Bay Solstice is this weekend (Dec 6th at 7pm, with a Megameetup at Lighthaven earlier in the day).
I wanted to give people a bit more idea of what to expect.
I created Solstice in 2011.
Since 2022, I've been worried that the Solstice isn't really set up to handle "actually looking at human extinction in nearmode" in a psychologically healthy way. (I tried to set this up in the beginning, but once my p(Doom) crept over 50% I started feeling like Solstice wasn't really helping the way I wanted).
People 'round here disagree a lot on how AI will play out. But, Yes Requires the Possibility of No, and as the guy who made rationalist solstice, it seemed like I should either:
This Solstice is me attempting to navigate option #2, while handling the fact that we have lots of people with lots of different worldviews who want pretty different things out of solstice, many of whom don't care about the AI question at all.
It has been pretty challenging, but I've been thinking about it over 3 years. I'm feeling pretty good about how I've thread the needle of making a solid experience for everyone.
Somewhat more broadly: Solstice is about looking at the deep past, the present, and the far future. When I created it in 2011, the future was sort of comfortably "over there." Now it feels like The Future is just... already happening, sort of. And some of the framing felt a bit in need of an update.
(Meanwhile there is a separate subthread about making Solstice do a better job of helping people singalong, both with a smoother singing difficulty curve, and picking songs that sort of naturally introduce new required skills in a way that helps you learn, mostly without feeling like you were "learning").
It's sort of a capstone project for the first half of my adult life. It's felt a bit to me like the season finale for Solstice Season 4, if Solstice was a TV show.
It's still a bit of a weird thing that's not for everyone, but, if the above sounds worthwhile to you, hope to see you there.