The second Merrin story (well, I don't know if they're chronological or what but it's the one I reference second in this post) is here.

New York City

When: December 20th, 6:00pm

Where: HI NYC Hostel at 891 Amsterdam Avenue, NY

Tickets: https://rationalistmegameetup.com/

This combines with the East Coast Rationalist Megameetup, a weekend of neat talks and relaxed socialization. You can totally get a ticket to just Solstice or just Megameetup if that's more your preference.

Boston

When: December 27th, 6:30 pm

Where: Connexion, 149 Broadway, Somerville, MA

No tickets needed, RSVPs appreciated either at https://www.facebook.com/events/1188042049854248 or https://www.lesswrong.com/events/asnjsSXqKNmfKMcB9/boston-secular-solstice-2025

Oh, thanks! First two I just straight agree with.

For a Scientist checks things again and again

Hrm. "But" is better than "For." I think "Now" might be better than either, but I've been staring at these lines for a while- thoughts?

So the best of their work is the kind that’ll replicate.

Eh. I like "so the best off their work is the kind that'll replicate" over "so the best of their work is what can replicate" but admit mine isn't great.

Under sensible, responsible consideration "replicate" is just a really insane word to try and make work in anapestic tetrametre. I have to cheat my pronounciation a bit to downplay the "rep-" plus it takes some weird setup. Since I am not always a sensible responsible poet I wanted to put "replicate" in here somewhere anyway. 

"Why on Earth [should/would] we test?" said the Snaw with a sniff."

Yep, I dropped a foot, this is straightforwardly better.

Thanks for the suggestions!

I'm enough of a visual artist that I could draw the scenes, but I haven't had much if any practice or training in colour. If anyone feels inspired to make better art happen somehow I'd be pretty interested in upgrading out of this, possibly for compensation if I like the style. Otherwise adding better art to this will go on my backlog.

Boston

When: December 27th, 6:30 pm

Where: Connexion, 149 Broadway, Somerville, MA

No tickets needed, RSVPs appreciated either at https://www.facebook.com/events/1188042049854248 or https://www.lesswrong.com/events/asnjsSXqKNmfKMcB9/boston-secular-solstice-2025

Feels weird to correct-vote and also give a missed the point react.

I'm aware of Tsiolkovsky's harsh equation, and I totally am treating my delta-v here as magical momentum applied from some kind of platonic spherical cow engine. I stand by my metaphor anyway. If you handwave the mass of the fuel, I think my numbers are roughly right. If you don't handwave the fuel, then all my numbers are wrong, yes in a way that makes Pluto take more effort, and handling the implications of how much more effort becomes closer to an engineering problem (e.g. "do multiple launches to bring fuel up before leaving LEO.") 

Once we're treating it as engineering problems, if you've already gone to the moon I think you've already solved the hardest engineering problems involved in going to Pluto.

I'm worried I'm unintentionally creating a motte-and-bailey in the comments, so I'm going to try and split a few things out. Here's four things all of which I believe are true, but which people could reasonably agree or disagree with separately.

1. It's possible to make strictly better statements in the Graceful / Honest spectrum. "You gotta tie your shoes idiot" is less graceful than "Do you know your shoe's untied?" without communicating more information about the shoe. It's even more syllables. More grace doesn't actually always mean less honest.
2. Communicating gracefully takes effort to learn, but once learned, can be close to free on most per-statement cases. It's like learning a language; it would take me a long time to learn German, but a bilingual English and German speaker wouldn't find most conversation hard in one language.^[1] 
3. Communicating gracefully is worth effort to learn. It is better to have this skill than to not have this skill.
4. There are instrumental circumstances where giving up some honesty is worth getting some grace, especially if the rate of exchange is favourable. (Please don't take this line as advocating for outright lies in the name of momentary preservation of social harmony. I think I'm more honest than the average person even when I'm making these trades.)

I think 4 is true, but I'm on board with LessWrong in particular being a place where we don't give up units of honesty in order to get units of grace no matter the exchange rate. I'm less cheerful about existing in spaces where we give up 1.

1. ^{^}

   Note: I'm not trying to say every single sentence is close to free to say in the other language, or gracefully- there's detailed German words like Schadenfreude that are harder to communicate in English, and there's it takes effort to gracefully fire someone for non-performance.

Lightly agree with a little caveat. I don't want to make too strong a claim here to the counter, but there's a healthy version of this that's surprisingly close to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It's possible to be poorly calibrated in the other direction than I'm talking about in this essay, where you don't say perfectly fine things because you incorrectly assume people will be mad.

--"If I say this, everyone will hate me. If I say that, everyone will hate me. If I don't say anything, everyone will think I'm weird and hate me."

"Can you tell me what that would look like?"

"They'll ignore me, or give short answers, or move away."

"Are there any other possible explanations for that behavior?"

"I mean, I guess maybe they saw a friend."

"At the last gathering you were at, when you talked, did they do those behaviors?"

"No. I guess some people smiled. But maybe they were just faking?"

"At the next gathering, if you say those things, do you predict people will smile or move away from you? Would you like to put odds on those options?"

I think the difference is Heroic Responsibility doesn't mean taking every problem on your shoulders, it means taking every potential part of the problems you have taken on your shoulders. 

A business manager takes Heroic Responsibility for their business, but not the whole world. You can decide to take Heroic Responsibility for the whole world, and that looks a lot like the EA playbook in many ways. At least in my interpretation Heroic Responsibility often involves crossing departments to make sure your problem gets solved, but it doesn't automatically make everyone else's problems your problems.