Published on October 2, 2025 3:45 PM GMT
Cached responses are very useful. When this topic comes up, I bring up X. When the gadget comes by, I add a gizmo to it. When you have a repetition of three, come up with a pattern-breaking, funny example for the last one.
But to have most of your words & actions to be cached is considered soul crushing.
Is to be dead.
Oh, so you're saying to just be more sPonTanEOus?
Sort'of! But "just be spontenanoeous" isn't helpful advice or even spelled correctly. The key is to become aware of:
Local Details Unique to Your Current Situation
In any long-term relationship, it's easy to fall into the same routines & canned responses. With my wife[1], making the same jokes with the same responses. Even if the joke is novel (liquer? I hardly know her!), the delivery, the response, are the same, are cached. HOWEVER!!! When paying attention to the current moment, there is so much unique information & options:
- I can change my facial expressionsI can try to catch her eyesThere's lots of details on her facial reaction that I usually ignoreOur cat is on the counter[2]
And suddenly, things feel alive. Not just for me, but for both of us. Simply becoming aware of local details is enough to feel and act more alive.
At least for me.
[It definitely requires noticing & acting on these local details. My intention here was to have more fun, where the rest of my actions flowed, so YMMV]
Being Forced to Consider Local Details
Some of the most fun activities get you out of your usual action-space because they force you to focus on details you normally would ignore.
- When I was talking to my friend about this topic, she responded by chasing me. This forced me to consider all the chairs & beanbags as obstacles to be avoided (or to be thrown at her), which was really fun:)A common activity in the arts is to add arbitrary constraints.
- Write an engaging children's book w/ a vocab-size of only 50 wordsWrite a book w/o the letter "e"Make a piece of art w/ only dotsHit me with this stick, but you're blind-folded[3]
3. There's also the situation of someone who's heard all the usual counter-arguments to [AI x-risk] and so gives the same cached responses. It's much more exciting when someone provides something novel that then requires, like, thinking or something.
Being forced to consider local details can be fun and exciting. It can also be horribly frustrating (eg my code's not working, and now I need to consider the local details), but I never said you can't feel alive and bad!
Isn't that just not relying on cached responses? How does this relate to considering local details?
By "local details", I'm trying to point towards the fact that, in this moment, there are so so many different things to pay attention to & ways to act. Details specific to your current situation. They can help in two ways:
- As a random number generator (RNG) that change what you'd normally say/doSome specific details are in fact relevant to your current situation, but they're not always part of your general-solution/cached response so they don't seem salient. Once you're aware of them though, they obviously are relevant.
Ground Hogs Day
One pointer is Groundhog Day (great movie, recommend), where the protagonist is stuck re-living the same day over and over again. Literally repeating the same day makes the repetition obvious. This repetition is actually a major cause the protagonist to act in ways they normally wouldn't.
In a way, you are living in Groundhog day; you just need to notice the repetition.
Being Trope Savvy
In a sense, the whole skill I'm proposing is noticing tropes in your life. Some romantic movie tropes:[4]
Aborted Declaration of Love: You're about to confess your love for somebody, but then decide not to.Accidental Adultery: Cheating on your lover/spouse by mistake, e.g. thinking they were dead when they were actually alive.Accidental Hand-Hold: Ship Tease moment where two characters end up locking hands with each other when they reach for the same item.
Similarly, I find myself re-enacting the same plots. Simply recognizing "Ah, I'm acting out a cached response" is enough for me to do something more alive.
In college, I was talking to this fellow when it dawned on me that he wasn't actually listening to what I was saying, he was just waiting for my mouth to stop moving so he could say his point. I then decided to say crazier and crazier things and he surprisingly didn't notice (I didn't go crazy enough I guess).
To tie it back, him not listening brought me out of the "we're having a conversation" trope, making me focus on the "he's not listening to a word I'm saying" detail, which I can think make different actions than I normally would.
As another example, usually a blog post doesn't include a bunch of dijfpeianifnpasdkfnkenanapoisdnfipaosidnfinepaoienfnvrbyubarygaoejoifjepayouregaynotthattheresanythingwrongwiththatthoughspaiojfeoiapjkdjfiapsodifjnhapuiehfapsdifhapsjdhpfiehpa, but there's literally nothing stopping me.
I'm a loose cannon; I don't play by the rules.
Notice Your Goal
A common un-examined detail is your goal (or the other person's goal).
I sometimes find myself in arguments where my goal naturally becomes convincing them of my point. Taking a step back; however, I notice we're actually on the same side w/ the same goal (& the point is irrelevant to that shared goal).
There's a certain flexibility required here. I need to be willing to let go of what I normally do in that situation, in order to respond more skillfully. Letting go is indeed a skill you can improve on, but the first step is actually noticing your current situation in more details than usual.
A Meditation Pointer
There are two meditation pointers to get near this head-space:
- Be 100% aware of the current moment. When you eat, you're aware. When you talk, you're aware. When you lay down and when you wake up, you're aware. This is a habit you'll build upon day-by-day until it is simply a part of who you are.
- Do be aware to not tense unnecessary muscles (eg jaws & forehead). Relax if you can. If you can't relax that muscle, then just note that you're tensing that muscle & move on.
So Habits and Routines are Bad?
Habits are great! Making time every day to, I don't know, write blog posts for a 30/60-day challenge is a good way to succeed at writing blog-posts. My main focus is more on[5] the second-to-second level of lived experience.
- ^
That's right y'all. I'm married now.
- ^
I didn't want to overload too many examples in the main text, but there's so many actually.
- The fact that our cat yelled for food that morning. We're currently washing dishesWe're planning on watching a movie laterWe're both not wearing shoesThe light is shining on my right side & her leftShe's heard similar "hardly know her" jokes in the pastWe ate eggs that morningI'm within a couple feet from her
- ^
If you meet me in person, I love this game. I have blindfolds and your choice of: water gun, nerf gun, giant blow-up caveman stick.
- ^
In one story, a character realized they might be boxed in as the "wise mentor", triggering the "death of the mentor for the development of the protagonist" trope
- ^
Moron? What'd you call me?
Discuss
