Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Hey gang,

I hope everyone has been well. I thought of you guys, and ERE2, after this session from Tom Morgan @ The Stoa yesterday called "Accelerating Wisdom: At the Leading Edge of the Metacrisis."

https://youtu.be/whHC50IbiPo?si=Yyv_G5CSJeBQeiHC

This is based off his 8-part series: https://www.theleading-edge.org/acceler ... om-series/

His respond to the metacrisis is wisdom (defined as "knowing the right thing to pay attention to, and when") and believes that gaining sensitivity to "attractors" are the key to wisdom cultivation: https://newsletter.theleading-edge.org/ ... attractors:

While wisdom doesn’t necessarily correlate with age or intelligence, it does correlate with openness. But wise people aren’t open to everything; they are open to the right thing. This requires a deep understanding of arguably the most important and neglected accelerant of wisdom: “attractors.”

An attractor is something that helps you navigate a complex, rapidly changing environment. The world is “combinatorially explosive”, which means there are too many options to test with trial and error. Attractors are the way evolution narrows our options to good choices.

If the universe is trending towards complexity, and we are obviously a part of the universe, then we would need to experience this force somehow. The legendary systems theorist Ervin Laszlo calls this the "Holotropic Attractor." It simply means something that guides us towards greater wholeness, integration and complexity. He argues that, for humans, “this attractor manifests as instinct, intuition, or what might be described as subtle spiritual insight.”

Curious to hear your thoughts. And Jacob, come back to the series to be our philosopher in residence! <3

Peter

Peter, really happy to see your post here, thanks for dropping in.

I've only read the first and second article so far, but wanted to drop a couple thoughts re: the second article.

The concept of ditching xy charts in favor of 3d fitness landscapes undulating through time with roving Attractors struck me as an incredibly useful mental model for navigating The Freedom-To Problem. A couple things that occurred to me:

In a fitness landscape, it makes sense that sometimes you go up and sometimes you go down, and sometimes you go down because you rolled off but sometimes you go down because you see another higher peak. ('Higher' here indicating not necessarily an achievement metric but a suitability/fitness/'self-environment match' metric). In an XY chart, any 'down' is The Wrong Way.

Fitness landscape undulation due to Time highlights the impossibility of static balance, and the importance of adaptability and a dynamic equilibrium mindset. Also, can be a nice thought if/when you find yourself in a low spot of shit.

The whole idea of mashing the 'more of this' button on things we find interesting/curious/enjoyable, in a rapid low-risk environment, while keeping in mind that we potentially can have *no idea* what it's going to look like in N iterations, as pointed at by Stanley's Picbreeder experiment, could be an extremely useful framework for people trying to figure out what to 'do' with their freedommaxxed lives and perhaps feeling bad or anxious that they don't have a fleshed out vision for the 'end' state.

Revealing Attractors wrote:This experiment catalysed a profound insight in Stanley. He realised users could only produce true novelty by seeking it one step at a time. He has subsequently argued that surprisingly few major inventions were invented with that particular breakthrough explicitly in mind in advance[4]. The fact that you can only see one step at a time when following an attractor is a powerful illustration of the practical application of faith to real life. It’s like crossing the river by feeling the stones with your feet.
In stark contrast, the flatland of an X/Y chart optimises for a single path with predefined outcomes: number go up. Stanley’s work clearly illustrates the flaws in this model:
“This isn't how the world works. That's why there's cognitive dissonance in Western culture... So many objectives pervading everything. We somehow, I think, at some deep instinctual level realize this is insane……So there's basically two pieces of advice I would give. One is collect stepping stones and honor interestingness. That is a system that we need to establish.”

My own experience over the last few years experimenting with goals, process, and serendipity has certainly primed me to be receptive to this idea, and interested in applying it more systematically. I've said a few times recently that letting go of goals and making space in my life for serendipitous returns has brought me *way better results* than I could have imagined, not just quantitatively but qualitatively. That experience plus this attractor framework has me thinking about ways to double down on this approach. I like that 'adventure', risk, uncertainty, and faith are necessary ingredients. "Follow these simple rules and something magical will happen." "What magical thing?" "No way to know. Follow the process, though, and it'll be magical af."

I also think that there could be a danger/risk in dipping one's toe into this process, getting a good result, and becoming attached to it and stopping there. "It worked! My life is magical now!" but you're just standing on a little hummock in the fitness landscape of your reality, at iteration 3 of following stoke. Turning the wheel again requires letting go of the current position on the fitness landscape, which is a risk.

I know this series is about the metacrisis but I'm seeing this particular article resonating at the level of actionable lifestyle praxis, in a domain that a lot of us round here struggle with/get stuck on/regress at/etc. I could see fleshing some of these ideas out into a very helpful framework to guide people through the fog of freedom.

I'm looking forward to digesting the rest of the content. Thanks again.

I found the session quite interesting. I must admit that from my perspective of solo polyamorous, heterosexual female of older or "negative" age, my reflexive/intuitive FITB for the early slide at 3:00 was "sexual activity." My next thought was that the "right" answer would be "meditation." However, once I comprehended that the primary intended audience for Tom Morgan's work was what I might refer to as "locked Dominants", I wanted to amend my initial reflexive/intuitive response to something more like "sexual activity as qualititively rated by female and/or more developed in FeFi partner", and then was made happy when Claudia suggested the word "intimacy" during the Q&A segment.

In "It's a Guy Thing: An Owner's Manual for Women", David Deida writes about how an aspect of feminine energy is the tendency to open and close like an oyster in response to perception/presence of love. This "vulnerable" tendency will often make it difficult for women (or humans who are in feminine energy in relationship) to end relationships that are for the most part dysfunctional yet intermittently loving. The problem that Tom mentioned, that humans who are locked in highly agentic masculine energy may have with "receiving love", is 2X opposite or cross-quadrant to the "oyster problem." It's towards what Deida is addressing when he suggests that when you sense that a man is not present (not in intimacy or somewhat "numb") with you during sex, you should smack him on the ass to get his attention.

This very much in the moment vivid bid for attention towards intimacy is very much akin to how "curiousity" may lead to "open receptiveness" which may lead to "empathetic caring" which may imbue "purpose" with "meaning." IOW, somebody who is locked in adult masculine energy will have to travel through juvenile masculine energy to get to juvenile feminine energy and then land at mature feminine energy. Of course, this is quite often easier said than done. For example, I fixed my feminine "oyster problem" way back in my 30s, but as a female eNTP, I seem to be dead stuck with masculine energy that won't mature much beyond the level of Tom Sawyer. And in my experience hanging out with highly-agentic humans, even those whom are inclined towards coaching does not budge me. There are multiple reasons for this, but in part it is due to the fact that self-aware assuming the behavioral practices of a highly-agentic Wall Street type or "locked Dominant" at semi-conscious level feels very "Butch " to me. IOW, the message "why don't you focus on making more money" hits me just a tad like "why don't you focus on growing a beard." So, I can somewhat empathize with similar yet quite different difficulties in achieving balanced fluid optimal development.