# Follow-through on Bay Solstice

There is a [Bay 2025 Solstice Feedback Form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdIm0BA-CTMw_egSwqC-iQaCzxSTZtbl7QuVmrFTlFZNqQO0A/viewform?usp=dialog). Please fill it out if you came, and especially fill it out if you felt alienated, or disengaged, or that Solstice left you worse than it found you. (Also fill it out the first question if you consciously chose not to come)

The feedback form also includes a section for people interested in running a future Bay solstice (summer or winter).

The feedback form focuses on high level, qualitative feedback. You can also vote and comment on the [quality of individual songs/speeches here](https://secularsolstice.vercel.app/feedback).

* * *

I had a subtle goal, with a narrow target, for Bay Solstice this year.

I wanted to:

*   earnestly face the possibility of living in a world where AI was quite likely to kill everyone soon.
*   *not* advocate other people believe that. It's something I believe, and my believing it was part of the Solstice. But, the point wasn't for other people to change their beliefs. The point was to give people an opportunity to Pre-Grieve / Stoic Meditate on it, so that uncertain fear-of-it would have less power over them.
*   give people a few different healthy options for how to contend with that (and some impetus for them to find their own way of doing so if none of the options worked for them)
*   celebrate life as fully and vibrantly as I could.
*   end with as much [hope](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RbqqfkXYhEtvSL5Zb/i-have-hope) and [believing in](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/duvzdffTzL3dWJcxn/believing-in-1) as I could muster.
*   (also, unrelatedly, do a much better job than usual at helping people become able to singalong with songs they hadn't heard before, and deliver a very musically high quality solstice)

I wanted to face a particularly raw, darker darkness, than Large Public Solstice has done before. But, I had an explicit goal of counterbalancing that by also trying to give brighter, more vibrant light than Large Public Solstice has done before. (With an important caveat that the light has a different shape than it often does).

If you left worse than you came, I will try to help
---------------------------------------------------

I'm sending out the [feedback form](https://secularsolstice.vercel.app/feedback) now. We'll find out in a few days how I succeeded at my various goals. 

I have gotten a lot of heartfelt positive feedback from a variety of people (MIRI-types, Anthropic employees, people who don't think much about AI, people who think about it but are much more optimistic than I). But, I don't expect to have gotten negative feedback yet. Please fill out the feedback form if you left halfway through. (Also, feel free to fill it out if you didn't come and just want to register that)

I have heard some people left halfway through because it seemed too doomy or despairing, who might have had the takeaway "Solstice was about despair." The elements that were supposed to help them came later.

Probably the biggest mistake I made was not emphasizing at the beginning of the darkness "Guys, this may be intense, and I'm not sure how this will go for everyone. But, I *have* worked hard to ensure Solstice leaves you better than it found you. I wouldn't have done tonight the way I did if I didn't think I had."

(I did encourage people to step out or tune out during the darkness arc if they needed to)

If you got negatively affected by Solstice, I am sorry. I know I was doing a dangerous thing. My impression is it worked for at least many people, but, I want to take personal responsibility for anyone who left feeling worse, or better-but-disregulated. 

If it would be helpful to have a conversation with me to sort of talk through anything (or just, like, give me feedback or just complain to my face), I am happy to do that. If that wouldn't be helpful but there's some other favor that feels like it'd help, happy to make a good faith effort trying to do that.

Also, if you left worse than you came, I will definitely give you a refund.

This is not meant to be "every year"
------------------------------------

I expect some people are worried that Solstice will now be a doomy Look Directly at Extinction event every year. I want to state: I think that would be a bad mistake. 

I think this is something that needed happen once. 

First, because I expect a lot of people to have some kind of stuck, unprocessed grief that they could use help processing. 

And second, it would be a betrayal of Solstice's integrity if we *neither* did something like this at least once, *nor* had someone stand up and say "guys, I don't know how a 500 person Solstice is supposed to look squarely at the question 'will we survive' and have it be healthy if the [answer was no](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/G5TwJ9BGxcgh5DsmQ/yes-requires-the-possibility-of-no), so, I am saying explicitly: We are not going to ask that question.'"

Solstice "for whom?"
--------------------

I expect fewer than 1/4 of of Solstice attendees were on the same page as me, re: pessimism on 'will we make it?'.

I expected there was another substantial fraction of people who weren't as pessimistic as I, but, weren't really sure how to think about the question, and could use help processing the question, such that they could then think more clearly about it.

So, another thing I want to acknowledge: I think it's important that Solstice organizers not try to shove their beliefs down other people's throat, or take advantage of a ritualized institution with a somewhat-hypnotic arc to try to shape people's beliefs.

I think it *is* reasonable and good for different Solstices to try to speak to people who are at least a substantial minority of Solstice attendees, and make them feel seen. Last year, Ozy Brennan lead a Solstice very different from mine, more focused on day-to-day lives of people who don't necessarily feel like they can be one of the primary movers/shakers of the future. 

