The Inkhaven Blogging Residency
inkhaven.blog
inkhaven.blog
Happy to answer questions if anyone has any. Ben (one of my co-founders) is more centrally in charge of it, but I should have enough context to answer really any question.
Should it go away? Probably not.
As they say, "if you are not the customer, you are the product", and I really wanted this fellowship to not be the kind of thing where the actual underlying motivation is some kind of recruitment scheme that drives the program objectives, while looking on the surface like a thing that is optimized to help the residents.
This seems to be more of a training camp or a writing intensive than a residency, but I am not sure what the appropriate name for that is.
The main reason to delay: I've started writing relatively recently, and expect I might have more posts I'd showcase in my application by then.
Thinking about it, my guess is we will probably let promising people who applied early know that they are on some kind of waitlist and extend an invite to them if we end up disappointed with the later applications, so if you are flexible, I think that makes early strictly easier. I don't expect the effect to be that large though.
Until late 1949, Inklings readings and discussions were usually held on Thursday evenings in C. S. Lewis's rooms at Magdalen. The Inklings and friends also gathered informally on Tuesdays at midday at a local public house, The Eagle and Child, familiarly and alliteratively known in the Oxford community as The Bird and Baby, or simply The Bird.
University was free for, say, the likes of Greg Egan and others to study physics and math, with a nominal student union fee to be able to join / form clubs and apply for a base beer, wine, and cheese fund to lubricate weekly discussion.
Oh well, guess I'll stay in New Orleans and draw queer comics at a less punishing pace instead.
(actually sheesh if we use the standard conversion rate of "a picture is worth a thousand words" then my usual peak of two pages a week is probably more work per week than the stated minimum of 500 words per post.)
Honestly I'm tempted. I know the rationalists have a bad rap but I have a grudging respect for Scott Alexander.
Plus $3,500 to live in Cali for a month... barely more than I'm paying over here
Maybe if everyone was definitely starting a Substack we could take a small cut of Substack revenue for the next year or two, which would be straightforward enough.
If anyone has ideas, I would definitely be curious to hear them.
I think the volume would really be a lot. For the program we'll be dealing with 900 (!) blogposts (30 residents times 30 blogposts). I doubt something with that volume would actually end up with many subscribers
Also, I would feel bad about splitting the audience of the authors. I feel like you really want to build your own audience early on.
And last, I am worried it would push people towards homogeneity. My ideal outcome from the whole project is that we will have a bunch of really very different blogs and essay writers find traction who share little of an audience, but add some important perspective to the world.
Also, my guess finding such a style/niche will take a bunch of exploration, so I think most people should probably write in a bunch of different styles and on a bunch of different things during Inkhaven to get more evidence about what they enjoy writing about the most (and which of their writing people want to read).
I wonder if there'll be an aggregator of the blog posts written as post of this cohort (and others, if there's more cohorts).
What’s stopping you besides the unsettling truth that it’s more fun to think that it’d be fun to join in from afar by pledging to do the same things than it is to actually do the same things from afar?
Yep, Bay Area rent and cost of living is a big pain. $1,500 for housing for a month is still below real estate costs on our side, and $2,000 in program fees is barely enough to pay for the staff costs and program supplies. We might barely break even, but my guess is we'll lose a bunch of money on the program (which is fine, we are doing this because it's good for the world, not to make money).
I feel like for a program like this it might make sense for someone to run it outside of one of the highest cost of living places in the world, but it's where we are located, so that's what we have to make work (I do think being in the Bay Area does also attract people and makes it more likely for people to participate, so it's not an obvious call even from first principles).
> I wonder if there'll be an aggregator of the blog posts written as post of this cohort (and others, if there's more cohorts).
We're definitely planning to do something like that! Not sure yet about the exact format, but we'll definitely make it easy to find what everyone is publishing as part of the residency somehow.
I am not familiar with blogging or this sphere at all, but it's so funny to me that I was assuming the website said that the program would PAY the bloggers to be there for a month (including housing) and not the other way around.
I assumed this was one of those "We'll let you write a book while riding Amtrak for free" sort of thing. Not sure why I thought that, but it made me laugh after reading your comment.
I don't think "retreat" is the right choice for a 4 week program, I think "retreat" implies a shorter duration. We played around with "fellowship" but that seemed worse.
Searching around a bit though, it seems like there are lots of other programs with similar naming choices. See for example this: https://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/literary-arts/deep-winte...
Which charges ~$5,600.
Or this: https://iyws.clas.uiowa.edu/2-week-summer-residential-progra...
Which charges $2,500. Both are called "residencies". Seems like it's not that weird for a program called "residency" to charge fees, though I still kind of buy there is some association here. If anyone has better suggestions, I would be pretty interested.
