My biggest concern with this song has always been the refrain, which I failed to make any sense of, and so I kind of feel like the song doesn’t resonate with me:
But I am willing to sacrifice
Something we don’t have for something we won’t have
What is the thing that we don’t have, and how can you sacrifice something you don’t have? It seems like it should just straightforwardly say “something I have”, but that doesn’t fit into the meter.
And then also the fact that my timelines are relatively short, so it’s actually not really the case that I am sacrificing it for something we won’t have, since I assign decent probability to the current generation living forever. Though that part feels more fine than the weird negation in the refrain.
There’s a general thing that the song is written with longer timelines in mind, with a target audience of space-travel-oriented science fiction enthusiasts (also a generally older audience – even with shorter AI timelines many of them still wouldn’t live long enough to see the future)
Last year someone (I think drethlin) asked the songwriter what it meant, and Ada Palmer replied on twitter something like: “It’s about letting go of the attachment/dream that you personally will get to go to the stars, so you can focus on the parts of the real story that you can actually be a part of. It’s harder than you think.” (I’m not quite sure I’m remembering this right – she had specific phrasing that might have been nuancedly important)
So, this is not a song about sacrificing something you have, in return for which you get something. This is a song about change your internal stance, in a somewhat stoic fashion. Translated into LessWrong terms, rather than filker terms, I would say this is a song about bringing your dreams into alignment with reality (both to avoid your dreams being fantasies, and to see clearly how your dreams could be real and important, once you’ve set better goals)
Notably, in this line:
But I am willing to sacrifice
Something I don’t have for something I won’t have
But somebody will someday
Initially I would sometimes accidentally sing “so somebody will some will someday.” And I even thought that sounded better. But actually that is not what the song is about. You are not sacrificing a thing so someone else gets a thing. You are sacrificing a confused, hopeless dream so you can have a real dream.
Now, if you do think timelines are short (either AI, or SpaceX) and actually just want to go to Mars and ascend to glorious transhumanist godhood, should this song be meaningful to you?
I think so. Two reasons why:
1. Epistemic Hygiene, and Counterfactual Dreams
Maybe timelines are short, and you are the lucky generation that actually gets to dream of the future, and have the future be real. A rationalist who wants their dreams aligned with reality should be willing to straightforwardly set goals like “go to Mars” and “help build AI that will uplift everyone”. But I think there’s something important, if truth is important to you, to be the sort of person who could accept that that they don’t get to go to Mars or live forever – because they were born too early, or because circumstances didn’t work out for whatever reason.
“If I can see the glorious future, I desire to believe I can see the glorious future. If I can’t see the glorious future, I desire to believe that I can’t see the glorious future.”
The litany of tarski is actually hard to live up to. Ada Palmer is operating from an epistemic state where “It’s looking like obvious I won’t get to see the glorious future, so the important part of the stoicism here is accepting that.”
2. Part of the song isn’t just about you.
When I sing the song, it’s not just about my own position – it’s about the position of all the people born, 10,000 years ago, 100 years ago, or 50 – who won’t get to go to Mars or live-a-long-time, but nonetheless are still part of the story that I am a part of. They are part of who I am.
Miranda wanted this song as part of our 3rd wedding anniversary ceremony and I had the same complaint Habryka does. I think we had it but changed it slightly?
The interpretations you mention seem reasonable but still feels like the straightforward interpretation is of someone saying they don’t expect to have the result for themselves in a way that feels fatalist and false or something.
I mean, the important bit is that the epistemic state of most people is that you *won’t* have the result for yourself, and this was definitely true for most of human history and might still be true now. You need to have particular concrete beliefs about immortality being practical in your lifetime for the song’s fatalism to be anything other than straightforwardly true.
Yeah, I was going to edit the comment to try to more clearly get at the aesthetic cruxes at play (with someone different cruxes for: “Why the song resonates with me”, “Why I think it should at least not anti-resonate-with-Ruby”, and “Why I’d be somewhat sad if it anti-resonated-with-Ruby after we fully talked about it”)
(There’s an additional thing where, because this is a cultural-cornerstone-song for science fiction enthusiasts, it places science-fiction-enthusiasm as a central element of The Great Story of Humanity. I think science fiction is legitimately important but if I wrote the song I probably wouldn’t have made it so that the climax of the song is writing songs and hosting sci-fi conventions. But, I think it was a fine song to write for the culture it was intended for)
My biggest concern with this song has always been the refrain, which I failed to make any sense of, and so I kind of feel like the song doesn’t resonate with me:
What is the thing that we don’t have, and how can you sacrifice something you don’t have? It seems like it should just straightforwardly say “something I have”, but that doesn’t fit into the meter.
