I think the Anti-Asch stuff is something that Ideal Platonic Tegmark 5 Solstice would have, but is in practice very hard. (rest of this comment is not disagreeing so much as outlining the hard-ness)
On Changing Stuff to Preserve Flexibility
Building up sacredness I think does require sacred things to accumulate that don’t change every year. Part of the way they work is feeling familiar, like part of your childhood. (I did write the song Endless Light specifically so that one year we could swap out Brighter Than Today and practice letting go, but I think stuff like that should happen every 5-7 years)
Meanwhile, writing or learning new songs/speeches each year is in fact really hard, and I don’t think it’s sustainable. (the effort that goes into Solstice is immense. The effort that goes into Rationalist Seder, at least in NYC, is pretty close to “we roll out of bed and do a rationalist seder”. (Daniel Speyer does write some new content each year, but at this point if he stopped doing that I think things would be totally fine)
So I’d currently lean towards “Individual Solstices would benefit from accumulating a set of stories and speeches that more or less work, that don’t require you to reinvent everything every year”, so that the only effort required is the logistics and some rehearsal.
On Standing Up and Calling Out Bullshit
Re: “you can stand up and say if something seems epistemically unvirtuous”—I think this can work for a small-scale Solstice. At Big Solstice… where part of the point is to bring everyone together even if they have disparate viewpoints...
The options I see are either “come up with something everyone agrees with” or “be okay with a huge amount of Solstice being delving into some kind of derailing conversation” or “maybe people flag when they disagree but don’t get into a protracted conversation until afterwards.”
(Hmm, actually that last one sounds maybe doable)
You could come up with a set of things that literally everyone agrees on, but I bet those things would end up being fairly bland and insufficient to actually inspire anyone. I think most forms of enabling disagreement would automatically trip over something and automatically ruin most kinds of sacredness you’d probably go for.
I think embedding Anti-Asch conformity into the thing somehow is important, but I think it’s impractical to make it a huge part of the actual event. Things that I can imagine working include:
At the beginning, note specifically that we’re doing the ritual thing, that we are telling stories/songs that are somewhat hacking our brains, that this only really works if you lean into it with your system 1, and that we’re trying to do this wisely.
Yes, make it clear what’s going to happen so people can opt in or out sanely.
Maybe encouage people to do some kind of “silent but visible disagreement” thing if they disagree (I’m not sure if this would work without ruining things)
Make a dedicated space for people afterwards to discuss / disagree / argue.
“maybe people flag when they disagree but don’t get into a protracted conversation until afterwards.”
yup that’s what I meant
At the beginning, note specifically that we’re doing the ritual thing, that we are telling stories/songs that are somewhat hacking our brains, that this only really works if you lean into it with your system 1, and that we’re trying to do this wisely.
Yes, make it clear what’s going to happen so people can opt in or out sanely.
Maybe encouage people to do some kind of “silent but visible disagreement” thing if they disagree (I’m not sure if this would work without ruining things)
Make a dedicated space for people afterwards to discuss / disagree / argue.
I think the Anti-Asch stuff is something that Ideal Platonic Tegmark 5 Solstice would have, but is in practice very hard. (rest of this comment is not disagreeing so much as outlining the hard-ness)
On Changing Stuff to Preserve Flexibility
Building up sacredness I think does require sacred things to accumulate that don’t change every year. Part of the way they work is feeling familiar, like part of your childhood. (I did write the song Endless Light specifically so that one year we could swap out Brighter Than Today and practice letting go, but I think stuff like that should happen every 5-7 years)
Meanwhile, writing or learning new songs/speeches each year is in fact really hard, and I don’t think it’s sustainable. (the effort that goes into Solstice is immense. The effort that goes into Rationalist Seder, at least in NYC, is pretty close to “we roll out of bed and do a rationalist seder”. (Daniel Speyer does write some new content each year, but at this point if he stopped doing that I think things would be totally fine)
So I’d currently lean towards “Individual Solstices would benefit from accumulating a set of stories and speeches that more or less work, that don’t require you to reinvent everything every year”, so that the only effort required is the logistics and some rehearsal.
On Standing Up and Calling Out Bullshit
Re: “you can stand up and say if something seems epistemically unvirtuous”—I think this can work for a small-scale Solstice. At Big Solstice… where part of the point is to bring everyone together even if they have disparate viewpoints...
The options I see are either “come up with something everyone agrees with” or “be okay with a huge amount of Solstice being delving into some kind of derailing conversation” or “maybe people flag when they disagree but don’t get into a protracted conversation until afterwards.”
(Hmm, actually that last one sounds maybe doable)
You could come up with a set of things that literally everyone agrees on, but I bet those things would end up being fairly bland and insufficient to actually inspire anyone. I think most forms of enabling disagreement would automatically trip over something and automatically ruin most kinds of sacredness you’d probably go for.
I think embedding Anti-Asch conformity into the thing somehow is important, but I think it’s impractical to make it a huge part of the actual event. Things that I can imagine working include:
At the beginning, note specifically that we’re doing the ritual thing, that we are telling stories/songs that are somewhat hacking our brains, that this only really works if you lean into it with your system 1, and that we’re trying to do this wisely.
Yes, make it clear what’s going to happen so people can opt in or out sanely.
Maybe encouage people to do some kind of “silent but visible disagreement” thing if they disagree (I’m not sure if this would work without ruining things)
Make a dedicated space for people afterwards to discuss / disagree / argue.
yup that’s what I meant
These all sound good