The Education of Axel Heyst

[AxelHeyst]

No, in that case I would be "chiding" not "ribbing."

Your writing generally seems to imply you want to move towards holistic and integrated systems, which I think are necessarily participatory (as in 'well, nobody else is going to dump the humanure bucket so I'll have to do it') if they are to be maintained. More permaculture than '4hr Work Week'.

I'm a big fan of holistic, integrated, and participatory systems, as well as permaculture. However, the sentence 'well, nobody else is going to dump the humanure bucket so I'll have to do it' rather brings to my mind the terms 'covert contract', 'negligent communication practices', 'dysfunctional organization leading to interpersonal toxicity despite the involved of 'good' people', and 'shoddy attention to detail'. In the realm of productive endeavors (businesses, organizations, ventures, etc) it brings to mind burning piles of money and megahours of wasted human effort. (These things come to mind due to personal experience, not books.)

Puzzles like this ("how to pull off holistic integrated participatory endeavors without inadvertently cultivating toxicity, covert hierarchies, and the whole familiar mess") that humans have not yet to date solved with a high degree of reliability or repeatability is one reason why I so frequently strap on my hot-rodded Binford 5000 Baby/Bathwater Filter and hoover large volumes of information with a special interest in people/orgs winning on their own terms, even if those terms are much different than mine. The game is to find interesting patterns like puzzle pieces, understand how they fit in *that* system, and experiment with how they might fit in *this* system.

ETA: I’ve been involved too many times in situations where people used holistic and integrated as code for “everything is going to work out well because we’re the good guys and Gaia wants us to win, so we don’t have to work hard, do our homework, or be organized because #emergence”. My response to these experiences isn’t to try to go lone wolf, it’s to be selective about getting involved in / cultivating only participatory endeavors that are friendly to organization, critical thinking, tight feedback, open and hard communication, doing homework, being diligent and respecting quality, etc.

[2Birds1Stone]

Born too late to witness the invention of aircrafts, and too early to witness interstellar colonization, but just in time to see some of my friends actualizing.........#achievementunlocked

[white belt]

*Interesting exercise: compare and contrast the stories in the book about how easily some of the New Guinean people kill with the profile of the psychology of violence in *On Killing* by Grossman. The tribespeople are aculturated from birth to be able to kill easily (there's a story of 6yo boys stabbing a nearly-dead 'enemy' with their toy spears while being drug into camp after being ambushed, and that's a socially celebrated thing to do). Grossman talks about how they figured out that in the US Civil War and the two world wars, soldiers had a psychological aversion to killing other humans as reflected in modeling kill rates. Soldiers would miss on purpose, consciously and half-consciously. The US changed its training and got 'better' kill rates by Vietnam. (Grossman's books and the studies his books are based on are not slam-dunk accepted, by the way - methodological issues pointed out with the original studies etc. The study of violence is a whoooole thing, of course.)

I found Grossman's books to be interesting but I never really bought into his theories, even before I knew about the methodological issues. For one, western culture was much more violent in the 1920s/1930s/1940s than it is today. Fights were common and socially accepted, domestic violence was commonplace, many sports were much more violent, hunting was widespread, and legal consequences for human on human violence were fewer and far between. So it never made sense to me that men who had brawled, beaten, been beaten, etc would all of a sudden shy away from violence in the context of war. Certainly killing is an extreme form of violence, but it seems farfetched that men couldn't be convinced to kill when their lives literally depended on it and there was widespread cultural acceptance. Technological innovations also tend to add more obfuscation between killer and victim, although WW2 still had its share of "fix bayonets".

