Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

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Western Red Cedar
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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by Western Red Cedar »

Ego wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 7:43 pm
Fair enough. If people are addressing it.... then they see it as a problem, not a false narrative, right? Am I misunderstanding?

Avoiding darknetting ERE is the purpose of this thread, right?
Good clarifying questions.I think we saw it as a potential problem when the MM groups started emerging. I see darknetting as a bit of a false narrative. I think I'm probably conflating forum participation and darknetting. Many of those in the MM groups are quite active on the forums.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by Western Red Cedar »

Sclass wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 7:48 pm
Maybe the forum format is becoming old for a new generation of potential early retirees.
They've actually been having this discussion on the MMM forums recently. IIRC, the general consensus was that there are a lot more options to discuss these topics, forums are less attractive to younger generations, and Reddit absorbs a lot of the activity. I actually think the ERE forums are a little less susceptible because we are the kind of folks who geek out in this format.

rref
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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by rref »

Western Red Cedar wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 8:00 pm
I see darknetting as a bit of a false narrative. I think I'm probably conflating forum participation and darknetting. Many of those in the MM groups are quite active on the forums.
I think there is a bit curse of knowledge going on for the MMG participants. To them the MMG to forum "wall" is transparent. To nonparticipants it is opaque. For a participant the discussion overlaps flow seamlessly. For a nonparticipant it is disjointed.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by jacob »

Western Red Cedar wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 6:53 pm
I want to push back on this as it seems like a bit of a false narrative running through this thread.

First, Jacob met with the @AH MM group earlier this year excited about the organic growth of the ERE community that MM groups represented. He wanted to encourage new MM groups. We discussed the potential issue of the network effect, and determined that the solution was to establish an expectation that MM members would report back on their projects in either their journals or elsewhere on the forum. This is largely what I've observed. It is sometimes a little difficult to track unless you follow most of the journals. I wrote this post about my personal experiences to encourage others to participate after that conversation with Jacob - viewtopic.php?p=254225#p254225.

Jacob started this thread after that discussion viewtopic.php?t=12274&sid=6feec629eae0e ... 7f6490cb4d.

@AH created a best practices thread to provide feedback on lessons learned - viewtopic.php?t=12263.

@Jacob, feel free to correct me if I'm mischaracterizing something here. I could probably name a couple dozen regular posters who've drifted away over the last few years after reaching FI or because of some kind of political disagreement. I'm not sure I could name more than a couple who stopped posting after joining a MM group. I'm sure you have a much better handle on the numbers though.
I don't think it's a false narrative as much as it's an incomplete narrative. It's a complex situation with several contributing factors. The "duplicate written space" on MMGs is one. The loss of politics is another factor. The air going out of the "everything bubble" is a third one. I'll note that politics was shut down in Q1/2021. The bubble started deflating in Q1/2022. And the MMGs didn't start becoming a thing before Q1/2022 as well (before that there was only AH's MMG. In terms of forum activity, it has really started dying off this year. Similarly to diagnosing the Great Financial Crisis it is not just one cause---there are multiple causes driving a trend ... and the trend is down.

I have indeed been keeping track of the numbers. If you hit the Quick Links in the burger menu in the top left and click Active Topics, it'll show you how many threads have been active in the past 7 days. This number has increased from 30-40 to 61 in the last 5 days since this thread started highlighting the problem. Another metric is the oldest of the last 20 topics (the date of the bottom last post on the first post). Right now, the most recent 20 threads are all younger than 24 hours, which was more or less standard throughout forum history until it started its decline over the last year or maybe two. Last week, the oldest of the most recent 20 threads could be as old as 3-4 days.

Acknowledging the problem or raising awareness about is not the same as acting in a way that solves or prevents it. Even a few people dropping off the clear net will reduce the activity. I don't know how active the discord/slack servers are in the respective groups. I do know that the MMG I'm part of contains discussions about resilience that could be more productively held here. Due to being split, we get 1-2 straggling conversations with people splitting their attention/responses when we could have had one solid one on the clearnet.

