ERE1 vs ERE2, forum culture

[AxelHeyst]

Th purpose of this thread is to serve as a space for seeking understanding of other people's perspectives, and to keep this topic from taking over other-topic'd threads. It is not a thread to convince anyone of anything. It is a place to listen and to be heard. To communicate with good faith.

We had some good discussion in the darknetting thread and some in the ERE2 Lifestyle/holon thread.

Here's a short summary of my understanding:

• Many people did not appreciate ERE2-style jargon and theoretics overtaking ERE1-style threads. They felt that the forum was both declining in traffic, and what traffic there was was being dominated by ERE2 talk.
• We had a heart to heart about this in the Darknetting thread, and I think all forumites are on board with Horsewoman's post that it comes down to mutual respect. Don't barge into an ERE1, practical thread with ERE2 jargon and frameworks. It's rude.
• Also, if you want more ERE1 threads, start more ERE1 threads. This forum is what we make of it.
• We also think the MMG's contributed (but were not entirely responsible for) the decrease in forum traffic. All MMGs are now actively taking steps to reverse this trend, and in fact strengthen the main forum. We will be keeping an eye on this. The place to discuss darknetting is that thread, not this one, but it's relevant to note it here.
• Some people such as @JP are getting bad vibes from the ERE2 discussions. Not that they are happening, but what ERE2 'is', and they feel misled. I don't understand why ERE2 feels wrong, but I would very much like to. My ears are open here.
• Ego mentioned that some people dislike the ERE2 theoretics when they are posted by forumites who use ERE2 theorizing as an excuse/distraction to not do ERE1 activities. Theory divorced from practice is... sketchy.

It's also fine if no one wants to talk about this stuff anymore. I just wanted there to exist a bucket for those conversations instead of interwoven into a bunch of other threads.

[daylen]

Perhaps we should split the Wheaton levels into two so that 1-5 are more left brained and 6-10 are more right brained. Many of us do not really resonate with 1-5 partially because it seems biased towards western culture that encourages financial success. Whereas for many, social flows are more important by the time we start accumulating.

The pattern of 1-5 is still in some sense "required" for 6-10 but may operate on a shorter time scale that may not capture as many variables. This is sorta necessary as optimization in a social context is tricky. If a particular ERE'er feels as though they do not meet the criteria of lifestyle optimization then perhaps we should not dismiss their capacity to sub-optimize parts of the social process that leads to individual lifestyle optimizations. Inversely, individual examples of practice help to ground more socially-oriented members.

On some level if you do not expect much than it becomes easier to "optimize". If you can feel deeply enough to classify every action as "good" or "bad" then optimization is a binary choice away. Part of what makes this forum unique is the high-expectation of what it means to optimize a lifestyle. Perhaps a necessary punch in the face being people of low expectations that are open about their feelings can help alleviate anxiety and reduce consumption in the aggregate better than any optimizer looking out for just their footprint in certain circumstances.

In some sense, I don't really belong here in that I have never "accumulated" more than around 5k. Does that mean I have nothing to contribute? Perhaps. I often feel as though I talk in symmetries without content. Though, there also seems to be a world of asymmetries which are at risk of breaking apart from their shared origin. I embody that origin (or at least I strive)... as well as many INTP's and apparently GPT without a body.

[AnalyticalEngine]

I feel like this entire issue boils down to the fact people here vary tremendously in their personal background, goals, temperament, interests, and definitions of success, but ERE and its community are expected to be one single, coherent thing. So you are doing ERE "wrong" if you aren't eating enough lentils, going on enough hikes, or reading enough Hanzi. When in reality, there is not always overlap for a given individual between lentils, hiking, and Hanzi, and the people who care about lentils think Hanzi is off topic and the people who care about Hanzi don't find lentils an interesting enough problem to solve.

[Scott 2]

In some sense, I don't really belong here in that I have never "accumulated" more than around 5k. Does that mean I have nothing to contribute?

Yes, this is a problem. Lived experience has to come first.

[daylen]

First before what?

I feel pretty alive.

Life isn't a race.. more like a collage of experiences.

[mathiverse]

daylen and others have experience on the low expenses and frugal living side of things even if they haven't accumulated much. Similarly, someone like Rob Greenfield who made a pledge to not accumulate any money would fit here.

