Vibeology, Vibeography, Vibeonomy
On March 4 - 6 I'm going to be attending the first Vibecamp, in a summer camp cabin facility outside Austin, Texas. It's for a loose collection of Twitter users who refer to themselves tongue-in-cheek as Ingroup, with a vibe that feels to me to be ha-ha-only-serious. They're associated with a movement called post-rationalism, which emerged from a Silicon-Valley based movement of internet bloggers called rationalism, primarily centered around a website called LessWrong. (This is not the same as rationalisms as they have existed in most civilizations since ancient Greece, reaching its peak in the early 20th century. I heard this 21st-century rationalist scene referred to as "rationalpunk", which seems apt.)
David Chapman, whose books I have been narrating on my podcast, uses the term "stance" to mean a pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. Most stances (One True Life Purpose, Materialism, All Is One, True Self, etc) get in the way of us seeing complexity and nuance. A stance is not a worked-out ideology, but is simpler and more foundational, like an attitude. He also has a term "emotional texture" which a stance has; it is a collection of emotions found together when in a stance, such as wonderment, curiosity, humor, play, enjoyment, and creation being typical of the complete stance.
Maybe a third category is "vibe". For a long time I was confused by what the word "vibe" means as it is being used on Twitter. I have come to understand the following:
- Vibes are somewhat akin to stances plus emotional textures, but for scenes.
- Stances and emotional textures are not the same thing, but some combination of them is a vibe, but more complex.
- Postrationalism, as it is now, is probably less a coherent "ism" than a scene.
- To the degree that there is an "ism" in 2022 postrationalism, it is recognizing that the explicit content of a scene's texts or platform does not explain the phenomenon of what's causing the scene to cohere, and that mostly the vibe of that scene's exemplars does explain it.
- The Crystal Palace had a Queen Victoria vibe, the Merry Band Of Pranksters bus in the 60's had Ken Kesey's vibe, 90's subcultures especially had vibes like punk rock musicians, but vibes in our internet-atomized mode of social organization are more fleeting and combinatorial.
- A shared vibe, if it coheres, plays a role in what Chapman calls the bridge to stage 5 meta-systematicity-- a bridge must "challenge", "support", "confirm". Challenge the old stage, support while only partially in the new stage, and confirm expressions of the new stage.
- Vibes involve norms, and norms cannot be adequate to be all of "challenge, support, confirm", but is a not-insignificant part; other things like new markets, laws, and tech must be part of it (hat tip to Lawrence Lessig for the norms/markets/laws/tech schema).
Here's Chapman's post, "The Psychological Anatomy Of A Stance". I wonder if there could be an article "The Psychological Anatomy Of A Vibe"? Vibes seem less anatomically simple than stances.
I'm excited about Vibecamp. I think there is an unprecedented level of openness in Ingroup Twitter to meta-systematicity (I'm in the "meta-rationalist" camp I guess), which I have been narrating in my podcast. There was effectively no screening process; the closest thing to asking if we are a post-rationalist was just asking us what our favorite egregore was. And so I believe something will probably happen which happened at the Critical Rationalism Weekend I attended in Philadelphia in November: the social scene is going to be mostly rationalists with no prefix "critical", "post", "meta", or anything else. At both these events, the website, the communications channels, and the name of the event send a clear message: be a good guest and don't act like The Critical Rationalism Weekend is not for critical rationalists or Vibecamp isn't for post-rationalists. But there are 400 attendees at Vibecamp, so post-rationalists will be so rare that I will only occasionally encounter their vibe.
And yeah, there will be some pre-systematic Romantics and woo people at Vibecamp, but there almost always has been in every vibrant and interesting scene, and there always will be. They will be so poorly-systematic that they will have no effective screening process (because that would be systematic) so they will get outnumbered instantly and their dysfunction won't be reflected in decision-making and norms. It's going to be mostly rationalist dysfunctions instead.
So let's go back to the essay I mentioned about "A Bridge To Meta-Rationality Vs Civilizational Collapse". In it, Chapman said that bridge must be an intellectual and social framework, and its institutions must challenge previous-stage thinking feeling and acting, support its members while they are having trouble getting to the next stage, and confirm next-stage functioning with praise and rewards. What gets confirmed is systematicity in those for whom it's developmentally appropriate, and meta-systematicity in those for whom that is developmentally appropriate. I think Vibecamp, as part of the social framework, mostly will be compatible with that.
Chapman's Bridge essay ends with: "It will take collaborative construction by many contributors, though". I'm giving thought to the interplay of two different forms of contribution: vibes, and content. Let's take for example, the content of meta-systematicity. For examples, I would think of Chapman, Robert Kegan, Brian Cantwell Smith, and several other living figures on Chapman's Further Reading list. Obviously such work is crucial.
And yet the Bridge article emphasized how the bridge must facilitate emotional acceptability in order to identify one's self with a higher stage, and social networks to support meta-systematicity. I think Vibecamp will play a role in that.
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