I'm also not convinced that humans need to be socialized at an early age to be able to kill easily*. The uncomfortable truth is that at least some percentage of the population can kill with little prior acculturation. I will provide two examples. I recently went back down the Soft White Underbelly rabbit hole and watched a series of interviews with former prison inmates. One in particular was sent to a maximum security prison for nonviolent drug charges and ended up killing/nearly killing several inmates in fights during his time in prison. He discusses how he never been in a fight since grade school but new that his life was on the line so he did what he had to do. I've also watched a few interviews with former cartel sicarios, most of which seem to be relatively normal people who treated killing and torture as a job. Cartel leaders (business owners?) show more psychopathic tendencies than sicarios who incidentally are treated as independent contractor skilled labor. I think there is this idea that if you commit violence then you will be psychologically broken by it, but the reality is that the majority of people never develop PTSD.

* = From an evolutionary perspective this makes some sense because whomever can "flip the switch" in a life/death situation has a greater chance of passing on their own genes

[SouthernAlchemy]

Fair enough and probably a bad example with no context. I don't mean to imply having to take shitty (ha) jobs is necessary for an integrated system or think that it would necessarily be a failure. There is no system that exists in isolation and sometimes systems conflict. How do you maintain the integrity and outcomes of all the systems? In the case of overflowing bucket vs. flow and enjoyment of EREfest you chose to just dump the bucket while filing away a note to self that it needs to be addressed next time. A very valid response to that present state of conflicting systems and desired outcomes. OTOH, the letting Brandon cook/4 hr work week solution tries to isolate the desired singular outcome (writing books/collecting $) from anything that may conflict with it. The systems allowing that outcome and, of course, any resulting 'externalities' are obscured as much as possible. Is this a feature or a bug? Seems like a bug to me, but I believe I am probably in the minority, certainly in society at large if not this forum.

I get it. Systems thinking is hard work and system implementation is even harder. Most people would rather not do it or bother to confront the reality of the systems that are imposed on them daily. I appreciate you taking it on and relaying your thoughts and experiences.

Apologies if I am just making up this example from half remembered previous posts on this or other threads...

[7Wannabe5]

@SouthernAlchemy:

I think AxelHeyst is right-minded, but I also believe that what you are communicating does possibly go towards what sometimes goes wrong with hippie communes, permaculture projects, and similar from the perspective of the females involved. There's a level where everything is supposed to be all egalitarian and "free love", but then, because 'boys will be boys", the women end up getting ripped off. Another example would be that although I greatly admire David Holmgren ("Retrosuburbia", etc.), something he wrote about how his wife prefers to center her life in the kitchen while he focuses more on writing and planning made me see red, even though he truly may have been reflecting her personality type vs his rather than stereotypical gender roles. In my own relationships with men who exhibit a great deal of masculine energy and higher Physiological IQ than me (smart for a jock type, for instance), I have been somewhat able to overcome this by at least inhabiting the role of "consigliere", because my partner recognizes that although he has more masculine energy than me, I likely have the higher IQ. When I am in relationships with men who have similar or higher Math IQ than me, I still usually have higher Verbal IQ, so then my purpose becomes more towards bringing amusement. For example, when I was in contract with overt NYC Dom who only had Physics and Philosophy books on his shelf, I would try to break him out of Dom role by being funny. It's actually a bit trickier for me to partner with men who do have higher Verbal or Arts IQ than me, but lower Math IQ and maybe even lower level of masculine energy (for example, a depressive INFP visual artist), although I still might find attractive.

My point here being that, as we can currently see in Late Modernity, it almost becomes necessary for those who exhibit more feminine energy to start commodifying and charging for these services in order for a situation/system to be truly equitable. Kind of like how some North Korean women were actually assigned the job of Comfort Woman, except, obviously, not Top Down and Creepy as Fuck like that.

[AxelHeyst]

I appreciate your post SA, but I think I'm only half picking up what you're putting down. I think you've got something in your head that's significantly enough different from what's in my head and so I'm missing something. Maybe the following will help:

OTOH, the letting Brandon cook/4 hr work week solution tries to isolate the desired singular outcome (writing books/collecting $) from anything that may conflict with it. The systems allowing that outcome and, of course, any resulting 'externalities' are obscured as much as possible.

