“Future Proofing Solstice” by Raemon

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 Solstice, it seemed like I should either

1. say explicitly: "sorry guys, I don't know how to have 500 people look at 'are we gonna make it?' in a way that would be healthy if the answer was 'no'. So, we're just not actually going to look that closely at the question."
2. or, figure how to do a good job at that.

This Solstice is me attempting to navigate option #2, while handling the fact that we have lots of people with lots [...]

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First published:
December 1st, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pdZ2geyATFGt9v6Su/future-proofing-solstice-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.