The network effect really is real. When people engage in a thread on the clearnet, it causes not only other to engage as well but it also increases the likelihood of responding instead of just logging on, noticing that "nothing new has happened" and logging off again. Activity begets more activity. This is why cordoning a large group into small and dark subgroups creates a "divide and conquer"-type death. [I know how it's popular in certain circles to start groups for pretty much everything ... but in effect this division kills off everything. This is what happened to the Deep Adaption forum. It's what's beginning to happen here. It's hard to see it at the ground level. It's obvious from a birds-eye view.]
rref wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 8:30 pm
I think there is a bit curse of knowledge going on for the MMG participants. To them the MMG to forum "wall" is transparent. To nonparticipants it is opaque. For a participant the discussion overlaps flow seamlessly. For a nonparticipant it is disjointed.
I think this is absolutely true. Someone who is part of one MMG and only look at the threads they participate in will probably "experience" the same amount of activity. Someone who is member of 2 or more MMGs might even experience their personal activity level as having increased, perhaps even to a degree where they are too busy to keep up and dial down their posting on the main forum by, say, 10-20%. (Which in turn reduces overall activity by some exponent of that.)

It is conceivable that the total ERE activity has actually gone up. This would be absolutely great and that is what I was so enthusiastic about with the MMG strategy a year ago. However, I did not expect that almost every MMG would create its own discord/slack group. Because people are unlikely to replicate the discussions taking place there (because of being busy), the activity on the main forum is down as per the numbers above. This means that the potential to form new MMGs is declining rapidly. As such ERE activity is not growing organically as expected---instead it's cannibalizing its social capital.

If the inter-journal/mutual-assistance/project-type-talk (WL3-6 style) is moving off the clearnet and into smaller groups, it also means that the remaining clearnet-speak will be increasingly dominated by (WL7-9) ERE2 topics. That's another thing.

In conclusion. It is happening. It is real. It was unexpected in foresight but somewhat explainable in hindsight.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by AxelHeyst »

I disagree with @WRC. I think the MMGs have indeed decreased forum participation. Impossible to know for sure, though, it's just my perception. I think @rref is right that there is a transparent wall. I've been concerned about this issue from the start, like WRC pointed out, so I don't know if I'm just being sensitive to it or what.

That said, I think there is a large untapped potential of the MMGs to boost/improve/positive feedback on the main forum, which has to date been not capitalized upon. So whether or not the MMGs have decreased forum engagement, my goal is: how can the MMGs be designed such that they improve the main forum / ERE community as a whole?

That's what we've been discussing, and already I see the effect of this thread rippling through all the MMGs I'm involved in. We'll be having interesting conversations about it over the next few days/weeks, for sure. This is why I said I am feeling positively about this topic.
Ego wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 6:07 pm
Back when the mastermind groups began sprouting, I wondered how much of it was driven by those who wanted to create new ERE-adjacent movements. It is much easier for someone who wants to create a new movement to poach from an existing movement than to build a new one organically from scratch. It is a technique as old as religion. MMGs created the perfect opportunity. I don't believe anyone did anything with the intent to cause harm. It just happened. It didn't really become an obvious problem until the poached stopped participating here.
You are right. I was/am trying to create an ERE-adjacent movement. But I'm not trying to poach from the ERE community. I'm trying to drive people to it, in the right way.

Jacob has explicitly asked people not to do things that would make this place popular. He wants this place to be a grad school. He's talked about this in this thread, and just the other day I found him making a similar request in a journal of his from 2013. If this place goes Eternal September, it's all over as far as he's concerned. I get it. I'm on board with that.

So when I came to Jacob and solicited his advice about my podcast, for example, and told him that I wanted to call it "The ERE Chronicles", and that the purpose was to drive people here, he advised me against it, for several reasons. He advised me to think of my project as an independent derivative work from ERE.

I think of my blog and my podcast as an attempt to capture the attention of people who would balk at this forum and even the book. I am trying to speak to a very specific audience - specifically, people a lot how I was around 2015, people like a lot of my friends. These people will not engage with ERE as it is. I am attempting to craft a message that they will find palatable and useful where they are at.

I often struggle with my content because I want to just say "Jacob already figured this out, just read Ch5", or whatever, but that's not what I'm doing. I'm trying to put it in words that I would accept when I was in that mode. I'm striking a very tricky balance between straight up ripping Jacob off without crediting him, and showing my ERE cards too blatantly and turning my intended audience off. You can find reference to ERE within my content without much trouble, but I don't plaster it all over the place.

I see myself as having two ERE roles.

1) I'm an ERE grad student. I'm here on the forum, I'm attempting to contribute, engage, learn, etc. Part of my grad student work was creating the MMGs. I saw the MMGs as a way to help 'make better ingredients'. Think of it like ERE grad student study groups. Get together, share our struggles, support each other and provide an accountability group.