Sanderson might be a distracting example because of the nature of writing fiction. It certainly does have a whiff of 'great man' to it, but that's because you can't shop out the activity of writing fiction and Sanderson happens to identify as a man. Someone in his business can't come along and say "ah, I see Brandon hasn't finished world-building the magical system for his new novel, I'll just go ahead and do that." Because Sanderson doesn't 'just' write, but owns and operates a rather large media business, he can't do everything. He hires people to help. At some point he and his business partners/colleagues/employees had to sort out who does what. They had all sorts of things to figure out: who's going to handle shipping logistics? Who's going to handle facilities maintenance? Who's going to cover HR, and payroll, and taxes? Who's going to lead the creative team charged with marketing and visual art? Who's going to run the kickstarter logistics?

Some of those tasks could be done by just about any competent adult, and some require a bit of skill, training, and/or talent, and then some things literally only Sanderson could do. So Sanderson put his name next to the "only Sanderson can do this" tasks, and that was his full plate, and the other tasks had to go to other people. Having Sanderson do payroll, for example, would be insane. It is a bit mind-boggling that someone has on their daily check-list "make sure Brandon's water bottle is ready to go at 13:30 sharp", but it's also a bit mind-boggling that Sanderson can sign 1,000 leather-bound editions of his book in an hour and then sell those copies for $250ea, so his time is arguably worth a quarter million dollars an hour. That kind of math leads to business realities that don't have a whole lot of practical application to the lives of such as you and me.

Al that said, I don't understand your point about the systems allowing the outcome being 'obscured'. Do we expect Sanderson to have a note on the back flap of his book laying out all the support personnel for his endeavor? Not trying to be flippant, just trying to get where you're coming from.

Regarding the 4HWW, this I also sort of get the hate because Ferriss rubs people the wrong way, but I also sort of don't get it. Boil 4HWW down and what's the message? "Use strategy and alternative thinking to build a life where you only have to work 4 hrs a week and then do whatever you want." That *should* sound familiar to anyone on this forum: "Use strategy and alternative thinking to build a life where you only have to work 5 years or 5hrs/wk, whichever you prefer, and then do whatever you want."

(Regarding the humanure bucket at EREfest, I did actually have the 'role' of 'humanure bucket person' on a spreadsheet that someone volunteered for weeks ahead of time and took care of. That said, there were certainly jobs that I wasn't so organized with that people picked up organically just because everyone at Fest is awesome. To @7's theme, were some of those roles picked up by women in non-equitable percentages? Fuck, maybe! I hope now, it's something I think I'm well-above-average sensitive/perceptive to, but "average" is pretty shite so no gold stars there. But also if someone who happens to be a woman volunteers to do a thing in the moment am I supposed to stop them? That whiffs of patronization and control too. Unfucking this whole dynamic to the nth degree is work worth doing, but it gets subtle pretty quick.)

[AxelHeyst]

...I also believe that what you are communicating does possibly go towards what sometimes goes wrong with hippie communes, permaculture projects, and similar from the perspective of the females involved.

This is a major reason why I'm such a fan of/stickler for being organized and engaging in high-functioning communication. When things are all loosey-goosey we tend to drop back into whatever cultural/social-norm soup we came out of. And the historically-ripped-off continue to get ripped off as those norms are just repeated and re-normalized in the 'new' society.

[chenda]

I think there is this idea that if you commit violence then you will be psychologically broken by it, but the reality is that the majority of people never develop PTSD.

* = From an evolutionary perspective this makes some sense because whomever can "flip the switch" in a life/death situation has a greater chance of passing on their own genes

Yes it's remarkably easy to murder and feel no particular remorse. It's what we've evolved to do.

[7Wannabe5]

To @7's theme, were some of those roles picked up by women in non-equitable percentages? Fuck, maybe! But also if someone who happens to be a woman volunteers to do a thing in the moment am I supposed to stop them? That whiffs of patronization and control too. Unfucking this whole dynamic to the nth degree is work worth doing, but it gets subtle pretty quick.

