Homeotelic Responses

One of the themes to Early Retirement Extreme is the homeotelic process (two birds, one stone). Consider health and wealth, waste and waist, and live intentionally. FIRE really just has a branding problem.

Via Early Retirement Extreme.

With kids doing distance learning we are living this out as I take Khan Academy classes to stay a step or two ahead which also satisfies my curiosity and ties into a suggestion from Naval. One theme of the Navalmanack curation is to focus on foundational ideas: more math less macro.

Put another way: there’s a limit to what we can know in large enough systems with many moving parts.

One obstacle to the foundations is stories. Stories link cause and effect regardless of an and. For good, or not.

In The Night Circus, Celia (real magic) is farmed out by her father as a spiritual medium (non-real magic, but still Alchemy?). She tells clients stories of the great beyond. She sees no point, feeling worn out from the whole experience.

“These people mean nothing,” her father says. “They cannot even begin to grasp what it is they think they see and hear, and it is easier for them to believe they are receiving miraculous transmissions from the afterlife. Why not take advantage of that, especially when they are so willing to part with their money for something so simple?”

Fiction is good. Math and science are good. Social science is good, as Rory Sutherland puts it, by just knowing something works along with a willingness to tinker. Real life is good. Working with your hands, making things, is soulful. Combining these is extremely good.

What’s better is homeotelic. 

Touchdown Tom Update: No update this week on our gambling idea. However, it might be that Brady plays less games due to a relatively stable playoff picture and relatively weak end-of-year opponents. This is another feather in the cap of more under unknowns.