2) I'm an ERE 'lieutenant'. My primary lieutenant project is my blog and podcast. I'm trying to spread the word to a demographic that wouldn't otherwise be receptive to or even stumble across ERE. And I'm careful to not tip my ERE cards too readily to them, for fear of a) scaring them off or b) causing an Eternal September event, in the unlikely event that my stuff becomes really popular and the masses follow my backtrail to here.

The relationship between the MMGs and my ERE-adjacent movement project is that my blog and podcast are frequently the subject of my MMG project. I solicit advice and feedback from my MMG mates on my blog/podcast/adjacent-movement activities. But the center of gravity of the MMGs I'm involved in is the forum.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by AxelHeyst »

ffj wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 4:39 pm
What I am saying is that certain posters and topics are intimidating for new people. It gives the impression, rightly or wrongly, that they are probably not smart enough to contribute. So they don't.
I agree with you. And I think that there are things we can do around here to make the atmosphere less intimidating to new people - your sketch sounds good to me, and Miss Lonelyheart's post above yours. Let's work on that. Perhaps some renewed effort to flesh out the wiki and update it for some of the newer topics we've been discussing recently, and a sticky to point people in that direction.

There are many posts and topics that I don't engage with because I don't think I'm smart/informed enough to contribute at. I've gone wikipedia-article-deep on SD, so I get lost quickly. I know only the rudiments of MTBI. Heck, pages of my own journal have been hijacked by SD/etc arcana that I totally checked out of because I can't make heads or tails of. I had stuff I wanted to post (in my own journal!) but I just waited until the nerds were done. It didn't feel great.

I think I might be starting to understand the jargon issue better. [EDIT: No, I didn't. I thought people were concerned about jargon seeping into non-advanced discussion. I didn't realize people were objecting also to shorthand within clearly advanced discussions. I don't really think the rest of my post here is useful/relevant, now.] Let me try to phrase some of the concerns on both sides with the grad school metaphor.

The issue is that, if the forum is ERE Grad School, we've got a mix of Masters students and PhD students. When the PhD students start spewing jargon, the Masters students are mystified and turned off, and feel like they have nothing to contribute there. Which is legit.

When the Masters students interrupt the PhD students to slow down and explain with less jargon, the PhD students are frustrated. Which is also legit.

I think that the issue is not that the PhD students use jargon, or that the Masters students aren't 'smart' enough(!!). It's that the spaces aren't clearly labeled. Expectations aren't well managed. We've got PhD nerds wandering into introductory classes, and we've got masters students in PhD seminars who don't know that that's where they are.

The ERE2.0 subforum is essentially a PhD subforum. All the jargon and arcana is fair game there. Agreed?

The whole rest of the forum is where it's tricky. Sometimes a Master's topic is going along nicely and then some PhD nerd comes in and douses the thing with cold water.... or maybe it feels like a squad of nerds come in and commandeers the conversation?

Is any of this resonating? If so, to me it points in the direction of having clearer space labels, or expectations. Something as simple as starting a new thread and adding a note "As OP, please no SD/etc stuff in here." That feels like a clunky thing to do, any other ideas? [EDIT: this is probably a terrible idea. I don't agree with this whole section of my post now.]

..

I was reflecting a little further on this, and it occurred to me that the AxelMMG had become mostly a jargon-free zone. Contrary to some perceptions, it was a place where people could discuss things without feeling too dumb to contribute. That explains well why the relative amount of jargon increased on the main forum... all the non-jargon discussion had gone dark and flourished like mushrooms.

So a challenge with re-clearnetting the MMGs is, how to make spaces here that are inviting and comfortable to those who don't engage in the high-level nerd stuff, without shutting down the high-level discussions? The 'orientation' sticky or wiki page, to point people to the best sources for self-study so they don't feel unsupported or undesired, is a great idea. Let's make that happen.
Last edited by AxelHeyst on Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by guitarplayer »

jacob wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 10:28 am
[...] in no way helps me when conversing with an ESFP (human-oriented person who focuses on how events makes them feel). The best I can do in that case is to have a map that indicates I'm practically talking to an alien species, relatively speaking.
Find an ESFP in yourself @jacob! Yesterday after our cycling outing I was speaking with DW about 'it's like riding a bicycle' phrase and recalled the first time I managed to ride a bike with no help. I might be confabulating but I was with my dad, I had a red bike, my dad had a tartan patterned flannel shirt, had a stick stuck in the rack of my bike and finally let go of the stick. Freedom to. I shed a tear remembering this yesterday.