I think emptying the humanure bucket is more towards a gender-neutral typically low-paid submissive role. The concepts of "submissive' and "feminine" are often confused, because majority of heterosexual females tend more towards the sexually submissive. Personality type and cultural training contributes more towards whether a human is socially submissive. As a female eNTP, I am mostly independent, but also fairly switchy, so have a perspective up/down. What I meant in terms of often "unpaid" feminine energy task would be something more like how my hot masculine energy ENxJ "ex" literally paid me to accompany him to some mediation meetings over a major lawsuit, because he knew I would help him not lose his temper. Even in my corporate career and some teaching situations, I have been paid to inhabit the soft, relaxed "good cop" role in tandem with somebody else inhabiting the hard, driving "bad cop" role. However, as with most things, "self-aware is halfway there", if an eNTJ cold-masculine-energy executive type does not realize that his manner might result in somebody hustling to bring him a cup of coffee, but also incline them towards possibly spitting in the cup as they provide "chop, chop" service, then he will not realize that he might benefit from hiring a personal assistant with a more pleasing manner to arrange for his drinkables. I could easily earn my entire living at upper-middle class U.S. level just making use of my pleasing manner in my tertiary Fe in relationship tandem with some hard-driving masculine energy type (even if I was a lesbian, since virtually every lesbian or bi woman who has ever tried to interest me sexually/romantically has also been of hard-driving type, only exception being a couple other relaxed women who were looking for third/swap for threesome/swinging), except for the fact that every other year I would have to spend an entire year doing nothing but relaxing on a beach to recharge my tertiary Fe. I have learned this lesson so thoroughly at this juncture, I would only contract in relationship with such a hard-driving type if they at a minimum agreed to 100% financial support inclusive of membership at very good meditation, yoga, and spa studio and understanding that I would be spending at least 20 hrs./week in my garden. Otherwise, I prefer to just visit such types in their territorial domains when I want to get laid. Kind of like Persephone and Hades.

[AxelHeyst]

I think emptying the humanure bucket is more towards a gender-neutral typically low-paid submissive role.

Yeah, I was thinking of tasks people picked up 'organically' in the kitchen.

What I meant in terms of often "unpaid" feminine energy task would be something more like how my hot masculine energy ENxJ "ex" literally paid me to accompany him to some mediation meetings over a major lawsuit, because he knew I would help him not lose his temper.

For sure. My romantic entanglement deploys something at least akin to what you're describing to de-escalate and resolve conflict as an executive for her company in a pretty masculine-dominant industry (she's described it as "my job is to take the bullets"), and she is very well financially compensated for that work.

[RoamingFrancis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSJfSokKmis

Hi Axel. Watched this talk to today and thought of you. Mention of the Mojave. Hope you're doing well.

[Scott 2]

For me - the "let Brandon cook" mindset forces acknowledgement of inequality. That clashes with an immature notion of equity. Elevating one's specialization, creates lesser work by definition. When others execute those tasks, a hierarchy emerges. It violates a naive sense of justice.

One way to resolve the injustice - having Brandon empty buckets, deprives everyone. Less of his superior cooking is on offer. Maybe more important - the person who can only empty a bucket, loses their purpose.

The error is applying one's personal frame to others. Each person exercises a decision tree, informed by their individual constraints. Equity demands a respect of the individual, but does not assume identical output. My housekeeper is making the most of what she has available. I can treat her well. I cannot make her a technologist.

The specialist also incurs a new obligation. Care and feeding of the emergent hierarchy. Its growth constrains their peak. This is where we get into "you're not a leader, until you create leaders who create leaders" energy. While the statement refers specifically to leverage via human capital, it applies to all forms. Very few can unlock the exponential result. It's the basis behind extreme wealth, power, fame, etc.