Now if someone spent a ton and never accumulated, then I'd probably question a lot of their input if it was in the threads about frugality or FI or low expenses, etc. But maybe they have other things to contribute in the realms in which they do have experience. It's more likely on the ERE forums there is something they could contribute to compared to other FI forums since we have a wide range of interests and thread topics.

Also there are topics of discussion about things that no one has experience in such as what ERE2 communities would look like or the future of AI intelligence, etc. Those forward looking threads require prior thought more than experience.

[Ego]

Oh, I certainly think @daylen has something to contribute. I also think the question begs another question...

Is it possible to simply skip over ERE1 and go directly to ERE2?

[candide]

@daylen

[ETA. I'm not caught up on your backstory. I've just see your theoretical stuff.]

If you haven't accumulated a JAFI in savings, are you at least close to living at a JAFI? I'll even give the additional olive branch of saying go ahead and subtract health insurance/care expenses.

[daylen]

I spend about 4-5k a year total. Share rent with mom.

[candide]

@daylen

Yes, that should be super-frugality by anyone's book.

Are there old posts where you talk about what drove you to be so frugal? If not, is it prying too much to ask?

[AnalyticalEngine]

Feel free to disregard this as non-useful or ill-informed, but I'm still confused about what ERE2 even is. If it's just philosophy, frameworks, social psychology, or anthropology, I see no reason you couldn't discuss ERE2 without ERE1 in the same way a professor of psychology can discuss the psychology of money while going bankrupt himself.

The issue I keep running into with ERE2 (and again, feel free to disregard if I am just wrong) is that society is largely ran by normies but this forum is heavily dominated by people who are trying to escape normies/normal. If ERE2 means that one in four people are ERE, then this is just going to be like any number of societies that have existed throughout history that have spent way less money and relied on community bonds to function (aka almost all of them). And again, you can predict this with social psychological without having achieved ERE yourself because you're just thinking about the question of "what's going to happen to society as we hit the hard problem of climate change in the future?"

Now if your goal is to lead this transition, it does run into the problem of what's really separating ERE2 from what academics/governments are already doing? What's the endgame here?

I have no idea the answer. I just like philosophy and psychology as hobbies and talking to people on here about interesting topics.

[mathiverse]

@daylen
...

Are there old posts where you talk about what drove you to be so frugal? If not, is it prying too much to ask?

Good question, candide, but @daylen if you wouldn't mind answering in your journal or another thread, that would be preferable.

Let's not derail this thread.

[candide]

[My question was answered elsewhere].

To try to bring it back to topic and Ego's question, the world would benefit a lot more from a lot of people living well below JAFI than it would from more people who are FIRE.

[AxelHeyst]

Oh, I certainly think @daylen has something to contribute. I also think the question begs another question...

Is it possible to simply skip over ERE1 and go directly to ERE2?

I hope this isn't too pedantic, but, since we're in the process of trying to hash out what ERE2 actually is, it's worth it to try to be really precise: Individuals don't go from ERE1 to ERE2. ERE2 describes a group system composed of people of various attributes. Asking if someone goes from ERE1 to ERE2 is like asking at what point does Mr. Jones go from being Mr. Jones to being the Rotary Club?

Mr. Jones cannot become the Rotary club. He can have a relationship with the Rotary club. He can be the president, or the treasurer, or just a dues-paying member, or he can be the guy who sweeps up afterwards and doesn't even know what in the hell a Rotary club is. His brother might be a Rotary Member, but not Mr. Jones, but he hangs out with a lot of his brother's Rotary Club friends so he has a relationship with it. He can also be a guy who knows everything about the history of the Rotary club, writes white papers about it, and suggests modifications to Rotary Club governance based on a multi-dimensional analysis he did on the Rotary Club incorporating feedback from all Rotary Club chapters across the globe.

So all that's to say, one can participate in an ERE2 unit without having ever heard of ERE at all, and not even being a 'natural' WL7 or whatever. Just a regular person.

ERE2 requires a critical mass of Webs of Goals becoming interconnected. But that interconnected unit can then 'pull in' other people who don't have WoG's, or who have very odd looking WoGs. (I think!)