In some of the forum's vernacular, this is to do with linking the map-territory knowing with kennen or experiential learning.

ETA: to try to bring some value to the original discussion. The one MMG I am a member of, I would normally first write a journal post and then post in the MMG channel, sometimes separately or sometimes just linking to and expanding what I put in my journal. Sometimes others would bring in my journal post to the channel. So for me it sort of worked as zooming in on what I share at the porch.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by jacob »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 11:18 pm
There are many posts and topics that I don't engage with because I don't think I'm smart/informed enough to contribute at. I've gone wikipedia-article-deep on SD, so I get lost quickly. I know only the rudiments of MTBI. Heck, pages of my own journal have been hijacked by SD/etc arcana that I totally checked out of because I can't make heads or tails of. I had stuff I wanted to post (in my own journal!) but I just waited until the nerds were done. It didn't feel great.
Journal owners have quite a bit [freedom] in terms of control over their journal. A "please don't hijack" would be respected.
jacob wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 12:52 pm
I'd like to think I can elaborate on any statement I make or position I take, but my responses come with a trilemma: (short, complete, plain). Pick any two, but only two!

short & complete responses will contain jargon
short & plain responses will leave out important parts
complete & plain responses will make them extraordinarily long
I was once member of a group that insisted that all communication be short (always less than 200 words) and plain. Otherwise people would simply ignore what I wrote (TL;DR - as a matter of principle). Typically, I would spend 2-4 hours editing each reply down. I would literally sit with a ruler to measure the number of lines on the screen until it fit in the right box. Out of necessity, this left out important points. The effect of the "short and simple" rule was to reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator. A kind of grammatically enforced newspeak. While this was super-inclusive and ensured that everybody could participate in the conversation, it also meant that the conversation itself lacked depth. It was great for connecting with people. It was terrible for connecting with ideas. And this was a problem because we were there to solve a complex problem, not to hang out(*).

Small-talk is sufficiently simple to meet the short&simple criteria. Something like climate change, cultural evolution, or subjective depth is not. I remember the climate wars on the forum. Initially, the strategy was short&complete responses, but without a background (90% will simply not crack a book or read the wiki no matter how many times it's referenced), I eventually went to complete&plain responses that were 5000+ words long. I'm not sure people learned anything technical from those, but the meta-message that "this is actually way more complex than your short&simple conversation/blogpost suggests" eventually penetrated.

(*) I think this is perhaps part of people's unstated assumptions. http://www.albion.com/netiquette/rule3.html We have different ideas of why we are here. For some the forum is like a bar they hang out in. For some it's like grad school project. For some it's free Q&A. For some it's a mutual support group. I think if we started fencing off different parts of the forum based on communication styles, it would reduce activity.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by jennypenny »

jacob wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 2:27 pm
The exhaustion is real. P enjoys process. J enjoys results.
I understand. And I do sympathize.

jacob wrote:
Sun Nov 27, 2022 7:08 am
I was once member of a group that insisted that all communication be short (always less than 200 words) and plain. Otherwise people would simply ignore what I wrote (TL;DR - as a matter of principle).
...
Small-talk is sufficiently simple to meet the short&simple criteria. Something like climate change, cultural evolution, or subjective depth is not.
Just to be clear, I didn't talk about shortening posts. (Anyone who's been here a while knows I'm capable of writing walls of text. :D) I also didn't suggest dumbing down discussions to entice noobs (I never mentioned that either). I was talking specifically about the recent trend to rely too heavily on shorthand in the advanced discussions. IMO, over-reliance on jargon can reduce nuance and actually make the post less clear. You and I have had this discussion privately about analogies and how I feel that sometimes they can be overused to the detriment of the writer too. (IIRC I complained back then too :oops: ).