Each level demands an increasingly harsh breadth of perspective. Scale to the global population, and for a populist, "every billionaire is evil". It's another class of Wheaton levels. A lucky few can both acknowledge the map, and choose what space they'd like to occupy.

There's certainly an argument around the morality of unbounded leverage. In the spaces I have capacity to play though, I'm not sure it's relevant.

[AxelHeyst]

@RF! Hey man. Thanks for the video, looks cool. Hope you're well too.

@scott2 thanks for the thoughts, interesting.

---

Manual 1.0 and Manual 2.0
ERE is an instruction manual for writing your own instruction manual. It's right there in the first paragraph. The book provides guidance to get you to what we now call WL7, on the threshold of WL8. It gets you out of Plato's Cave, but offers no guidance as to what to do once you get out onto the surface. Not a bug it's a feature. That bit is up to us!

To date (2020-2025) I've been more or less copying a lot of basic ERE/post-consumer praxis, with a very salient goal/desire of attaining high levels of freedom (financial, emotional, psychological, physical, intellectual, etc) *so that* I can engage wholeheartedly in my freedom-to activities. I deliberately tried to speedrun ERE, although at a half decade in I'm not sure how much it counts as speedrunning. Incidentally, I recommend the speedrun approach for those who experience a full-body yes to the idea. A very hell yes or no kind of thing.

I'm now getting to the point where I'm internalizing a lot of these practices, I'm attaining a high level of robust freedom in many areas, and I'm getting to the edge of what I can do with the practices/tools/mindsets I've been running/adopting/working with to date.

The instructions I wrote down (mostly copied and compiled from the instruction manuals of others) have gotten me this far, but it is not evident that those same instructions will serve me in the next phase of my life as currently written. It feels appropriate to take a high level look at all of the heuristics and strategies I've been running, and how they fit together, and look at heuristics and strategies from other domains, with an eye towards a major update if not a rewrite.

I'm sure that most of what we consider 'ERE canon' isn't going anywhere in my system. It's not like I'm going to discover that systems thinking, loose coupling, hometelicity, keeping problems small and slow, etc doesn't serve me anymore. But I am prepared to see these concepts fitting into a broader framework in a different kind of way than they have to date. Something something transcend and include.

Whereas the broad goal of my 2020-2025 instruction manual was "How To Get as Free as Possible/exit Plato's save as soon as possible", the 2025> instruction manual is something like "How to Deeply Learn, Internalize, and Apply My Way" (Way understood in the Taoist sense).

Manual 1.0 feels like it was very heavy on unlearning dysfunctional patterns. There was a vibe of divestment and of throwing off constraints and making space in my life for serendipity: decluttering (physical and otherwise), unlearning, attaining autonomy of action, etc. Manual 1.0 could be picked up by just about anybody, maybe slightly tweaked, and used to good effect.

Manual 2.0 might feel kind of the opposite: investment, commitment, choosing and delivering, maybe even a 'narrowing' of focus in a certain sense as I find what I want to double down on in life and going for it. Manual 2.0 might be entirely useless to anyone who isn't me... but possibly my notes about how I went about writing it will be useful for others. That's why I write these borderline stream-of-consciousness posts.

Another frame on the difference is expansion vs. contraction, removing barriers vs. choosing productive constraints. (Having a hard time thinking of a productive constraint? Study the geometry of rocket motor nozzles or refrigeration expansion valves.)

Manual 1.0 was about removing undesirable constraints, obstacles, friction, muda. I suspect Manual 2.0 is about designing and accepting constraints. The old constraints were not deliberately chosen and thus needed to be removed. now, my task is to deliberately choose constraints via my own volition.

Manual 1.0 Ingredients:

• Systems thinking (Reverse Fishbones, webs of goals, loose coupling, buffers, homeotelicity...)
• Minimalism
• DIY (home ec, radical homemaking, repair, salvage, etc)
• Frugality
• The techniques of FIRE math / applied capitalism
• Renaissance Ideal
• Needs/Wants Analysis
• etc etc, you know all this.

