In this case, I'm not saying "let's make an Epistemics Party." I'm saying, rationalsphere people who agree on political goals should coordinate to achieve those goals as effectively as possible (which includes preserving rationality).

I expect this to look more like supporting ordinary Democrat or Republican candidates (in the US), or otherwise mostly engaging with the existing political apparatus.

I did say roughly that this would happen, the thing I regret was somehow threading the needle on communicating:

"guys, when I say it's gonna get dark, I'm, like, more serious than usual. But I am also more serious than usual about it being light at the end, when you are evaluating the darkness which is darker than you expect, I will be trying pretty hard to counterbalance that." (literally those words feels too awkward, but, that's the vibe I wanted)

I think depends on how much you believe in yourself vs other specific people. I agree with funding other specific people you believe in. 

(fixed)

Mmm, I'm thinking of before vaccines came out. I have more thoughts about that but maybe don't want to make this thread all about that. 

I've heard similar comments from several people about the afterparty, and regret not spending a lot more time trying to make it a good part of the experience. I think in future years I maybe would prefer the afterparty on Saturday night to be more primarily "for Solstice attendees" and try to make a different night of the weekend the "everyone from all over the extended community comes over."

(You didn't mention the decompression zone but I maybe also want to take the opportunity to apologize: I had announced the decompression zone around firepits, but, then it turned out that all the firepits were full of people by the time I got there, and the whole area was so loud it felt hard to do announcements to direct people into the room we found. What I realize now was that I should have put up more/bigger signs about that)

Ah whoops. Fixed.

(Normally this wouldn't have been that bad a problem since the form itself is private, I happened to make it public to be easier to get feedback on the questions earlier today)

(For people who read it already, I just added an Appendix of Director Commentary. I might add another Appendix B about why I made some of the choices in the event that did get included)

fwiw I think there is a good thing about steelmanning and a different good thing about ITT passing. (Which seems plausibly consistent with Rob's title ITT-passing and civility are good; "charity" is bad; steelmanning is niche, and also your post title here. I haven't reread either yet but am responding since I was tagged)

ITT passing is good for making sure you are having a conversation that changes people's minds, and not getting confused/mislead about what other people believe.

Steelmanning is good for identifying the strongest forms of arguments in a vacuum, which is useful for exploring the argument space but also prone to spending time on something that nobody believes or cares about, which is sometimes worth it and sometimes not. (it also often is part of a process that misleads people about what a person or group believes)

Which of those is more important most of the time? I dunno, the answer is AFAICT "each consideration is important enough to track that you should pay attention to them periodically." And it feels like attempts to pin this down further feel more like some kind of culture war that isn't primarily about the object-level fact of how often they are useful.

(apologies if I have missed a major point here, replying quickly at a busy time)

Minor reference that I agree wasn't worth spelling out in the post but seemed nice to include: A Little Echo is a song I wrote in 2012 as "a cryonics funeral song", about the various ways that echoes of people can survive.

It hasn't turned out to be a mainstay Solstice song. I was actually a bit sad that this solstice turned out last-minute-accidentally to be the most cryonics-heavy Solstice I've led (as a recurring B Plot), but it didn't really make sense to do the song because other songs were filling it's niche as a singalong.