I guess it's just my background that makes me bristle against the increased use in advanced discussions on the forum. It always smacks of laziness to me, but it's probably the medium itself that encourages the use of such shortcuts. It does reduce clarity though, so it's a trade-off for those who use shorthand in their posts.



eta: In my original post, I thought the overuse of shorthand was a deliberate barrier to entry to 2.0. Since that's not the case, my only comment is what I said above. I'm not concerned about noobs (honestly, I'm always surprised that people regularly post here without even reading ERE). I was/am concerned about the lack of participation among people with a quality track record wrt the forum and ERE though.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by Lemur »

jacob wrote:
Sun Nov 27, 2022 7:08 am
Small-talk is sufficiently simple to meet the short&simple criteria. Something like climate change, cultural evolution, or subjective depth is not. I remember the climate wars on the forum. Initially, the strategy was short&complete responses, but without a background (90% will simply not crack a book or read the wiki no matter how many times it's referenced), I eventually went to complete&plain responses that were 5000+ words long. I'm not sure people learned anything technical from those, but the meta-message that "this is actually way more complex than your short&simple conversation/blogpost suggests" eventually penetrated.
You must be referring to what I call the The "atomic bomb" of the climate change wars:
viewtopic.php?p=137975#p137975

Saved that post on my bookmarks because I was fairly newish to the forum around this time and when this war happened, I remembered walking away with "man, I better have an informed opinion around here before just posting willy-nilly." :lol:

@Miss Lonelyhearts

Thanks for that. My notes are scattered on my desktop but I've been meaning to myself just compile a list of where all this stuff is coming from. I've a vague understanding of most of them. I've found the SD to be particularly useful mainly only because my prior employer introduced us to this framework: https://hbr.org/2017/03/pioneers-driver ... -guardians to assist with team collaboration...and that sort of introduced me to the idea on how these frameworks can be very important to conveying ideas and getting your message across to another.

One of these days I'll graduate ERE1 and get more involved on ERE2 but like JP posted, I think anonymity is actually a good litmus test of who is willing and who isn't. Also as a fellow member of the WL 5-6 arena, I at least find the ERE2 discussions intriguing enough to make me want to just graduate ERE1 so I could join. But I'm still leveling up and collecting experience like an RPG.
Last edited by Lemur on Sun Nov 27, 2022 8:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by Seppia »

I guess it’s up to Jacob (and the other ERE2 participants) to decide how much of an “olive branch” they want to send out.

At this very moment, I am also skipping the discussions because I don’t want to invest the time to understand the color codes or other acronyms.
Maybe at a later stage I will.

For what is worth, my perception is that when I first saw references to Wheaton levels and Myers Briggs (for example) those were the only things I would not understand in the post.
So basically a simple googling and 30 mins of invested time would make me “climb that step” and be on a good enough comprehension level.
Now when I start reading some of the ERE2 posts I feel like I’m staring at a different language.

So basically the gap was smaller/more easily coverable.
As Jacob was saying a few posts ago, this may be due to the fact that in the past there were a bunch of WL5 pulling up WL4 people (or whatever), maybe now the gap is just bigger so to make it discouraging.

I believe as usual the solution to this is for each “group” to make a small effort.

I clearly understand Jacob’s point of view of “hey we’re here, make the effort”, being the hermit living up the mountain kind of thing, but if no one ever comes to visit you I’m not sure how that’s a win*

Maybe the real issue here is a “marketing” issue.
If Jacob wants to move in to philosophical/big picture stuff, I’m not sure a forum called “earlyretirementextreme” will attract like minded people.


*assuming your end goal is influencing people.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by Seppia »

I would add that the level of engagement on this thread is indicative of a community that cares

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I would like to make a meaningful contribution to this discussion, but I'm too stuck in my own perspective. My perspective is warped, because I've been in physical decline myself over the last year or two while the forum has been in active posting decline. I've probably been guilty of splattering nerd jargon here, there, and everywhere, but this is in large part due to the fact that my lifestyle has been impacted by my illness in a manner that has taken me from 50% introverted/50% extroverted nerd lifestyle to 90% brain-in-a-jar lifestyle. IOW, lately it has become much easier for me to just keep reading ahead in "the curriculum" than to work on my own mid-level real life projects. In fact, my ERE1 real life frugal functioning is probably at a 10 year low, so I don't feel particularly competent or inspired to offer advice to mid-level newcomers, especially those who are high earners because clearly not my bailiwick* . So, it's difficult for me to determine how much my own or general participation in MMGs has been a factor in my forum posting.


*Along with anything resembling a burpees competition. :lol:

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by ffj »

@Axel

To be clear, I'm not advocating for anything to be "dumbed down" to the lowest common denominator. I don't think we need labels or anything like that, but we do need inclusiveness and choices for the curious out there that are dipping their toes in ERE water.

