Early Retirement Extreme Forums

jacob wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 08, 2021 12:00 pm

Lets compare Tiny Houses to van[-living] conversions.

As such I'd predict that TH popularity will not sustained, whereas van conversions will.

While I agree, I think it would be best to analyze WHY. Why are not all four boxes checked? I would say it is due to regulatory requirements. Indeed, how exactly is a tiny house different from a mobile home? Despite "mobile" in the name, a tiny house appears to be even more mobile than a mobile home. The difference is regulatory which in turn drives cultural. Change the regulatory then the culture changes and all four boxes are checked.

In the past there were other accommodation options that are unavailable today. Good examples are boarding/rooming houses that were common before 1940 but today are virtually unavailable in the USA. This is due to regulatory changes. Some of the cheapest housing options possible gone because some people didn't like them and changed the regulations forcing them to close. It looks like they didn't really care about the impact on low income people.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 08, 2021 3:29 pm

I must have spaced on the part of the presentation where you described the four different quadrants,

[]Individually Actionable
[]Honest Society (meaning it would still work if everyone did it)
[]Can get from Here to There w/out a Revolution
[]Graceful Failure is Possible

@AxelHeyst:

I think those must be guidelines for creative strategies rather than varied quadrants in which to seek mastery. For instance, I think my Lentil Baby strategy which did combine raw competencies from at least two different quadrants would not pass muster on guidelines 2 and 4.

Yes, They’re Jacob’s Guidelines for Designing Emergent Social Movements with an eye towards Resolving the Metacrisis. Any movement that has a poor grade in any category is going to struggle to build or maintain momentum. The slide before the 1hr mark. (Edit: Or rather, the title on the slide is "Ethical standards for emergent movement design", with implications for the potential success of a movement based on those standards.)

@jacob How do you pick the areas to build skills in? Pure interest?

I ask because sword fighting and clock building seem like cool ways to spend time, but I don’t see what relevance they have towards resolving the metacrisis.

Is it primarily the cross-fertilization among fields that matters, and not so much the fields themselves?

RoamingFrancis wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 09, 2021 1:29 pm

@jacob How do you pick the areas to build skills in? Pure interest?

I ask because sword fighting and clock building seem like cool ways to spend time, but I don’t see what relevance they have towards resolving the metacrisis.

Is it primarily the cross-fertilization among fields that matters, and not so much the fields themselves?

Interest guides by usefulness. I don't/can't do much w/o interest but that doesn't mean I do everything just because it's interesting to me. For example, I've been talking about getting into the flightsim game again for over ten years but I just can't see how it would be useful.

Swords on the other hand ... once you realize there's more to it than two people swinging metal sticks around. It's a complex subject that is impossible to fully intellectualize. Teaching doesn't build linearly---you have to learn wrong things first to establish the foundation for learning the right things. There are some very rich metaphors.
https://earlyretirementextreme.com/how- ... fight.html

My original "Return talk" was about the various lessons learned from renaissance pursuits. I might dedicate some of the philosopher in residence time to this.

jacob wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 03, 2021 7:36 am

Homeschooling is obvious ... unfortunately it seems like the majority of those who are most into that are exactly the types who probably shouldn't be.

When it comes to savage burns, do you consider yourself to be a technician, mechanic or designer?

AxelHeyst wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 09, 2021 9:35 am

The slide before the 1hr mark. (Edit: Or rather, the title on the slide is "Ethical standards for emergent movement design", with implications for the potential success of a movement based on those standards.)

@jacob I think this is a very good slide and framework that any person in a reasonable frame of mind would adopt (if only we manage to contain ourselves and be reasonable). In fact (and you will have thought about it), ERE can be seen as putting together modules meeting those standards.

Anyway, I would like to explore this more. Would you point to relevant readings / authors / practices that resulted in this slide?

Also, a nudge for you to give another talk somewhere or publish a written piece!

guitarplayer wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 10, 2022 6:08 am

Anyway, I would like to explore this more. Would you point to relevant readings / authors / practices that resulted in this slide?

Also, a nudge for you to give another talk somewhere or publish a written piece!

Thanks for the nudge. No, really!...

What motivated the slide was the realization that the problem [of?] is not unknown-unknowns (black swans) or known-unknowns (risk) but unknown-knows (ignorance). Much of my focus since 2015 has been on trying to understand why certain issues are not immediately obvious to other people even as they're obvious to a few with a high reality batting average. In particular, how to bridge between the two. The Wheaton Levels resulted from that focus. The hardest part per se is not to solve a problem but the frustrating process of communicating that solution to those who don't understand it, insist it's impossible, or at best demand a quick and simple solution for it.

As such the relevant readings would be on the topic of "adult ego development".

jacob wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 10, 2022 2:46 pm

Thanks for the nudge. No, really!...

But then I just read that article from the New Yorker from the 80,000 hours thread - don't go overboard with it, the garage status of ERE is good

I work with some severely handicapped people and in the behaviour support trainings the fundamental rule is that there is a reason to every behaviour. Use the spoon theory or what have you to figure out the decision making tree.

