Oh, hey HN! I run Lightcone Infrastructure which runs this residency (as well as LessWrong.com and the venue, Lighthaven.space).
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.
venkii · 52m ago
Any sense if applying later will be detrimental?
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.
habryka · 48m ago
My guess is not much? Because we are doing rolling applications, so we are somehow trying to judge how many good applicants in total we are going to get (classical secretary problem). Applying early means we might let you in with a lower bar if we end up getting a lot of great applications later and raise our bar. Applying later might be better if we realize we were overly conservative in the beginning and are disappointed in the later applications.
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.
gorgoiler · 18h ago
I could be the only person to have thought this, but when I saw this was a residency advertising money and accommodation I assumed this was a grant for an arts/culture programme. If it’s just me that thought that then I’m clearly too naive, but if ten people do then it might be worth adjusting the copy.
habryka · 2h ago
Makes sense, it certainly is the case that these programs tend to pay people, though I have kind of learned to treat that with a bit of suspicion (having run lots of programs of that kind).
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.
TimorousBestie · 19h ago
Any sweetheart deals with a blogging platform yet? I expect the Nearly Free Speech folks or the bearblog dev would hear you out.
habryka · 19h ago
Not yet! My guess is Substack is the best choice for most people, just because it's easy to set up, has a bunch of UI problems solved, and has a non-terrible way to get towards getting food on the table (even if you don't paywall anything).
TimorousBestie · 19h ago
Substack? Talk about unfortunate connotations. Hopefully their drama dies down before November.
wink · 10h ago
Is "endorsing nazi content" a drama that can die down?
TimorousBestie · 9h ago
In this media environment? Yeah probably. We’ve all gotten very good at forgetting inconvenient facts.
Should it go away? Probably not.
dotcoma · 19h ago
How do you earn money with Substack if you don’t paywall anything?
habryka · 19h ago
You use it more like a Patreon. I don't think it's easy, but it works for at least some people like Scott at AstralCodexTen (who arguably has some paywalled essays, but it's extremely rare and I doubt it's the reason why almost anyone is subscribed to him).
dotcoma · 19h ago
So content is free, and readers can make a donation?
habryka · 18h ago
Yep, something like that.
egypturnash · 1h ago
Man I wish I had $3.5k to do this. Actually I wish I had $3.5k to do this and try to go into total overdrive mode on my queer comics for a while, I could probably crank out a page a day if I just sat my ass in front of the computer all day instead of going out and doing errands and slacking around the park.
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.)
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 58m ago
500 words a post and I'm not working full-time? Shit that's not even a third of a NaNoWriMo. My hands don't even hurt. I already shitpost 500 words a day on Hacker News, my third-favorite social media content platform.
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
cosmicgadget · 20h ago
I'd be interested to see the writing of folks that do this course.
tenkabuto · 21h ago
It'd be fun to join in from afar by pledging to do the same things, but for nowhere near the cost. (The place looks super neat, but I'm not paying that much, don't live near there, and need to report to my employer's office twice a week.)
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).
habryka · 20h ago
> It'd be fun to join in from afar by pledging to do the same things, but for nowhere near the cost.
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.
darknavi · 20h ago
> It'd be fun to join in from afar by pledging to do the same things, but for nowhere near the cost.
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.
paulcole · 21h ago
> It'd be fun to join in from afar by pledging to do the same things
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?
benwerd · 20h ago
It feels like there's a particular ideology uniting the bloggers involved that isn't actually declared on the page, centering on Lesswrong and the kinds of conversations hosted there. I think that's fine for that community; I'd love to see a version of this for people who buy into a more humanist version of the present and future.
habryka · 20h ago
Definitely not trying to hide it!
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.
defrost · 21h ago
Back in the day it cost a round of drinks at the pub to be read and questioned about your work in progress:
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.
netown · 21h ago
interesting idea, kind of like the y-combinator of blogging except with upfront tuition being paid instead of a longer-term investment by the 'provider'--i wonder if that business model could work as well?
habryka · 20h ago
We were thinking about whether there is any way to do some kind of income sharing agreement, but given how messy those tend to be (see all the Lambda school stuff as an example) we couldn't figure out a way to make it work.