If a name is going to imply the wrong thing, would you rather someone get the wrong signal and think "wait, I thought you were going to pay me but I have to pay you?!" or "oh, I guess it's an even longer vacation"?
I do want to not scare people who aren't into LessWrong and similar things, as I would really like this residency to be less opinionated about stuff than LessWrong and other projects we usually run, so I feel like putting a big LessWrong logo somewhere would have given the wrong impression.
I would also love to see other people run similar things (including in places that aren't the Bay Area and so where they can run it much more cheaply). I feel like it could be a cool model.
I also think an online-only version of this could be great. The original inspiration for this project came from seeing that the Nanowrimo charity had shut down, and realizing that I would love to do something like Nanowrimo but focused on blogging and essays instead of novels. I ended up registering Nablowrimo.com (National Blogging Writing Month) and might end up trying to make that a thing, or would be happy to give the URL to someone who is committed to make something happen here.
Surely most people dropping work to focus on blogging would be looking for minimal costs (whilst they have limited income as they hone a skill) rather than maximal costs?!
If you rent sharing for maybe $1,500 pcm and then spend $50 a day you'd finish with $500 left vs Inkhaven.
If you've ever looked at housing (or anything else) in the SFBA, yes, it's more expensive than even London. (Salaries are higher too).
> Surely most people dropping work to focus on blogging would be looking for minimal costs (whilst they have limited income as they hone a skill) rather than maximal costs?!
Maybe. In my experience when you're trying to switch careers, getting to the point where you can earn income (or discover that you can't) as quickly as possible is more effective than trying to extend your runway by cutting expenses. Others may make a different judgement call.
The minimum is $2,000 if you want to source your own housing (and for example stay with a friend in the area).
The food cost is just fully straightforwardly passed on ($20 for a catered meal is not a lot!), and the rooming is also provided below cost (good luck finding a short term rental for less than $1,500/mo, or even $3000/mo in Berkeley). We are subsidizing this with our own money, this isn't going to make us anything.
Like, man, what are these expectations? Where can you get a month-long hotel experience in a major metropolitan area for less than $3,500 a month? And that is ignoring all of the costs associated with the rest of the program, which will involve a lot of volunteered time from staff with opportunity costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
$100/night in Berkeley is not going to get you something pretty, and definitely no food included.
You've said a few times in this discussion about how the room is provided at "cost" (or below cost here). But does "cost" really just mean your mortgage/debt on the property?
Also, you keep saying that the housing is subsidized, but it doesn't really seem like it. If you split a studio two ways in Berkeley, that's easily under $1500 for a month. Sure, it's less than a hotel for a month and splitting a crappy studio is pretty uncomfortable, so your price might be good value. Maybe it's below your costs, but not necessarily below market for "shared bedroom in trendy suburb."
I think I personally have a problem with the way you labeled this more than anything else. This seems like a great program for someone who has made some money doing something else and wants to do a writing/blogging intensive course. It does not seem like something that would attract an upcoming professional writer.
I guess on the other hand, it wouldn't be a blog if the author didn't do it all.
Some writing programs with similar naming schemes: * https://iyws.clas.uiowa.edu/2-week-summer-residential-progra... * https://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/literary-arts/deep-winte... * https://www.hedgebrook.org/residencies
Open to other names. I don't like "retreat" because of the above, don't like "fellowship" because it IMO more strongly implies that you would get paid money instead of paying money, and don't currently have any other great ideas.
The other two blog, yes, but now Scott flirts with race realism [1] and other Scott is hyperfixated on being pro-Israel at any cost. I can’t imagine they’re much fun at parties (or in communes, shtetl-optimized or not).
[1] https://www.stevesailer.net/p/scott-alexander-comes-out-of-t...
> The large difference between sub-Saharan Africans in developed countries (eg the US) and in sub-Saharan Africa demonstrates that the latter aren’t performing at their genetic peak, and that developmental interventions - again, nutrition, health care, and education - are likely to work.
If I go to this blogging thing I'll tell him that the time for being a "grey party" enlightened centrist was about 20 years ago and it's a stupid act to keep up. Just say you're not racist. (Unless he's actually able to deprogram any racists, which I'd need data to believe)
True, he’s not made any public, unequivocal statement on the topic. Not yet.
At the end of the day, if you are just some guy interested in the very notion of administering a test to determine, "objectively" the "intelligence" of entire swaths of people, and you take a kind of perverse interest in genetics, clearly, you hope to do something with that information. The very interest in the subject stems from a deeply problematic tendency in human beings and their subjugation of others (see biopower). A more nuanced and arguably more "rationalist" and "first principles" view would actually question the validity of the concept of "IQ" and unitary, decontextualized intelligence in the first place, but since Alexander is not that smart, he doesn't realize this and isn't actually capable of examining the water he's swimming in. Just for kicks, I picked a recent article of his at random and here's the second and third paragraph:
> Starting in the 1970s, the pendulum swung the other way. Twin studies shocked the world by demonstrating that most behavioral traits - including socially relevant traits like IQ - were substantially genetic. Typical estimates for adult IQ found it was about 60% genetic, 40% unpredictable, and barely related at all to parenting or family environment.