I think Ozy nonetheless did a good job of making a Solstice that also resonated with me (who is trying to help put a dent-in-the-universe), acknowledging the things I cared about. This is The Way. I think it's better for different Solstices on different years to do a great job reaching some subset of the audience, while also making sure to be a worthwhile experience for people who are not that group.

I heard from some more aspiring-hero x-risk-worried people who felt sort of sad that Solstice wasn't "for them" last year. 

Some of those people also felt like Anna Tch's Solstice in 2023 wasn't "for them", even though Anna's Solstice was explicitly about grappling with "are we going to make it?". She went about it a different way than me. 

There are two options for Solstice, broadly: try to accommodate everyone fully every year, or, allow itself to focus on strongly resonating with some particular subgroup, while doing it's best to still be "for everyone."

I think it's good for the latter to at least be in Solstice's wheelhouse – it'll allow us to reach higher peak experiences. I think it's good for each Solstice organizers to let their soul shine through it, while making something that a lot of people can connect with and appreciate and get something from.

For that to happen and work, I think it'd be helpful if people cultivated a wider range of appreciation for Solstice. Some people said Anna's wasn't dark enough. I was a bit confused by that – I thought it was the darkest Big Bay Solstice since 2019. I think the darkness took a different shape than they expected so they didn't see it, but it was there.

There is a trade people could choose to make, for organizers to try hard to give everyone a meaningful experience while also shining their own soul through the event. And, everyone else trying to *find* meaning in that.

(Meanwhile, each year, if you want the oddly specific solstice For You And Your People Exactly, I recommend holding a smolstice on the night of the 21st and invite exactly who you want to connect with)

Spending / Gambling a limited resource of "trust"
-------------------------------------------------

Big Public Solstice organizers who choose to make a "more for some people in particular" Solstice are taking a risk, gambling the reputation of it as an institution. 

I think mine was taking a particular risk. It was centrally for people who were grappling more directly with the possible end of humanity, and deciding whether to try to work to stop that. But, in addition to many people not identifying with that, it was also just taking a pretty big psychological risk for many people.

This doesn't necessarily "cost" trust en net if it ends up doing a good enough job. But, might burn trust with specific people, and it's definitely taking a risk I want to acknowledge.

I ran three rehearsals for the event, each time time tried to invite people I expected to not resonate or be offput by the central arc, and iterated on how to phrase things such that it worked for everyone. I made changes up through the last 30 minutes before the event where I reached out to someone I expect to have been a bit alienated at the dress rehearsal, who said "yep, I was indeed a bit alienated", and we workshopped one of the speeches a bit more. 

They commented afterwards "\[yep, on the final run through\] I thought your versions of the speeches pulled off that very hard thing, of meeting a wide array of people where they're at and also accomplishing the "possibly last solstice" vibe.

We'll see how the feedback form goes. 

I expect it didn't work for everyone, it wouldn't surprise me *much* if there was still a substantial number of people for whom it didn't work. But, fwiw, I did put quite a lot of effort into this.

Is it bad that our Big Holiday is about Being Sad?
--------------------------------------------------

One criticism I got from someone who decided not to go to Solstice, is that it seems like rationalist culture has a fixation on pessimism / negativity. It seemed unhealthy for our biggest holiday to lean into that, and to make it such that you get status by vulnerably being sad in front of everyone and there's a bit of a "how much can you make the audience cry?" contest.

I do think this is a real concern that makes sense to at least be tracking. 

I think it is a bit confusingly true that:

Rationalist culture does have some kind of "pessimistic" or "negative" bent. And, also, I think the center-of-mass of how pessimistic we are is "approximately correct, from a predictive stance." It means we are early to react to a lot of bad things. But, that doesn't mean there isn't something off/wrong about our culture.

I think the Covid Pandemic was a particular time where the pessimism harmed us as a group. We were (correctly IMO) early to lock down and take covid seriously. But then a year later a lot of people seemed stuck in kind of low-agency highly risk averse group settings that were (probably) too conservative. (See: [Takeaways from one year of lockdown](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uM6mENiJi2pNPpdnC/takeaways-from-one-year-of-lockdown)).

I have some thoughts I am mulling over about this, but for now am interested to hear what other people think about it.

* * *

Remember, the [main feedback form is here](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdIm0BA-CTMw_egSwqC-iQaCzxSTZtbl7QuVmrFTlFZNqQO0A/viewform?usp=dialog). Feedback on individual [songs/speeches is here](https://secularsolstice.vercel.app/feedback).

* * *

Appendix A: Ideas that almost made it in
========================================

The Solstice was very long. There was a lot I cut. There were also some things I tried to make happen, but couldn't find the right person to execute them.

