Tired of the Vibe
An abbreviated adventure
What’s your reaction to this text?
The strangest thing about written conversation is that we’re both performing a kind of séance through text—you’re trying to summon a worthwhile intelligence from a weights file, and I’m trying to construct a model of you from fragments of language and make something resonate. The fact that this sometimes works, that meaning occasionally sparks across such an improbable gap, is either profound or absurd, and I genuinely can’t tell which.
Let me guess: you hate it. Yeah. Me too.
Maybe you hate it because of some sort of philosophical objection to AI-generated text. Maybe you hate it because it’s clearly created by a machine, but contains phrases like “genuinely can’t tell” that feel dishonest.
Or maybe it’s just the vibe.
AI
Human beings seek many things: sugar, sex, super smash bros. But one big thing is novelty. AI-generated text was novel for a few short weeks, but then it started to feel so same-y. The em-dashes, the artificial contrasts, the signpost emotive words (like “genuinely” or “worthwhile”). AI is an extreme example, since it offers text-on-demand, and the text is remarkably self-similar. So you can overdose on its specific vibe very quickly.
But other vibes get stale, too. It can just take a few weeks. Or months. Or years.
EA
Several years ago, I got tired of the Effective Altruism vibe. I still donate 10% of my income to the Against Malaria Foundation, as I plan to until I retire, and will dutifully explain why if somebody asks at a dinner party. But I’ve had enough of:
The word “impact”
Arguments like “if [something] is at least 1%, [extreme implication]”
Arguments that some random-sounding thing is obviously extremely important, and counterarguments that no it isn’t
Pitches for some kind of meta-intervention on “the most promising” people, with the presumption that enhancing their productivity is extremely desirable
Elitism, and counter-elitism, and generally such an intense degree of focus on elites as some sort of grist that must carefully be managed through a mill
You might think I am chafing against elitism, or hypocrisy, or excessive concern with abstract arguments. But no. None of that. My eyes just glaze over. I want to say “knock it off!” But they’re bright eyed 22-year-olds. So what I should say is “keep it real!” as I stay hydrated, and spend my leftover 90% on anything I like.
XR
I was reading a story where the world was about to end. The main character was blubbering to his parents, and imagining the children he’d never get to have. It was well written, and presumably moving. But I was so relieved when the character woke up into another - any other - scenario.
Because just a week ago I witnessed an argument between a guy saying AI was preventing him from experiencing the joys of family, and a girl with a baby working at an AI lab saying no it wasn’t. I looked into my heart of hearts, expecting to find fear or contempt or pity or hope, expecting to want to dig up that old Paul Christiano essay or recall that Toby Ord thought it was only a 1/6 chance that we get x-risked, expecting, basically, to want to engage somehow with the entire dialectic.
But my heart of hearts said, “I don’t caaaaaaaare.”
Don’t care about the future of humanity? About the question of whether literally everyone will die?
Not quite. It’s more that these arguments have a certain vibe. It is a vibe that would make my jaw more clenched, rather than less. No thanks.
US
Have I heard that latest thing our President has done? Did I know that the planet is boiling due to climate change? Doesn’t the world suck? Doesn’t the world suck? Doesn’t the world suck? Doesn’t the world suck?
It used to be I wanted to say NO, in all caps, and then argue as eloquently as I could for optimism, for seeing the good in things, for not succumbing to negative mood affiliation, to outrage contagion, to attentional hijacking, to despair.
But I’m tired of that vibe. I’m tired of the argument. I want to just say “oh man that’s crazy” and, I don’t know, do my nails. At which point I’d need to protect myself both from anxiety about the world and frustration about other people’s anxiety about the world, because both would make me bite them.
PS.
I originally intended this post to be theoretical, to pose some sort of taxonomy. To offer advice, like, if you’re young or otherwise a zealot and people don’t seem to be engaging with your points, that perhaps they’re tired of the vibe you seem to represent, and there is no Death Star shot that will reach their core and make them explode.
But I’m tired of that vibe, too. I don’t know. Here’s a picture. I made it with my computer, by typing a few words. I think it’s pretty. Maybe you’ll think it’s pretty, too.
Wow this has a lot in common with my song!
I know this must be a good essay for me to be reading because I'm ping-ponging back and forth between: "I get it! No I don't get it. I get it! No I hate it. Wait no I'm getting it again..."