Generally fair and I used to agree, I’ve been looking at it from a bit of a different viewpoint recently.
If we think of a “vibe” of a conversation as a certain shared prior that you’re currently inhabiting with the other person then the free association game can rather be seen as a way of finding places where your world models overlap a lot.
My absolute favourite conversations are when I can go 5 layers deep with someone because of shared inference. I think the vibe checking for shared priors is a skill that can be developed and the basis lies in being curious af.
There’s apparently a lot of different related concepts in psychology about holding emotional space and other things that I think just comes down to “find the shared prior and vibe there”.
Hm. This rings true… but also I think that selecting [vibes, in this sense] for attention also selects against [things that the other person is really committed to]. So in practice you’re just giving up on finding shared commitments. I’ve been updating that stuff other than shared commitments is less good (healthy, useful, promising, etc.) than it seems.
Hmm, I find that I’m not fully following here. I think “vibes” might be thing that is messing it up.
Let’s look at a specific example: I’m talking to a new person at an EA-adjacent event and we’re just chatting about how the last year has been. Part of the “vibing” here might be to hone in on the difficulties experienced in the last year due to a feeling of “moral responsibility”, in my view vibing doesn’t have to be done with only positive emotions?
I think you’re bringing up a good point that commitments or struggles might be something that bring people closer than positive feelings because you’re more vulnerable and open as well as broadcasting your values more. Is this what you mean with shared commitments or are you pointing at something else?
Closeness is the operating drive, but it’s not the operating telos. The drive is towards some sort of state or feeling—of relating, standing shoulder-to-shoulder looking out at the world, standing back-to-back defending against the world; of knowing each other, of seeing the same things, of making the same meaning; of integrated seeing / thinking. But the telos is tikkun olam (repairing/correcting/reforming the world)--you can’t do that without a shared idea of better.
As an analogy, curiosity is a drive, which is towards confusion, revelation, analogy, memory; but the telos is truth and skill.
In your example, I would say that someone could be struggling with “moral responsibility” while also doing a bunch of research or taking a bunch of action to fix what needs to be fixed; or they could be struggling with “moral responsibility” while eating snacks and playing video games. Vibes are signals and signals are cheap and hacked.
Generally fair and I used to agree, I’ve been looking at it from a bit of a different viewpoint recently.
If we think of a “vibe” of a conversation as a certain shared prior that you’re currently inhabiting with the other person then the free association game can rather be seen as a way of finding places where your world models overlap a lot.
My absolute favourite conversations are when I can go 5 layers deep with someone because of shared inference. I think the vibe checking for shared priors is a skill that can be developed and the basis lies in being curious af.
There’s apparently a lot of different related concepts in psychology about holding emotional space and other things that I think just comes down to “find the shared prior and vibe there”.
Hm. This rings true… but also I think that selecting [vibes, in this sense] for attention also selects against [things that the other person is really committed to]. So in practice you’re just giving up on finding shared commitments. I’ve been updating that stuff other than shared commitments is less good (healthy, useful, promising, etc.) than it seems.
Hmm, I find that I’m not fully following here. I think “vibes” might be thing that is messing it up.
Let’s look at a specific example: I’m talking to a new person at an EA-adjacent event and we’re just chatting about how the last year has been. Part of the “vibing” here might be to hone in on the difficulties experienced in the last year due to a feeling of “moral responsibility”, in my view vibing doesn’t have to be done with only positive emotions?
I think you’re bringing up a good point that commitments or struggles might be something that bring people closer than positive feelings because you’re more vulnerable and open as well as broadcasting your values more. Is this what you mean with shared commitments or are you pointing at something else?
Closeness is the operating drive, but it’s not the operating telos. The drive is towards some sort of state or feeling—of relating, standing shoulder-to-shoulder looking out at the world, standing back-to-back defending against the world; of knowing each other, of seeing the same things, of making the same meaning; of integrated seeing / thinking. But the telos is tikkun olam (repairing/correcting/reforming the world)--you can’t do that without a shared idea of better.
As an analogy, curiosity is a drive, which is towards confusion, revelation, analogy, memory; but the telos is truth and skill.
In your example, I would say that someone could be struggling with “moral responsibility” while also doing a bunch of research or taking a bunch of action to fix what needs to be fixed; or they could be struggling with “moral responsibility” while eating snacks and playing video games. Vibes are signals and signals are cheap and hacked.