Actualization!- Level 7 towards level 8

[AxelHeyst]

Reading through recent comments here I realized I’d been thinking about ‘money is on tap’ wrong for years. I thought the implication was that at WL8 you’re so good at multiple capitals that you can spin up any kind of income generating scheme on short notice if you want without trying very hard. And while that might be true of the skill level implicit at wl8, and might be how a semiERE wl8 operates, that’s not what was meant. What was meant was that all of the activities associated with generating, managing, controlling, etc $$ are so unconsciously competent that to the wl8 individual it just feels like it’s there without effort. (And may appear that way to external observation.) The unconscious competence piece is what I was missing.*

The reason this is powerful is that most people consume a large portion of their cognitive bandwidth dealing either with money or with the consequences of not dealing with money. Achieving unconscious competence unlocks this cognitive bandwidth in ways that ‘just’ FIRE doesn’t because, as bsog pointed out, the FIREd person still has to spend conscious effort and time to deal with it.


*I think unconscious competence at income generation is sort of what I was trying to achieve with my ‘money is purely an incidental yield’ schemes. I now don’t necessarily think that that approach couldn’t work, but I do see that for most people the hit it and quit it traditional approach of accumulate>FIRE is way more slam dunk.

[7Wannabe5]

WL5 - MHC 11 (optimization is the peak of analytical thought)
WL6 - MHC 11.5
WL7 - MHC 12
WL8 - MHC 12.5
WL9 - MHC 13

Yes, I grok the MHC. I have something like an abbreviated form of it clipped to my math tutoring clipboard. I got an A+ in Abstract Algebra, so likely I could touch Level 12 on a good day. What I was weakly attempting to communicate is that I agree with Hanzi's ("The Listening Society") take that other scales such as Emotional Depth should also be considered. IOW, considering it from an overly academic, mathematical perspective is too "dry." Humans are also "juicy." The second painting below is not just more complex; it also conveys more emotional depth.

[xmj]

Yes, I grok the MHC. I have something like an abbreviated form of it clipped to my math tutoring clipboard. I got an A+ in Abstract Algebra, so likely I could touch Level 12 on a good day. What I was weakly attempting to communicate is that I agree with Hanzi's ("The Listening Society") take that other scales such as Emotional Depth should also be considered. IOW, considering it from an overly academic, mathematical perspective is too "dry." Humans are also "juicy." The second painting below is not just more complex; it also conveys more emotional depth.

Someone has to say it: the first image is orderly, more complex through its man-made order, and thus has a deep emotional valence once you think of living there and all this entails.

The second image is just chaotic. Nice, interesting colors and brushes, but still. And people will torture students with it "what did the painter mean by this?"

Reading through recent comments here I realized I’d been thinking about ‘money is on tap’ wrong for years. I thought the implication was that at WL8 you’re so good at multiple capitals that you can spin up any kind of income generating scheme on short notice if you want without trying very hard. And while that might be true of the skill level implicit at wl8, and might be how a semiERE wl8 operates, that’s not what was meant. What was meant was that all of the activities associated with generating, managing, controlling, etc $$ are so unconsciously competent that to the wl8 individual it just feels like it’s there without effort. (And may appear that way to external observation.) The unconscious competence piece is what I was missing.*

The more common meaning of "money is on tap", at least outside this forum, is to have accumulated a pile so large your offspring won't spend it for generations.

[jacob]

The more common meaning of "money is on tap", at least outside this forum, is to have accumulated a pile so large your offspring won't spend it for generations.

I think the same applies here with the caveat that future generations won't increase their spending level above yours. To put a number on it, once SWR% get very low, we usually talk about "how many years saved" instead. My current number is 176x. I could put it in I-bonds at 0% interest and have it last until the year 2200.

However, another aspect of the "tap water"-feeling---perhaps more like a "reservoir"-feeling is the ability to "buy anything you want within reason". This is having enough money that your wants are not limited by whether you can afford it.

[7Wannabe5]

Someone has to say it

Many have already said it for me. Looking at a Thomas Kincade painting is like snorting French Vanilla Coffee Creamer cups up your nose in the Ladies room bathroom stall at an expressway exit Cracker Barrel. Barcelo's work is strong and masterful. My food metaphor will be weak compared to his work, but more like the first swallow of a very good cup of coffee on a brisk morning of a day with both open vista of possibilities and shadowed potentials. I found his description of his process in the interview below quite interesting.

You got to feel for Thomas Kinkade: The self-proclaimed Painter of Light spent his career facing accusations that he was a hack whose paintings were more suited for a Walmart bin than a museum. Critics have denigrated his charming, bucolic artworks as sugar-drenched, unpleasantly artificial, and something "normal" people should recoil from. When he died last year of an alcohol-and-Valium overdose, the Washington Post pointed out that many considered his work the "epitome of mediocre art."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... s-kinkade]

Miquel Barceló, born in Mallorca, is one of the world’s foremost painters. His work feels as free and inspirational today as it was in the ’80s, when he became one of the leading figures of the postmodern return to painting.

OLIVIER ZAHM — What do you mean?
MIQUEL BARCELÓ — All painting comes from clay. That’s something Picasso and Miró discovered, and I was lucky enough to discover it at a slightly less advanced age than they did. The fingers of the painter in the clay at Chauvet. The wall there was covered with a sort of very fine layer of clay: lime. The artists drew with charcoal, burnt bones, and the ends of burnt sticks — especially bones: bone char. That instantly gave them a magnificent black. But before they did that, an artist made an owl with his finger, just drawing it. I calculated; I did it; I redid it several times, and I managed to do it in nine seconds. I think that’s how long it took to draw that owl. It’s a gesture: two dots for the eyes, the beak, a sort of M for the wings, and then the two parallel lines, which he perhaps made several times with his hands, and the two pointed ears. Nine seconds. I tried filming myself with a camera. The first time, I did it in 10 or 11 seconds, the second time in nine, then eight, and then a little faster each time. But I think the artist did it in nine seconds. And it’s magnificent. And with that we have ceramics becoming painting. Then he adds manganese and starts to do the sfumato — the light and the dark — and it’s all there already. He works the content and the form. He works the outside, what lies behind the animal, and the animal itself, in a series of movements.

https://purple.fr/magazine/fw-2015-issu ... barcelo-2/