I argue below that 1) fashion norms are good, even purely within the rationalist community and 2) Secular Solstice should have an unofficial attire norm: a slightly dressy black base layer with shiny accents (shiny jewelry, reflective material, metallic colors, etc; see examples in the main text). 

Others have written general defenses of “dressing up” in day-to-day life. These defenses typically make the very safe argument that “how you dress conveys information about you to other people, and you should take that into account”. Fundamentally, these are arguments for rationalists to dress based on the perceptions of those outside of the rationalist community. I think it is far more interesting (and contentious) to consider how the rationalist community should approach dress internally. In settings where rationalists set the norms, what should those norms be? 

One tempting response is that rationalists should not care about fashion. Why devote mental energy to your own presentation when it could be better spent on other things? And, with that in mind, why should you evaluate other’s presentations of themselves when you could get to know them or their ideas, and evaluate them on that basis alone? Perhaps the Bayesian framing of this is that clothing is either totally uninformative (at least conditioning on rationalism) or a signal of information you would rather not use (maybe that’s wealth, maybe that’s country of origin, whatever).[1]

I think these positions are hard to defend. Absent any internal rationalist coordination, clothing is already informative. Many people wear shirts that explicitly tell you things about them, like where they went to college, where they work, what bands they like, what they think is funny, etc. And maybe you don’t want to use all of the available information, but why wouldn’t you want to use this information when deciding who to talk to, who to avoid, who to crack jokes with, who to be professional around, etc? So, I think even in rationalist spaces clothing contains information that is worth caring about. 

But there is additional power in coordination within a group. Many a college dance has created meaning from nothing by adopting a “stoplight” convention: wearing red means you’re taken, green means you’re single, and yellow means you want to advertise your drama. Once a dance has a “stoplight” theme there is no avoiding it—you can wear some other color in protest or by accident, but these convey information about you that you cannot escape.[2] Rationalists can similarly create social meaning in their fashion by adopting norms. Should they? 

My main goal in this post is to argue that they should, in at least one specific way: adopting an unofficial dress code for Secular Solstice. Secular Solstice is a holiday more-or-less created on Less Wrong, meant to celebrate “the journey through darkness” in a way that appeals to scientifically and rationalist minded people. It is structured around stories, poems and songs, broadly inspired by the winter holidays of many cultures and religions. The songs and rituals have been created pretty deliberately to create a sense of community, tradition, and a compelling emotional arc.[3] The aesthetics have even been considered carefully, although oddly this has not extended to dress (as far as I have seen). These were generally socially constructed, often via Less Wrong, and so I think it is entirely reasonable that the community could also create norms for attire. First, I will describe some arguments for an unofficial dress code, and then I will describe what I personally believe it should be. 

I think there should be some sort of attire norm at Secular Solstice, for the simple reason that setting a default helps create community and create information. It creates community in a few ways: First, it is a tangible symbol of community to show up to a place where you visibly belong, where like-minded people are dressed like you. Second, it creates a signal of commitment: when you see others abiding by a specific dress code, you learn that they consider this event worth their time and energy. They’re not just here because they had nothing better to do. Even if you knew that you were here intentionally, learning that others share your intentionality makes it feel like the community at the event is that much stronger. Third, and relatedly, marginal attendees who may not have thought much of rationalism as a community learn that there is a real “in group” to be a part of, and so might be more inclined to want to talk to people or go to other events.[4] Fourth, it creates an additional thing to bond over: you can compliment or be complimented on how well you adhered to (or deviated from) the code. 

These community reasons interact with information, because fashion is information, but there are benefits to information that go beyond building community. The common thread to creating community is the benefits created by conformity to a common code. But every code also creates the possibility of deviation, which can provide valuable information. Perhaps you feel you are above fashion or look down on people who want to use it to express themselves: you should be a dress code’s biggest fan, since now you can show up looking schleppy and signal your anti-fashion elitism![5] Perhaps you want people to know you are really committed to the community: you can try extra hard and people will learn that about you! I will give more examples of deviations below once I describe my ideal norm, but the bottom line is that once fashion is taken seriously as a social language, it provides new ways to learn and interact socially. 

In fact, I suspect a reason people dislike taking fashion seriously is that they feel they are relatively less adept at reading the social language. Better, then, to promote a norm of not caring about fashion, so everyone else is on a similar footing. This is a legitimate concern in many settings, but thankfully not this one. Since you’re reading this post, and as long as people abide by my suggestions, you will know the social language! Maybe that’s an independent reason to just do what I suggest—I’ll take the first mover advantage. 