Between Manual 1.0 and 2.0 it feels like there are bridge ingredients, also commonly applicable to anyone on this path:

• Self-Actualization Theory (Maslow, https://www.sloww.co/ is the best entry point and also very ERE-adjacent/aware etc)
• Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan, etc https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/theory/)
• The Mechanics of Stoke (Flow/Csikszentmihalyi, Peak by Ericsson, The Rise of Superman by Kotler, What Doesn't Kill Us by Carney, etc)
• Virtue Theory (eudamonia, arete, etc: McIntyre)

Manual 2.0 Ingredients (my guess at the ingredients relevant to ME, *not* ingredients I think necessarily relevant to anyone ready to draft their own Manual 2.0. This is where the choose-your-own-adventure part really becomes relevant):

• Earthcentric ethics (e.g. the 3 permaculture ethics)
• Permaculture design principles
• Solarpunk
• Founder Praxis (entrepreneurship but not necessarily business)
• Freelance Praxis
• Deep Mastery in Domain(s) of Choice (Cal Newport's evolving thinking re: 'the Deep Life')
• Essentialism
• Program Management
• Asset Management at >= one scale up from household
• Organic Leadership and alternative organization praxis (Reinventing Organization by Laloux)
• Writing (fiction and nonfic)
• Getting really clear on the depth vs. breadth question: what do I want to master, what do I want to gain basic competence, what do I want to delegate or dismiss?

Examples of Manual 2.0 ingredients that I have considered and currently think do not belong/fit in my near-future system:

• Homesteading (permaculture or otherwise)
• Moneylessness
• Joining an ecovillage (although I continue to derive second-order inspiration/insights from ecovillagers)
• Going full dirtbag (e.g. fulltime climber or bikepacker or ...)
• Going monastic (dropping full commit onto a spiritual path)
• Going very low- or no-tech (although I find low/no-tech 'retreats' very rejuvenating and have integrated those into my WoG)

eta: How did I come up with the list of ingredients for Manual 2.0? Chasing stoke/following curiosity, running rapid lifestyle experiments, being quick to try new things and just as quick to drop them, is the best answer I have so far. Reading a lot is an obvious one that doesn't really need to be mentioned round here, but might as well.

[Stasher]

Axel Heyst this is a wonderful summarization from your perspective, thank-you for sharing.

[AxelHeyst]

@stasher you're very welcome!

Had another thought this morning - for me, my Manual 1.0 was a lot about bringing "fundamentals" and "stoke" into greater overlap, from my 3-category model of skill acquisition:



And a big focus of Manual 2.0 is about

a) developing the vocation circle, which until a few months ago I had somewhat on the shelf, and

b) bringing it into greater overlap with the other two, with its overlap of stoke being the most important. Vocation overlapping fundamentals is gravy but not imperative, I think.



PS All the figures from my book are here now.

[Scott 2]

Cool of you to make the diagrams available for free. The book is underpriced IMO

Ever try auto arranging the Web of goals diagrams in software? I think it'd be interesting to see how relationships visualize under the various mechanisms. IE what chunking is present we don't Intuit

My experience comes from flow charting entity relationship diagrams in visio, but I think it's a common option. IE:

https://www.drawio.com/doc/faq/apply-layouts

[jacob]

Had another thought this morning - for me, my Manual 1.0 was a lot about bringing "fundamentals" and "stoke" into greater overlap, from my 3-category model of skill acquisition:

Uh oh ... rabbit hole warning. Look up "Ikigai Venn diagram".

