Interesting collection of links! I think vibes is a useful description of that which is difficult to be put into words but still significant, like reading someone's body language, or having a hunch. I wouldn't make too much of predictions based solely on feeling the vibes (synchronicities abound in the age of the algorithm). But, then again, we also can't predict the weather very well, so being wrong about a vibe shift doesn't invalidate the existence of shifting vibes. It's also more fun to talk about vibes than about intractable social and political problems: the vibes will continue shifting so that nothing has to change.
I think it’s an example of Kant’s idea of reflexive judgements: judgments that make a claim about a particular without knowing the general. A vibe is a judgement about a moment in time without knowing the whole meaning of history.
But surely we don't have access to "the whole meaning of history", so aren't we all going by vibes at some level and it is better to recognise this than believing we can develop a perfectly scientific understanding of the world?
Agreed -- just as (to use Kant's examples), we don't know what beauty is, but still make aesthetic judgements, and we don't know the ends of nature, but still make judgements about biology. Reflexive judgements undergird our knowledge of the world.
Interesting collection of links! I think vibes is a useful description of that which is difficult to be put into words but still significant, like reading someone's body language, or having a hunch. I wouldn't make too much of predictions based solely on feeling the vibes (synchronicities abound in the age of the algorithm). But, then again, we also can't predict the weather very well, so being wrong about a vibe shift doesn't invalidate the existence of shifting vibes. It's also more fun to talk about vibes than about intractable social and political problems: the vibes will continue shifting so that nothing has to change.
I think it’s an example of Kant’s idea of reflexive judgements: judgments that make a claim about a particular without knowing the general. A vibe is a judgement about a moment in time without knowing the whole meaning of history.
But surely we don't have access to "the whole meaning of history", so aren't we all going by vibes at some level and it is better to recognise this than believing we can develop a perfectly scientific understanding of the world?
Agreed -- just as (to use Kant's examples), we don't know what beauty is, but still make aesthetic judgements, and we don't know the ends of nature, but still make judgements about biology. Reflexive judgements undergird our knowledge of the world.
'Vibes' make me nervous. There seems to be a presumption that there is only one acceptable vibe at a time, and that we must all adhere to them.
Let's all remember the phase, 'marching to the beat of a different drummer'. That sounds much more appealing to me than 'marching in lockstep'.
That skepticism about about vibes (which I share, to an extent) is why we did this CrowdSource.