I agree with this. In the twitter thread, Eliezer later posts an example where “cringe” is used in the sense of “tone deaf.” I think that’s closer to the original meaning and think it conveys something useful.
For instance, I tend to feel cringe emotions when people approach a group with a certain mood (usually upbeat and “this is the best thing”) but they are misreading the room and people in the room don’t know what’s going on and feel like the mood is out of place (or just happen to have a low hedonic setpoint and feel like they have not have signed up for something where they feel socially obligated to smile).
In theory, it could also go in the other direction (oversharing about a depressive topic when the room isn’t in the mood for that). I have more sympathies for that direction of misreading the room (or just not caring about keeping things “light”), but I could also imagine “cringy” to apply in that scenario.
So I think it’s probably a bad practice to call a general type of something (“rationalist rituals in general”) cringe because it implies a judgment regardless of execution and regardless of whether the sort of people who self-select to attend can enjoy something together. But I think it could be appropriate (depending on the specifics) to say something like “rationalist rituals are often cringy” to imply that the way they are run often leaves people with a feeling of “this was trying too hard” or “this part felt very artificial.”
I agree with this. In the twitter thread, Eliezer later posts an example where “cringe” is used in the sense of “tone deaf.” I think that’s closer to the original meaning and think it conveys something useful.
For instance, I tend to feel cringe emotions when people approach a group with a certain mood (usually upbeat and “this is the best thing”) but they are misreading the room and people in the room don’t know what’s going on and feel like the mood is out of place (or just happen to have a low hedonic setpoint and feel like they have not have signed up for something where they feel socially obligated to smile).
In theory, it could also go in the other direction (oversharing about a depressive topic when the room isn’t in the mood for that). I have more sympathies for that direction of misreading the room (or just not caring about keeping things “light”), but I could also imagine “cringy” to apply in that scenario.
So I think it’s probably a bad practice to call a general type of something (“rationalist rituals in general”) cringe because it implies a judgment regardless of execution and regardless of whether the sort of people who self-select to attend can enjoy something together. But I think it could be appropriate (depending on the specifics) to say something like “rationalist rituals are often cringy” to imply that the way they are run often leaves people with a feeling of “this was trying too hard” or “this part felt very artificial.”