> By the early 2000s, genetic science reached a point where scientists could start pinpointing the particular genes behind any given trait. Early candidate gene studies, which hoped to find single genes with substantial contributions to IQ, depression, or crime, mostly failed. They were replaced with genome wide association studies, which accepted that most interesting traits were polygenic - controlled by hundreds or thousands of genes - and trawled the whole genome searching for variants that might explain 0.1% or even 0.01% of the pie. The goal shifted toward polygenic scores - algorithms that accepted thousands of genes as input and spit out predictions of IQ, heart disease risk, or some other outcome of interest.
You should always ponder why someone is exploring what they are exploring, communicating what they are communicating. Why does Alexander have such a peculiar interest in IQ and genetics? Why does he put some abstract definition of "intelligence" on a pedestal? Does he hope to pursue eugenic ends? Does he hope we can find some way to make the populous as a whole "more intelligent"? Did somebody just bully him really bad?
The guy is a neofascist control freak who wants to live in a neat world in which predetermined attribute values justify his attitudes toward various classes of people. I'll never understand why anyone reads his garbage. It's not even entertaining or interesting. It is literally a guy with no credentials navel gazing his way toward an wholly retrogressive, amoral, and colorless social philosophy. It's claptrap.
Then there's this, from another randomly selected article:
> I hate to rag on wokeness further in the Year Of Our Lord 2025, but they’re still the best example I’ve ever seen. You weren’t supposed to defend racists. And so:
> “Hey everyone, Joe Target shouted a racial slur and punched a black guy in the face because he hates minorities so much! This proves that we need hate crime legislation immediately!”
> “But if you read the article, you’ll see they were both really drunk, the black guy insulted Joe’s wife, it was an ordinary bar fight, and there’s no reason to think race was the precipitating factor”.
> "So you’re saying it’s okay and not racist at all to shout a slur at a black person and punch him in the face?”
> “I was just saying that it didn’t seem to immediately be motivated by racism, and should probably be filed under other social problems like drunkenness and violence.”
> "So are you denying that racism exists and causes harm?”
> Well, no. But if your only real point is that racism exists and causes harm, you could have said that racism exists and causes harm, and that wouldn’t have been a lie. Instead you chose to talk about how Joe Target punched the black guy because of racism. Presumably you thought that point made your argument stronger than it would have been if you’d just said that racism existed - maybe 5% stronger. If that’s true, then that extra 5% argument strength is illegitimate, and it’s every honest person’s duty to take it away from you. If you’re allowed to have it, then eventually we escalate all the way to the point we actually escalated to, where people have said in all seriousness that Trump might try to put all minorities in camps and murder them.
Notice that he's arguing against some made-up straw man he fabricated, not actual recorded instances of issues that have occurred (just like Bill Maher's approach to "wokeness"). Not to mention, the whole premise and argument is mind-numbingly stupid, tedious, and relies on percentages pulled from the ether for no apparent reason. If we want to talk about low IQs, we'd better start with Alexander and his audience.
Substantive issues aside, he isn't even an engaging writer. There is nothing in this writing that is stylistically impressive, engaging, or memorable. Are we seriously looking to a guy who likes to pepper in percentages because they have some kind of fetishistic appeal to him for writing advice?
If it's real it's real and you shouldn't blind yourself. If it's not real then it will meet the same fate as alchemy.
More or less than Gwern? Certainly I don't see a substantial difference.
Edit: if someone can explain why this was instantly downvoted I would genuinely appreciate knowing where I went wrong here
Alluding to some conversation which supposedly demonstrates my unsuitability for such a role, while pointedly refusing to link it or describe it any detail which could be judged (to the point where I, the person in question, have no idea what misdeeds you are talking about), is not credible and reeks of, one might say, 'very unconstructive crap-on criticism', and people might be understandably reluctant to upvote it.
If you think my criticisms were that bad, then link the tweets in question - and, since my account is currently locked, I will happily copy them all out here so everyone can read them and judge for themselves. I am not afraid.
If _I_ got this bit of feedback I wouldn’t know what to make of it.
I suppose you have some justification for all of that, but I wouldn't really know; without the aid of either preternatural patience or some sort of pharmaceutical support that Shulgin would have no doubt highly favored, I've always found you so needlessly and interminably self-indulgent in prose as to consider it must be really fortunate for your sake you had firmly established your reputation before the advent of true conversational AI. Certainly I don't expect you to change your whole personality at this late date. I doubt you can even very reliably restrain yourself from indulging it.
Huh?