So, what do I suggest? Nothing revolutionary. In fact, I propose we all do what the organizers and speakers clearly already think is the correct dress code: dress “nice”, sure, but most importantly dress in dark colors (ideally black) with pops of bright colors reminiscent of light (reflective materials and metallic colors preferred). For example, the choir at last year’s Berkeley Secular Solstice dressed in black pants and black buttoned shirts with reflective gold ties. The main speaker wore a black dress and a shiny silvery cape. I think this is the right dress code for a few reasons, most obviously the symbolism. Since Secular Solstice is about “a journey through darkness”, it feels appropriate that the base layer simply be black. This will even help make the literally dark moments of the service feel darker. But a main message of Secular Solstice is to look for and create metaphorical light, so straight-up funeral attire would not do it justice. Pops of color, emulating light as much as possible, are the best choices for accents. Why the “dress nice” part? One answer is that you should “Build on the Familiar”—this is a design principle of Secular Solstice. Since there are existing cultural ideas of how to dress for a special event, using those ideas helps make a new event feel special. There’s also an argument to be made that stereotypically “nice” dress is optimized to make people look good. 

Another reason I think this is the right dress code is that it isn’t too closely related to exiting dress codes. Sure, if everyone committed really hard in a particular way, it might look like a 1920s party. More realistically it’s maybe similar to a typical new year’s party, at least the tacky shiny accessories piece. But I think the dress code I defend would have a pretty distinct identity from Christmas/Easter formal, or Thanksgiving with the in-laws, or a wedding, or a Wall Street dinner. Perhaps best of all, it would not look like any other gaggle of tech bros. And having a distinct look for the holiday is good for defining community, as well as making the social language of the event relatively more accessible for rationalists who don’t have a clear idea of what the correct dress for the above occasions is. 

Finally, I’ll add that I think this is a dress code that’s relatively easy to implement and look good in, but that still allows for a lot of creativity in both implementation and subversion. Most simply, people look good in black and probably already own some. If you own jewelry you already have the “pops of light” covered, and if not it is easy to get some or some other shiny material. Time for some examples! To fix ideas, here are some defaults:

You can dress this up pretty fancy, or be on theme without much effort at all:

Clothes from many different cultures would fit the vibe just fine. 

You can get something special for the occassion to signal you’re especially fun or committed! 

And if you’re not fun, there are lots of fun ways to subvert the default. Want to abstain? It won’t be hard to find an outfit with none of the features above. Want to half commit, so you can plausibly deny having tried but also fit in? Just wear some casual black clothes and you can totally claim you didn’t know about any theme. Want a credible signal of your disdain for the whole idea? Buy this shirt! 

The social language here can be as complex as we want it to be. If you want to communicate how much of a doomer you are, maybe you commit to dressing up but with absolutely NO color but black. If you’re a relative optimist, come in all white! If you want everyone to know how “adjacent” you are, maybe you sub out black for navy or metallics for colors to just be a little off. Note, this is part of why it’s very important that a particular dress code not be enforced (in addition to the direct harm that it’s exclusionary): deviations from the norms are also good! Sure, some of these more specific things may not end up that informative. But just like any other source of cultural information, we can enrich our self-expression and our understanding of others by creating norms and exploring the deviations from those norms. 

Maybe you think I propose bad norms though. Maybe to prove how cold and calculating rationalists are, the ideal should be maximally utilitarian/comfortable clothing. Maybe to maximize useful social information, the ideal should be that everyone wears a shirt that they would like to be asked about (their college, favorite band, a custom shirt that details their stance on the alignment problem, whatever). These are defensible stances that reflect different priorities for the community both internally and for external presentation. My overriding message is that a norm beats no norm, regardless of what that norm may be. 

Not only does fashion always contain information, but a healthy community can even create new information from nothing simply by creating norms around dress. In many settings this would be a slow and difficult process, but here on Less Wrong I believe we can do it with a post. As a lover of social information, I hope you’ll dress up for your next Secular Solstice. 

[1] If you go so far as to say clothing is informative, but that you update negatively from someone “caring about clothing”, then I would argue that you are in the same “caring about fashion” camp that I advocate.

[2] Maybe you’re rebellious, maybe you’re forgetful, maybe you’re no fun. I’d have to see the rest of your outfit to judge for sure.

[3] See descriptions of running a Secular Solstice here, and reflections on creating rituals here.

[4] Ideally, this is an inclusive “in group”, happy to welcome people. But welcoming people into a group requires a group, and clothing allows this group to be visibly tangible. 

[5] I suspect at least some of you who look down on fashion wouldn’t do this, since you don’t actually want other people to know this about you. Cause for some reflection perhaps?