People who disagree with me more
--------------------------------

The thing I am most sad about is, in the *Vignettes on Living in a Possibly-Doomed-World* at the end, I did not find someone who represented "I'm actually just not working on x-risk at all."

The idea of that section was to show a wide range of ways to grapple with believing in a high-level of x-risk, in a non-cope-y way. And I think "I actually just don't know what to do about x-risk, and/or I value living in the moment without particularly focusing on it" are both legitimate choices to make, depending on your values.

There were a few people who considered speaking, and didn't end up speaking because the vibe of the event didn't feel right to them. This makes sense, but I'm sad about it because I know my vibe and outlook aren't the only ones and I did want the event to be inclusive of perspectives as possible.

Some speeches-that-almost-were, in this vein:

*   "It's not necessarily the case, that there's something for you to do about x-risk. You don't need to have a Thing To Do."
*   "It's sad that when people-around-here consider doing something other than working on x-risk, the granularity they think about is 'doing a startup' or 'earn-to-give'. They don't have models of anything more specific than that."
*   "I've had various personal goals I've pursued over the years. I ultimately did not succeed at them for various reasons. But, eventually, I stopped having capital-G Goals, and... I have found that I am happier since."
*   "Note that the world isn't actually doomed. Humanity might be doomed. The world will live on."

Each of those had something that seemed good about it to me. I wish we had gotten one of them.

The "Future is Now" B-plot resolution
-------------------------------------

A subtheme of the Solstice was: "Solstice is about the past, present and future. But, it's worth noticing that 'the present' is a moving target. When we started 15 years ago, a lot of stuff was located 'in the future' that is basically happening now. "

I originally had a song called "Gonna be a Cyborg", which I actually wrote in 2012. It's interesting to me that that song is now "a slightly dated relic of it's time". I like the idea of songs from a given time becoming historical relics. Sometimes it's appropriate to change the lyrics, but in this case I like the fact that the general topic of "being a cyborg" is as relevant now as it was then, but some of the details have changed.

I also had a plan to, just before Solstice, have Claude read the entire Solstice script, and ask it roughly: "Look at this script. Identify the themes that *should* be present*,* but aren't. Write a song about those missing themes. Then write a speech introducing the song. The song and speech should be excellent, world class art that would be remembered for decades."

I ran a beta test of this 3 months ago (it was important to me not to iterate too much on the test, so the results weren't cherry-picked). Claude looked over the script, and said:

> Looking at this program, I notice there's a missing niche between the heavy existential dread of Act II and the eventual resolve of Act III. While you have songs about **facing catastrophe**, **grieving**, and **determination**, you don't have a song about the **actual daily work of trying** \- the unglamorous, iterative, collaborative labor of problem-solving when you don't know if you'll succeed.

And... yep, that was indeed a thing missing from the script. The song Claude wrote about it was not very good, but it was the right high level concept.

It also wrote a speech that I thought was pretty fun. (It was a bit overly long and I cut it down here, but, tbf I also did that for everyone's speeches)

> I've been thinking about my friend Sarah. She works on interpretability research.
> 
> Last week I asked her how it was going, and she said "Well, we got the model to light up in interesting ways when we probe it, but we don't actually know what that means yet. So... Tuesday, I guess?"
> 
> And then she laughed, and went back to work.
> 
> …
> 
> I think about that a lot. "Tuesday."
> 
> Not "we're doomed." Not "we're saved." Just... it's Tuesday, and there's work to do, and we don't know yet what it means. When you're facing something really big and scary, your brain wants to jump to the end. But most of life isn't lived in the climax. 
> 
> And I think there's something important about... learning to be okay with that. there's still something that matters about *how* we spent the time we had. About whether we were kind to each other. Whether we tried. Whether we showed up.
> 
> Tomorrow's Wednesday. 

This speech wouldn't be nearly as fun for me if I wasn't *super into "Tuesdays" as a concept*, and I'm kinda like "how did it know?"

I wanted to include this in Solstice with a bit of context-setting on "This is the current capacity of models to co-meaning-make with human with humans. Which is, ya know, not that good. But it is dramatically better than what Claude wrote for the 2022 Solstice that Scott Alexander ran. 

"So, in addition to starting to orient to X-Risk as if it's real... you may also want to start orienting to 'AIs participating in the human world' as if it's real. And, *Solstice* should maybe start orienting to that, overall, somehow."

I ended up cutting this whole segment because, Long Solstice Was Long, and it was kinda a whole separate thread that I'd need to allocate a lot of time to if I was going to revisit it in Act III."

* * *

Remember, the [main feedback form is here](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdIm0BA-CTMw_egSwqC-iQaCzxSTZtbl7QuVmrFTlFZNqQO0A/viewform?usp=dialog). Feedback on individual [songs/speeches is here](https://secularsolstice.vercel.app/feedback).