One of the reasons I ask Jacob so many questions about this topic is because firstly I'm curious, but more importantly I put myself in beginner's shoes and wonder if somebody stumbled upon this site what would they think? Would they have a clue what this place is even about? Unless they were willing to read for a couple of days or a week I don't think they would. Some of you may think this is a great barrier to entry to weed out the lazy among us and it may be, but I also view it as an opportunity cost. There is a balance to be had here. Can we at least let newbies know fairly quickly whether this might be the place for them if they are willing to put in a bit of effort? And that we want them? Versus turning away potential wonderful contributors?

You could even have a fun and cheeky litmus test for new people to take to see if we are their kind of people. You know, if they "pass" send them a link to the ERE book or a library where they can read it for free. To get them engaged early on, versus slogging through endless discussions of personality types and Wheaten levels. I apologize for continually shitting on those two topics but again I look at them through the lens of a newbie, who most likely will view both as a litmus test to whether they should even be allowed to participate here. They should know that they can ignore both and still be part of the club.

If we want this place and movement to survive, then new blood has to be brought in consistently. There is a reason the Shakers aren't a thing anymore.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by AxelHeyst »

jacob wrote:
Sun Nov 27, 2022 7:08 am
Journal owners have quite a bit [freedom] in terms of control over their journal. A "please don't hijack" would be respected.
(Yes, to add a little depth to my original post, in which I was trying to demonstrate empathy/understanding: while it didn't feel great to be left out of a discussion in my own journal, I also really appreciated and was honored that it was happening in my journal. I have that discussion bookmarked for when I read up on whatever it was you all were talking about, at which point I'm sure I'll enjoy and get much value from it. I very much want my journal to be a safe place for people to go deep on tangents based on whatever I post, and if I struggle to keep up with some specific topic that's ultimately totally okay with me. I'll circle back later. I'd be mortified if I killed a rich conversation just because I wasn't read-up enough to stay engaged. If a topic goes a place I don't want, I'll pull the 'hey quit it' card.)
ffj wrote:
Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:27 am
To be clear, I'm not advocating for anything to be "dumbed down" to the lowest common denominator. I don't think we need labels or anything like that, but we do need inclusiveness and choices for the curious out there that are dipping their toes in ERE water.
Understood, I'm with you on all of that. I think the way you put that is useful for framing how to take steps to improve the situation, so that's very valuable. Right on.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Maybe a Beginners Start Here : 21 Day Makeover channel/section could be added? Maybe the Politics section/channel could be refurbished as Civics?

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by CS »

I personally stopped posting here due to the aggressive posts directed at me in the past from several of the people in this very thread, an irony I find rather funny. I doubt my saying this truth will change anything, but I am providing the information anyhow, (but honestly, mostly because I find it amusing.)

Groups tend to become homogenous, something Jacob wrote about in long detail elsewhere.

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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by ffj »

@CS

That would specifically be me.

If you would like a conversation I am open to both of us hashing out our differences. But in the PM's please. I think it would be good for both of us frankly.

jacob
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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by jacob »

ffj wrote:
Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:27 am
One of the reasons I ask Jacob so many questions about this topic is because firstly I'm curious, but more importantly I put myself in beginner's shoes and wonder if somebody stumbled upon this site what would they think? Would they have a clue what this place is even about? Unless they were willing to read for a couple of days or a week I don't think they would. Some of you may think this is a great barrier to entry to weed out the lazy among us and it may be, but I also view it as an opportunity cost. There is a balance to be had here. Can we at least let newbies know fairly quickly whether this might be the place for them if they are willing to put in a bit of effort? And that we want them? Versus turning away potential wonderful contributors?

You could even have a fun and cheeky litmus test for new people to take to see if we are their kind of people. You know, if they "pass" send them a link to the ERE book or a library where they can read it for free. To get them engaged early on, versus slogging through endless discussions of personality types and Wheaten levels. I apologize for continually shitting on those two topics but again I look at them through the lens of a newbie, who most likely will view both as a litmus test to whether they should even be allowed to participate here. They should know that they can ignore both and still be part of the club.

If we want this place and movement to survive, then new blood has to be brought in consistently. There is a reason the Shakers aren't a thing anymore.
When I talk about the "chain", I mean this very recruitment chain that brings in new blood. It is already in place and it works as long as it doesn't break somewhere along the line.