And then also the fact that my timelines are relatively short, so it’s actually not really the case that I am sacrificing it for something we won’t have, since I assign decent probability to the current generation living forever. Though that part feels more fine than the weird negation in the refrain.
There’s a general thing that the song is written with longer timelines in mind, with a target audience of space-travel-oriented science fiction enthusiasts (also a generally older audience – even with shorter AI timelines many of them still wouldn’t live long enough to see the future)
Last year someone (I think drethlin) asked the songwriter what it meant, and Ada Palmer replied on twitter something like: “It’s about letting go of the attachment/dream that you personally will get to go to the stars, so you can focus on the parts of the real story that you can actually be a part of. It’s harder than you think.” (I’m not quite sure I’m remembering this right – she had specific phrasing that might have been nuancedly important)
So, this is not a song about sacrificing something you have, in return for which you get something. This is a song about change your internal stance, in a somewhat stoic fashion. Translated into LessWrong terms, rather than filker terms, I would say this is a song about bringing your dreams into alignment with reality (both to avoid your dreams being fantasies, and to see clearly how your dreams could be real and important, once you’ve set better goals)
Notably, in this line:
Initially I would sometimes accidentally sing “so somebody will some will someday.” And I even thought that sounded better. But actually that is not what the song is about. You are not sacrificing a thing so someone else gets a thing. You are sacrificing a confused, hopeless dream so you can have a real dream.
Now, if you do think timelines are short (either AI, or SpaceX) and actually just want to go to Mars and ascend to glorious transhumanist godhood, should this song be meaningful to you?
I think so. Two reasons why:
1. Epistemic Hygiene, and Counterfactual Dreams
Maybe timelines are short, and you are the lucky generation that actually gets to dream of the future, and have the future be real. A rationalist who wants their dreams aligned with reality should be willing to straightforwardly set goals like “go to Mars” and “help build AI that will uplift everyone”. But I think there’s something important, if truth is important to you, to be the sort of person who could accept that that they don’t get to go to Mars or live forever – because they were born too early, or because circumstances didn’t work out for whatever reason.
“If I can see the glorious future, I desire to believe I can see the glorious future. If I can’t see the glorious future, I desire to believe that I can’t see the glorious future.”
The litany of tarski is actually hard to live up to. Ada Palmer is operating from an epistemic state where “It’s looking like obvious I won’t get to see the glorious future, so the important part of the stoicism here is accepting that.”
2. Part of the song isn’t just about you.
When I sing the song, it’s not just about my own position – it’s about the position of all the people born, 10,000 years ago, 100 years ago, or 50 – who won’t get to go to Mars or live-a-long-time, but nonetheless are still part of the story that I am a part of. They are part of who I am.
Miranda wanted this song as part of our 3rd wedding anniversary ceremony and I had the same complaint Habryka does. I think we had it but changed it slightly?
The interpretations you mention seem reasonable but still feels like the straightforward interpretation is of someone saying they don’t expect to have the result for themselves in a way that feels fatalist and false or something.
I mean, the important bit is that the epistemic state of most people is that you *won’t* have the result for yourself, and this was definitely true for most of human history and might still be true now. You need to have particular concrete beliefs about immortality being practical in your lifetime for the song’s fatalism to be anything other than straightforwardly true.
Yeah, but I have those beliefs.
Yeah, I was going to edit the comment to try to more clearly get at the aesthetic cruxes at play (with someone different cruxes for: “Why the song resonates with me”, “Why I think it should at least not anti-resonate-with-Ruby”, and “Why I’d be somewhat sad if it anti-resonated-with-Ruby after we fully talked about it”)
But, then, that turned out to be a lot of work.
(There’s an additional thing where, because this is a cultural-cornerstone-song for science fiction enthusiasts, it places science-fiction-enthusiasm as a central element of The Great Story of Humanity. I think science fiction is legitimately important but if I wrote the song I probably wouldn’t have made it so that the climax of the song is writing songs and hosting sci-fi conventions. But, I think it was a fine song to write for the culture it was intended for)