Should I attend Fluidity Forum?

External links are indicated with 🌐. Other links are to this site.

You’ll probably get a lot out of Fluidity Forum if you enjoy

• David Chapman’s Meaningness 🌐 or In The Cells Of The Eggplant 🌐
• Scott Alexander’s blog Slate Star Codex, or his newsletter, Astral Codex Ten 🌐,
• Ribbonfarm 🌐 by Venkatesh Rao and Sarah Perry
• Everything Studies 🌐 by John Nerst
• Less Wrong 🌐
• Desystemize 🌐 by Colin Lysford
• tis.so 🌐
• The Frame Problems 🌐 YouTube channel
• online salons like The Stoa 🌐 or Interintellect 🌐 or their videos on YouTube
• Or, if this site’s glossary interests you!

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The Vibes

For most of us, feeling like a gathering is “not for me” depends on the “vibe”.^[1] In a gathering that has no emphasis on music or fashion, the vibe is made of linguistic tics. The key is for Fluidity Forum to encourage multiple languagings, so as to prevent one vibe from being dominant.

There are three main vibes who are excited about our main topics. All three are identifiable by their linguistic tics. You do not have to identify with any of them. Here they are:

The “Care Work self-help therapeutic spirituality” vibe

• “holding space”, “holding an intention”, the word “hold” a lot
• “in relationship” instead of saying “in A relationship”
• “in community” instead of saying “in A community”
• using the word “a” less often, in general
• “called to” / “moved to” / “what wants to be said” instead of “I decide/choose/want”
• “what is alive in you”
• “feel into”
• “sit with”, “be with”, “working with”, “with” a lot

The “Managerial Dynamism” vibe

• use “impact” as a verb
• use “ask” as a noun, to mean “request” (“my ask”)
• “the why” to mean “the reason”
• nouning verbs & verbing nouns, in general
• “leveraging”
• “synergy”
• “agile”
• “value-add”
• passive voice (“mistakes were made”)
• euphemisms

The “Silicon Valley Rationalist” vibe

• “update my priors” 🌐
• “mental model” 🌐
• “object-level” / “meta-level” 🌐 / “gears-level” 🌐
• “epistemic status” 🌐
• “game theoretical” 🌐
• “signaling” 🌐
• “seems” more often than “is”

None of these vibes are a problem. They’re good. But when only one vibe dominates a group, it’s narrow. In a narrow group, there is one vibe; it is assumed that you identify with it; and no one translates for you.^[2] The vibe turns into a status ladder for you to climb, and you have to constantly put on a demonstration. Being the most enlightened; the most wealthy and profitable; the smartest. In a narrow group, there is no other way for you to be valued by the group, so everyone is either at the bottom or the top of the heirarchy of who has influence.

Instead, we will encourage trying on different frames or switching between them.

At Fluidity Forum, when you listen to an unfamiliar vibe, please give the benefit of the doubt and attempt to translate it into your own languaging. It is expected that someone might need you to help translate what you say out of your languaging. It is okay for you to not identify positively with some, or all, of these vibes, or the settings from which they originate. You can just be curious about others’ ways of thinking, acting, and feeling, without being expected to become that way & stay that way.

• Glossary
• Vision