Conversation

Replying to
Doctrine is rules for turning context-free insights into “morally good optionality” for a particular context easily. You have clear doctrine when there is a prevailing straightforward good/evil story. For eg, “what’s good for GM is good for America” in 1950s. Sub “SV” for 2010s
1
20
ML today is descended from Big Data a decade ago, but is evolving in a context with no clear grand narratives or doctrines. There are no obvious Schelling point ideas for turning ML capabilities into “good.” So the 100 fears about how it can be evil dominate discourse.
3
41
Never noticed this before, but things bandied about as “insights” tend not to be neutral interesting facts about the world like math theorems or new physics discoveries. They tend to be contingent on notions of goodness.
1
42
Like “sociopaths use clueless to manage losers” means very different things in milieus that broadly approve of neoliberal corporate darwinism vs ones that are hotbeds of culture wars. The insight economy only has stable valuations in regimes of broad moral consensus
1
32
Not sure what I’m groping at here, but this is why I’m no longer motivated to write merely by stumbling across good insights. I still find insights as good as the ones that fueled my writing 10y ago, but there’s no obvious ways to spin generally interesting essays out of them now
2
44
Now I have a reaction of “meh, to whom does this matter and why?” To use the popular “pill” metaphor from the last era, it’s no longer clear what you’re pilling from/to. “Pills” are bridges between competing grand narratives. When there are none, “pilling” is meaningless.
2
74
“Vibes” culture is a sign. Vibes are pre-conscious, pre-moral, and pre-pre-narrative. They don’t stand for anything, let alone catalyze a grand journey based on it. You can’t be “pilled” from one vibe to another. There are no moral valences to flip, shockingly or otherwise.
2
74
I get a surreal feeling watching the minority still excitedly sharing “insights” about various things like it is 2013 and they’re trying to audition their way from Twitter to TED. Nobody cares because there’s no coherent default caring context.
4
50