The question, perhaps, is can someone talk meaningfully about ERE2 without having gone down the traditional ERE1 path and ticked all the boxes. I say yes. Can someone talk meaningfully about ERE1 who hasn't done a single blessed ERE1 thing and isn't familiar with the ideas? No. But there is no one around here I'm aware of who has 'skipped' ERE1, so it's a pretty academic question. Which is fine, obviously, academic questions are fair game round here.

[Scott 2]

Is it possible to simply skip over ERE1 and go directly to ERE2?

Is ERE2 well defined enough to answer this?

I would expect someone defining ERE2, to have extensive experience with ERE1. No offense to @daylen, but a 24 year old living with Mom, who's never held more than $5k to their name, does not meet this bar. There are many life milestones to learn from first.

Even in my 40's, having achieved FIRE, I only feel qualified to ask some questions. One of the strongest lessons from my retirement, has been how little I know. When I look to those with breadth of experience - they are pushing back on ERE2. That does give me pause. Are they all wrong? Or does the idea need refinement?

While I don't hold him on a pedestal, I am inclined to give Jacob benefit of the doubt. He sees something I don't. He's learning to express it. The forum topics are a tool to evolve the concept. I can appreciate that. I'll keep doing my thing and contribute where I have experience.

[daylen]

Battle of the ages. That is where we need to go, right? Tell me something Scott..

What is life all about? (I'm 27 )

[AxelHeyst]

@Scott2, what's the least amount of money you have spent in a year?

That's a rhetorical question. Is this ERE1 wang-measuring not ridiculous and even dangerous to the culture here? You're judging Daylen based on normie-world values (earning potential and whether or not he has the emotional skills required to live with his mom) without knowing what he actually does all day. Stash size and living circumstance are not ERE1 values, they're normie-world values. Web of goals tensegrity and loose coupling are ERE1 values. To the extent that Daylen's life-system has tensegrity and is loose coupled and blah blah, he's ERE1 AF. And he did it on his own terms without doing the tradFIRE thing.

While I don't hold him on a pedestal, I am inclined to give Jacob benefit of the doubt. He sees something I don't. He's learning to express it. The forum topics are a tool to evolve the concept. I can appreciate that. I'll keep doing my thing and contribute where I have experience.

Daylen has an enormous amount of mileage invested in manipulating theoretical frameworks in his mind. No, he doesn't have the life experience of becoming a professional and pulling a six figure income like, uh, a lot of people all over the world. He does his thing and he contributes where he has experience: one of which is theoretical manipulation.

And if Jacob is the only one around here qualified to talk about ERE2, then that's going to be a really boring conversation for him isn't it? Having diverse conversations with diverse people is part of the process of hashing this stuff out. If everyone in the discussion has the same approximate life story (developer, high spend, learned frugality, accumulate to FIRE, working on Freedom-To), it's not going to be as diverse as if the conversation were more inclusive, yeah?

Even in my 40's, having achieved FIRE, I only feel qualified to ask some questions. One of the strongest lessons from my retirement, has been how little I know. When I look to those with breadth of experience - they are pushing back on ERE2. That does give me pause. Are they all wrong? Or does the idea need refinement?

Of course it needs refinement. That's the whole purpose of the ERE2 subforum, to figure out what this thing even is.

[IlliniDave]

Since the stated purpose of the topic is to seek understanding of perspectives, I'll give mine. I did so in the darknetting thread, but this gives me a chance to restate it.

From what I've gleaned ERE2 is ERE scaled up from individual level to community level. I fully expect that's an oversimplification, but I think it captures the gist of it. What the ultimate goal of it is, I'm not sure. There are many I could posit, but don't think that is important here. It seems for the time being that it's largely being sculpted in the abstract and theoretical. That may be a misimpression that stems from the use of jargon from esoteric theoretical frameworks. Nothing wrong with that--it's often how the leading edge is advanced.

I find the topic mildly interesting but it's just not the marketplace where I want to spend the shrinking reserve of my human capital. I'm too much of a cheapskate with that capital to spend it to "keep up with the joneses" in that pursuit. I wish those who pursue it well, and with heartfelt sincerity hope they succeed beyond their dreams.