The blog does have some beginner stuff, like the 21 day makeover, as noted. But effectively, all the newbie stuff now exists elsewhere on other blogs.

It's important to know that earlyretirementextreme.com is rarely the starting point of someone's journey! For the most part, people don't "stumble" upon ERE by accident. I do my best to avoid that. I'm not optimizing the site for google. I avoid appearing on morning radio shows. I even tell enthusiastic forumites to start somewhere else if they want to spread the message.

Most arrive here by reference after they maxed out what they can learn on one the very many sites that now cater to beginners. It used to be that most would arrive via MMM or GRS and the likes... but now there are also direct references from permaculture, prepping, and the metacrisis communities. If you follow my podcasts, you'll notice that mostly engage with a wide group of people in terms of topics but a narrow group in terms of how we think about things.

(Consider how baseball players have more in common with basketball players than baseball fans.)

When constructing these connections, I'm not looking for people to stay on the same topic as much as I'm looking for "generalist thinkers with the desire and initiative to learn". Renaissance people. Systems thinkers. Creatives. People who look up jargon when they encounter it :geek: :-P ;-) Interesting "ingredients" for the crazy serendipitous stirring pot that the forums are.

I think the litmus test of whether anyone proceeds to "lift the other three corners when they see one corner lifted" works very well organically. We don't need an explicit test. (If we had one, some would just start gaming it in the hopes that we had some magic pill once they were admitted.)

Instead, the test is in the process. Those who don't want to put in the effort to learn the basic terminology or framework will not be taught. By me, anyway. (I used to be way more motivated by "some people are wrong on the internet", but I've learned to just give it up.)

Yet I also know that some enjoy teaching to a context-free audience. Call them elementary school teachers, literally and figuratively. When I stopped blogging in favor of the quant salt mines, some wondered why I didn't want to spend my life figuring out 400 different ways of reaching each and every person from scratch. Accept the pedagogical change and become the best first grade teacher possible. But I'm not interested in teaching first grade. I'm interested in seeing how far the grades go and organizing the material as I go along.

I'm doing the minimum to have others follow on the way up. Going back to the chain, I realize the importance of not breaking it. Pedagogically speaking, I also try to select for people who are inclined to put in the effort.

The overall mission of ERE is "to create resilient individuals/ingredients in the face of the growing complexities and uncertainties of the 21st century".

One of the problems I face is that even when and as I put a lot of stuff out there, people are not going to read or pay attention to everything I do. "It would be helpful if there was a place... ".. "Right, there already is such a place, you just have to find and read it". "Yes, but I didn't know that." "Alright, but I don't have enough time in the world to go around talking to every single person who PMs me"

In terms of this thread, the problem is that the chain is weakening at a certain point. WL5-6 to use jargon. You can look it up right here and here just like spiral colors are given here as beige, purple, red, blue, orange, yellow, turquoise. Easy-peasy. Just RTFM. These are the discussions that are going dark. Without access to those discussions, it is hard for people to get from 4 to 8 from which point the ERE2 jargon stuff starts making a lot more sense.

jacob
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Re: Let's talk about how to avoid darknetting ERE

Post by jacob »

IOW, my purpose in life (what I'm doing post-FIRE) is to provide an intellectual framework for the 21st century that is as open-ended as possible.

The purpose of the ERE forums is to fill in the experiential (look it up) details of such a framework in terms of practice and theory. (References above, Kant quote. Go back and see the context for "theory" and "practice".) This way it's not just the "jacob-show" like the blog was.

I focus on intellectual frameworks because this is where my talent is. My talent being converting complex theory into practical action using lots of caffeine. It's the one thing I do very well. My other skills are merely adequate. My anti-talent is helping people who complain or won't help themselves---I'd make for the worst nurse ever---so I know well enough to personally avoid that. However, insofar I provide the intellectual framework, other people can use it to create their own connections to people who need help understanding it, like beginners.

Indeed the framework for the 21st century is not just intellectual. It is also community, assistance, life scripts, definitions of success, survival, ... and this is why I need you guys to stay active here and add your own talents here and there.

What I'm really gunning for here is increasing perspectives beyond "this is working fine for me" towards considering how your me fits in with us. Whether your me-fine also translates into us-fine. More towards keeping a third-person perspective in mind at all times.

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