…But responding as though this is an attack to be countered and defeated further illustrates why I had doubts about your suitability as a creative advisor. It may be the only way you _know how_ to interpret any reference to yourself or anything anyone might compare to your work. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. You just may not have the tools to draw out the best of other people’s creative skill. And then again, maybe you do, and I just caught you on two separate really bad days five years apart.
Saying in public that someone "replied with a bunch of very unconstructive crap-on criticism" and "[m]aybe he's different in person but based on that interaction I have no desire to find out" is, by any reasonable standards, an attack on that person, and if that person doubts your description it is perfectly reasonable for them to object.
(That doesn't mean you're in the wrong and gwern's in the right, of course. It could well be that your account of things is entirely correct and gwern was gratuitously dickish to you, in which case it's fair enough to point it out. Something can be fair and correct and also a personal attack that it's reasonable to respond to by trying to counter it.)
huh? If I said "gwern is a worthless hack" or if I said "gwern is just too stupid to give anybody advice" without any presentations of evidence toward this, I could reasonably consider those attacks. The stuff you quoted doesn't read as an "attack" to me. Rather, it is a claim that someone did something which may or may not be true, and, under the presumption that it is true , a claim about how the person on the receiving end felt. I don't see how that constitutes an "attack"—maybe an accusation, but certainly not an attack.
I have little more than a passing knowledge of gwern, but I would say that the response in this thread does in fact give me doubt that they are really prepared to stand in an advisory role toward hopeful strangers. If we are too focused on our own fragile egos we can't muster the focus that truly recognizing the distinct potential in others and championing them requires.
Often the right thing to do when facing feedback in an advisory role is not to be immediately defensive and demand evidence, even if you feel the claims may be illegitimate. Instead you need to approach with an open posture, hear the persons concerns, show willingness to do better in case you were in fact in the wrong, and only then, if necessary, voice your objection to try and reach a point of re-established harmony.
But this just goes to show you the problems entailed when you elect participants not on relevant experience but merely on popularity. I assume gwern is probably a fantastic blogger, but being a fantastic blogger and being a fantastic advisor for would-be-bloggers are two different things. Maybe gwern has experience doing this sort of thing, I don't know, but I wouldn't assume so given the response in this thread. A more seasoned bearer of fame would know it would be best not to even respond in this particular case, probably (as you are about to enter an environment in which people need to feel psychologically safe with you and seeing immediate defensiveness in response to direct critique or disagreement does not send the right signal).
I agree that if you are "facing feedback in an advisory role" then it's likely best to avoid being defensive. But gwern isn't in an advisory role here, and he wasn't facing feedback. Feedback is when someone talks to you and tells you what they think; this was velcrovan making a public statement about bad things gwern has allegedly done in the past and their implications for whether he's likely to do this future thing well.
(For the avoidance of doubt: I have no opinion, or at least none that anyone should care about, as to whether gwern will do well as an adviser or mentor to would-be once-a-day bloggers.)
> "I have been working on a reimagining of the blog idea for a few years, and it includes an idea (“series”) that is quite similar to blogchains. See this section of the design docs https://thelocalyarn.com/code/uv/scribbled/Basic_Notions.htm... and partial screen shot. It’s almost ready!"
My original response, in full:
> "One thought on the docs: if there's always a well-defined 'next', why not overload Space/PgDwn to proceed to the next node, GNU Info-like? At the very least, there should be a 'next' link at the bottom, not solely hidden away at the top.
> (Also, no one likes those silly 'st' ligatures.)
> As far as the current theyarn design goes: I like the use of typographic ornaments as a theme, but the colors are confusing. (What does orange vs red vs green denote?) And the pilcrow? Sometimes it's at the beginning of articles (redundant with the hr), sometimes not?
> Hrs seem overused in general, like the (busy) footer. Appending notes chronologically is interesting but confusing, both date/where they begin/end. Are the caps deliberately not small caps? Full-width images would be useful for photos. Be interested to see the new one finished."
I consider these criticisms reasonable, accurate, and constructive, milquetoast even, and stand by them. I see no difference from the many other site critiques I have made over the years (eg https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Nq2BtFidsnhfLuNAx/announcing... ), which are usually received positively, and I think this is a 'you' problem, especially after reading your other comments. And I will point out that you made no reply to my many concrete points until you decided to write this HN comment 5 years later.
(I have taken the liberty of adding a link to your top-level comment to the end of the existing thread, for context/updating.)
> But responding as though this is an attack to be countered and defeated further illustrates why I had doubts about your suitability as a creative advisor.
This is a remarkable way to characterize this conversation.
If you had butted in to a street conversation to tell me “by the way no one likes those silly glasses” I would have non-responded in the same way. But I would still be well within my rights to think you were kind of a jerk, and even to mention it to others.
What do you believe your role will be as an “advisor” at this residency?
It seems unduly personal.