[Stasher]

I think I will remain stuck or maybe it is just a subconscious desire to remain there, but your perspective of Manual 1.0 is what I keep handy on the shelf to continually refer to. I think it is for the most part that I really don't have any significant post secondary education and just gravitate towards keeping it simple and maybe that I don't have the intellectual proficiency to grasp or fully engage on some of the topics here on the ERE forums that are now more frequent. I do indeed marvel at the minds and collective discussions that engage, contribute and collaborate here though and clearly aid in your development of Manual 2.0

Or maybe I'm doing early efforts into Manual 2.0 and don't realize it having reached FIRE/ERE status some time ago. Since then is constantly tackling new pursuits of mind, body and lifestyle?? Not chasing career or vocational aspirations changes perspective and then comes down to somehow the work purpose comes into wanting its part of the diagram circles. That being said I really don't like the word purpose and possibly your using of Stoke is the alternative?

[AxelHeyst]

@stasher a few thoughts:

• Take anything I say with a grain of salt because I'm just muddling through all this as best I can figure. I entirely expect some of the stuff I get into to be a dead end - that's the nature of the scout/explorer vibe I am going for. I'd be disappointed in myself if I never got off track because it'd mean I wasn't really pushing.
• I don't think it's necessary to desire to go 'past' Manual 1.0/WL7/whatever you want to call it. For a simple analogy, I enjoy world travel, but I have no desire to see *all* the countries or even "a lot". I have no stoke for it, and that's fine. I've done some travel, had some classic "oh, other cultures are different but humans gonna human" epiphanies, and I'm pretty satiated with that. Other people, you couldn't stop them from going everywhere. Cool for them, not for me. I don't feel "stuck" with respect to world travel, I feel "content/fulfilled/uninterested in much further exploration in that domain."
• Re: 'vocation', I think that either my 3-circle model is only applicable to some percentage of people, OR 'vocation' needs to be more broadly defined as "that which makes one's life feel worth living". Maybe fundamentals and stoke is sufficient for some people.
• Also, my Manual 2.0 ingredients might make it seem like any Manual 2.0 ought to incorporate elements of venture/exploration/vocation/etc. I don't think that's true at all. For example, I don't really know what OOTB is up to, but I get the sense that they're working on a Manual 2.0 that is remarkably different from mine - much more focused on spiritual and philosophical truths than I'm currently wired for. Someone else's Manual 2.0 might have one ingredient, "be the best version of a parent that I'm capable of". Another might have the ingredient "drifter". My particular Manual 2.0 ingredients are fairly culturally lauded (in the West), at least for a certain interpretation of them, and so it might seem like I'm trying to aim the Manual 2.0 mob back in the direction of a certain style of mainstream cultural acceptance. I'm really not. I'm trying to be authentic to my own traits, despite the ironic fact that some of them happen to be associated with traits that ERE1 was designed to escape in the first place (intensity and drive look at lot like hustle culture, workaholism, etc).
• I think that the cognitive effort required to figure out some of this stuff (to 'blaze the trail') is much different qualitatively than the effort required to copy/follow/pick up the gist and run with it in your own direction. I attempted for YEARS to figure out ERE1 and failed completely, and then found the book and had a #facepalm moment where I was baffled at my inability to put the pieces together the way Jacob did in the 2000s. But that's unfair, because inventing things that don't exist yet is way harder than it looks after the fact.

[Scott 2]

Ever try auto arranging the Web of goals diagrams in software?

I tried with the most complex web - 11 nodes. It didn't work. Too many links between.

When modeling business entities, that finding would cause a revision to my framework. Sacrificing accuracy for improved complexity management. Grouping like with like, matching levels of detail, reducing interface scopes, minimizing channels of communication, etc

The value was in highlighting systemic intent, along with identifying likely constraints. Scaling depends upon effective decomposition of the domain. What to exclude holds equal importance.

I wonder if this gets at the problem in diagramming web of goals. Not that it isn't feasible, but that it requires sacrifice of weak connections. Loss of efficiency to enable growth. Closing every resource loop tightly couples the system, introducing a fragility that destabilizes overall.

So allowing some waste, could non-intuitively could improve overall results. Especially if it's aggressively discarded. I see I'm backing into delegation again, so I'm going to stop here.