That's more/less my perspective on ERE2 itself

As far as forum culture, my initial reaction (before ERE2 was so designated) was to conclude ERE had moved on and I was left behind. Those who have been around for the 8+ years I've been here probably know that I was never a true ere-er. Despite the arguments and their validity, I was never going to be comfortable (i.e., SWAN) short of something approaching fatFIRE. I'm all the stereotypes we collectively poke fun at. I didn't feel hurt or abandoned or anything since in some respects I was always a bit of an outsider. So I gradually retreated to my journal. I did so out of respect. Being a strong introvert that's just how I deal with those things. I don't readily jump into a group to redirect the conversation to me or my interests.

In truth I didn't even perceive a "problem" with the forum. Just like with old friends, paths sometimes diverge. But the darknetting thread title caught my eye (because "darknet" as I first heard it was specific to criminal/nefarious activity and the implication the forum was in danger of heading in that direction was a little jarring). So I read through it and some of what people said resonated with me. I'd assumed I was more-or-less alone in having those reactions. From that discussionI also took to heart the possibility that my introvert-driven behavior could be exacerbating the perceived problem. I've since dipped my toe into a couple MMGs (despite finding, based on simple diction, the term "mastermind" a little off-putting) and tried to participate more in everyday topic threads, even some (like this one) where I believe my contributions are likely of dubious value.

As far as offering suggestions for how to "fix" anything, or improve things, I don't have much. Unless there is a fresh keg in the middle of the room, commingling the freshman and sophomores with the PhD candidates is likely to result with one group in one corner and the other in a different corner. The solution seems like it would be to identify things of common interest (kegs) that will entice broad peer-based interaction. Difficult when the paradigm is that the high end of the ladder is incomprehensible to those on the bottom until they achieve various degrees of enlightenment. On the surface that excludes the possibility of a middle ground.

[7Wannabe5]

Daylen definitely has achieved a level of mastery in at least a couple different realms that make him a valued contributor to this forum. Me on the other hand...

Seriously, I apologize for flinging jargon related to theory around haphazardly. One of the ways I learn is by being playful with language and concepts as I come to comprehend them. Also, my sense of humor can tend towards purposefully making over-use of jargon in a ridiculous manner. I must admit that sometimes when I type something like "That is clearly a Blue verging on Orange construct at MHC Level 4..." , I am kind of amusing myself in the same way I do when I type something like "Based on my 2021 spreadsheet, it is clear that 86.42% of the grouchy old men I date will supplement the Eating Out category in my budget by an average of $62.50/month." IOW, I am being a nerd making fun of myself for being a nerd in the way I think about realms that most humans approach much more naturally.

[jacob]

The current situation reminds me a bit of 2016 when the forum struggled to understand ERE1 as compared to FIRE. We hashed it out in this thread and later formalized it with the Wheaton levels. The mapping of the territory has inspired forumites to change their mindset and actions to align with higher-level ERE1 behavior. People here actually view WL6-7 as a destination that is the natural progression beyond mainstream FIRE.

Indeed.

We seem to take the eventual resolution for granted now, but the current pattern of ERE1 vs ERE2 mirrors the previous pattern of "early retirement extreme" vs "extreme early retirement" or ERE(1) vs FIRE threads of 2016. We have many of the same questions and complaints pop up. What's the definition of ERE again? I do this and that particular thing, do I qualify as ERE? Please use your genius to explain ERE in less than 50 simple words? What's the short-cut to ERE? All this talk is dividing the forum into two groups and I feel left out! I'm not interested in learning new concepts! Why do you have to make things so complicated and theoretical?

These are valid concerns. However, they're also the same common complaints whenever there's a change in paradigm. I have the same type of conversation with my parents when it comes computing. The answer is that shifting the paradigm creates easy solutions to problems that used to be hard, impossible or even inconceivable. (Yes that means what I think it means!) For example, the Copernican revolution (putting the sun at the center of the solar system) replaced the optimization of epicycles upon epicycles with three simple [Kepler] laws.

A good research question would be to figure out what the source of this [tension] is? I do have some ideas. It might be as simple as preferring to spend 30 days kvetching in the lab to spending 30 minutes in the library due to being familiar with the lab but not the library. Familiarity increases the time-discount of the replacement cost. I'll keep my old car, thank you very much. I might be paying more to repair it than I would if I just bought a new car, but not today.