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.
inhumantsar · 19h ago
Maybe an Inkhaven substack that the writers agree to crosspost to for some length of time?
habryka · 19h ago
Interesting idea. Some thoughts:
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.
dotcoma · 19h ago
Do you envision a single writer writing largely on the same subject during the course of that month, or not?
habryka · 18h ago
Definitely not "same subject" if we are thinking of something as narrow as "Frontend development" but I would like many people to find a niche/style/perspective they feel at home in. Something as consistent as simonwillison.net seems good for many.
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).
tolerance · 21h ago
"Inkhaven (business model: Uber for Yaddo) is..."
That's where my best impression of n-gate stops short at. Someone is welcome to fill in the rest.
TimorousBestie · 20h ago
It’s a pity Gwern is saddled here with the two Scotts. It’s like if Umberto Eco shared the stage with Travis Baldree and Sarah Maas.
velcrovan · 19h ago
Is Gwern known for being a great creative coach and advisor?
TimorousBestie · 19h ago
He’s known for being a prolific blogger with multiple interests and excellent research skills.
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).
Yes that’s what I know him for as well. It’s a very different skill set than that used by a good creative advisor.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 50m ago
Flirting maybe, but I don't see clear racism.
> 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)
TimorousBestie · 22m ago
> Flirting maybe, but I don't see clear racism.
True, he’s not made any public, unequivocal statement on the topic. Not yet.
velcrovan · 19h ago
This is something I might otherwise consider, but Gwern being an advisor gives me pause. Awhile back I shared a blog design on Twitter in response to someone doing a “show me your cool stuff” kind of thing, someone replied and tagged gwern and then he replied with a bunch of very unconstructive crap-on criticism. I had looked up to him before that. Maybe he’s different in person but based on that interaction I have no desire to find out.
Edit: if someone can explain why this was instantly downvoted I would genuinely appreciate knowing where I went wrong here
dang · 1h ago
> if someone can explain why this was instantly downvoted I would genuinely appreciate knowing where I went wrong here
It seems unduly personal.
gwern · 18h ago
> 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.
…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.
gjm11 · 10m ago
"Cet animal est très méchant, Quand on l'attaque il se défend."
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.)
throwanem · 11h ago
It's just that you come off as a high-handed, unbearable jerk even by my standards, which is saying a really enormous amount. Everyone thinks you're an asshole because you act like an asshole, and some people are afraid of you because of that and the social power they understand you to have, ie the ability to effectively blacklist people from a weird, unpleasant, mostly pointless, but highly remunerative niche labor market providing an expedited path to US citizenship which is still probably a few years out from its inevitable collapse in value. (You're not really special in this, of course; your pal Scott also has it, for example. So do lots of others.)
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.
gjm11 · 7m ago
> the ability to effectively blacklist people from a weird, unpleasant, mostly pointless, but highly remunerative niche labor market providing an expedited path to US citizenship
Huh?
h0p3 · 16h ago
I can appreciate your defending yourself here, and you should. You're obviously suitable for the role, and I think folks will be incredibly lucky to learn from you. I'm not saying your criticisms are that bad (far from it), but I can't say I think you're always as careful as you should be in that role (which I also suggest you're sometimes too quick to assign yourself) either, sir. If you're asking for bug reports, this is one.
adiabatty · 15h ago
I’ve helped friends with their writing.
If _I_ got this bit of feedback I wouldn’t know what to make of it.
velcrovan · 10h ago
Sometimes, when the nature of someone's problem is such that it also prevents them from even seeing or understanding it, the best you can do is signal to them that a problem exists and see whether they care enough to try and understand it further.
h0p3 · 15h ago
Thank you for telling me.
throwanem · 21h ago
500 words a day isn't much for $3,500! I've done that for free before. But given the weirdo cult this is designed to recruit naïve suckers as propagandists for, I suppose that all checks out: requiring a stupid amount of money right up front, for what amounts to a social entrée with some rich weirdos and hangers-on, both filters out the sensible and makes the sunk cost fallacy pretty easy to invoke.
itronitron · 41m ago
This submission is just an advertisement, and advertisements submitted to HN usually get flagged dead.
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.
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.
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.
Should it go away? Probably not.
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
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).
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
That's where my best impression of n-gate stops short at. Someone is welcome to fill in the rest.
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.
Edit: if someone can explain why this was instantly downvoted I would genuinely appreciate knowing where I went wrong here
It seems unduly personal.
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.
…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.)
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?
If _I_ got this bit of feedback I wouldn’t know what to make of it.