A rather positivist statement though; maybe a better mental representation would be floating in the sea of inertia and then at certain moments having certain scripts (click - trrrr..... - I swear remember reading this exact phrase in one of the academic texts, it was to do with narrative psychology; cannot find it now) switched on, context renders them being stupid, clueless, bandit or intelligent; with some random error around the triggers (doesn't always work).

guitarplayer wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 11, 2022 6:53 am

A rather positivist statement though; maybe a better mental representation would be floating in the sea of inertia and then at certain moments having certain scripts (click - trrrr..... - I swear remember reading this exact phrase in one of the academic texts, it was to do with narrative psychology; cannot find it now) switched on, context renders them being stupid, clueless, bandit or intelligent; with some random error around the triggers (doesn't always work).

I tend to see it the other way around: Context supplies certain scripts that can act as scaffolding to make someone smarter than they actually are. As soon as that scaffolding goes away, the stupid/helpless behavior comes back. E.g. a doctor gives diet advice in their office and then goes home to eat donuts. That's another way of saying that scripts aren't sticky [to the mind]. Also, some contexts have stupid scripts. Stupid scripts can even be directly injected to infect an environment, e.g. conspiracy theories.

Yes this is probably at play as well.

My thinking could be along the lines of the imprinting theory, though there they talk about a permanent disposition, like goslings taking the first large moving object as their mother and following it. So a gosling could follow mother goose (intelligent), some predator that eats goslings (clueless), a machine that breaks when followed by goslings (stupid) or a moving stack of gosling food (bandit). One could imagine a 'weak' imprinting theory in the realm of transient social behaviour.

A current example: at work there is one guy whose strong need is social approval. When I am around at work, he proudly eats all these apples shouting out that they are healthy and he is healthy. When another coworker with different dietary preferences is at work, the guy whispers in her ear how he had some junk food recently.

When I think about it, probably a matter of definitions. Is script an external imposed construct (like doctor's prescription) or a mental pattern of behaviour. I was aiming at the latter.

jacob wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 11, 2022 7:01 am

That's another way of saying that scripts aren't sticky [to the mind].

Is there more behind this? It brings to my mind latticework and mental models.

guitarplayer wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 15, 2022 4:10 am

Is there more behind this? It brings to my mind latticework and mental models.

Constructivism, also see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MGQgQZHx1Q

A re-watch was in place, thanks.

Sorry @jacob, I re-read the post about the doctor, I did not get it the first time. The way I looked at it, getting into one's cozy home with doughnuts on the counter would be a trigger switching on the 'eat the doughnut' script. Context is that in the contemporary world of abundance of doughnuts, this is stupid. Another trigger would be hunger, and again the aforementioned context would render the script 'eat a doughnut' stupid. But when one is in a food scarcity situation, this same script could be intelligent or bandit.

ETA: What is a good intro to Kegan (ETA: nevermind, I found 'In over our head' recommended)? I read about the theory years back, but not the theory itself. One of those seminars where you have an excerpt of a text talking about a theory and then discuss is for 1.5h and move on.

Because I understand you would be looking to get people as high Kegan as possible and quickly. Like they regenerate wasteland into food-forest quickly in permaculture, what would happen anyway if uninterrupted, if only over a long time.

jacob wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 10, 2022 2:46 pm

What motivated the slide was the realization that the problem [of?] is not unknown-unknowns (black swans) or known-unknowns (risk) but unknown-knows (ignorance). Much of my focus since 2015 has been on trying to understand why certain issues are not immediately obvious to other people even as they're obvious to a few with a high reality batting average. In particular, how to bridge between the two. The Wheaton Levels resulted from that focus. The hardest part per se is not to solve a problem but the frustrating process of communicating that solution to those who don't understand it, insist it's impossible, or at best demand a quick and simple solution for it.

As such the relevant readings would be on the topic of "adult ego development".

Sorry, I have been thinking about this again. So strictly speaking it is you who come up with the framework, i.e. not like it was lifted from another book? In case I want to use it somewhere!

Okay that question was not nearly as clear as in my head. By 'framework', I mean the "Ethical standards for emergent movement design" slide from the presentation (at 57:52)

guitarplayer wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 01, 2023 4:49 pm

Sorry, I have been thinking about this again. So strictly speaking it is you who come up with the framework, i.e. not like it was lifted from another book? In case I want to use it somewhere!

guitarplayer wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 02, 2023 7:10 am

Okay that question was not nearly as clear as in my head. By 'framework', I mean the "Ethical standards for emergent movement design" slide from the presentation (at 57:52)

Yes, that was strictly speaking from my brain and not from a book. Original attribution is always tough when it comes to pointing out what's "obvious in retrospect". Technically the 4 steps involve a "here" (many focus on 'the most important problem of the world'), a "there" (also many authors proposing utopias), a "here to there plan" (usually the last chapter in problem-type books), and a "graceful exit for that plan" (actually, this is rare, because the former authors tend to be idealists or their only ambition is to raise awareness which fails in obvious and predictable ways). While many have focused on one of these, I'm not aware of any that have focused on all 4 together.

As always, absence of proof is not proof of absence. Maybe there's some obscure French philosopher from 1895 who pointed out something similar. One of my weaknesses is the lack of formal education in the liberal arts. There's a lot of "independent invention" going on with this kind of "research". One might almost say that continuous independent invention is what drives and maintains the field: People rediscovering the same old over and over but finding new ways to express it that are more compatible with the zeitgeist.

Yes of course, looking for 'the first person who has come up more or less with an idea' is the humanities equivalent of data mining. We can also approach one another in good faith though.

Looking at this now, I draw links to
(1) a function that is
(2) absolutely monotonic,
(3) continuous and
(4) non-decreasing.

Ahem.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/04/25 ... the-goods/

The way to build muscles is by using them.