# Ruby's Inkhaven Retrospective

*Most interesting takeway? To my disappointment, my attempts at substantive intellectual contribution flopped in comparison to fun/light/easy-to-write filler.*

So that we can better understand the experience ourselves, Lightcone stuff have been participating in Inkhaven as their primary assigned for 7+ days each. My officially-supported stint ended yesterday though I hope to maintain the streak through the end of the month.

I'm kinda disappointed. I failed at my primary writing goal: the posts I most cared about didn't get much traction, whereas the ones I wrote as "filler" did. Musings on this below.

My Inkhaven posts fall into a few groups groups:

1.  My [series on how individual variation in cognition](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/NNWCtWo3JCoKtjPQf) explains why other people (according to me) reason so poor
2.  "Filler"
    1.  The "[what's hard about...?](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qnMwwwzmnfaQHvymc/what-s-so-hard-about-a-question-worth-asking)" line of posts
        1.  [The Motorsports Sequence](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/TLPfyKBjoTZikwr26)
    2.  Random story:  [Out-paternalizing the government](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3CKvhF8DBnYd7anFx/out-paternalizing-the-government-getting-oxygen-for-my-baby)
3.  Misc "Substantive posts":
    1.  [I'll be sad to lose the puzzles](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6tEXnTp7fcs2KhXMk/i-ll-be-sad-to-lose-the-puzzles)
    2.  [Don't grow your org fast](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3RjJ8ehttJ78tqPa3/don-t-grow-your-org-fast)

On to my disappointment. In his 2014 book, a [Sense of Style](https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Style-Thinking-Persons-Writing/dp/0143127799), Pinker defines "Classic Style" writing:

> The guiding metaphor of classic style is seeing the world. The writer can see something that the reader has not yet noticed, and he orients the reader’s gaze so that she can see it for herself. The purpose of writing is presentation, and its motive is disinterested truth. It succeeds when it aligns language with the truth, the proof of success being clarity and simplicity. The truth can be known, and is not the same as the language that reveals it; prose is a window onto the world. The writer knows the truth before putting it into words; he is not using the occasion of writing to sort out what he thinks...

This is was my hope with the cognition series. I had the feeling that I had seen something important, and that if I could only describe it well, others would see it too. This was the kind of writing that the LessWrong greats did: Eliezer, Scott, Zvi, etc. They could see things and they helped you see them too, and enjoy doing so too.

It's hard to write like that – hence it being a good aspirational goal for Inkhaven. I'd hoped the coaches. skilled writers as they are, could help me towards that[^18yreju60k1].

I didn't get there. Maybe [How the aliens next door shower](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CEexspLWxmSAbv9X9/how-the-aliens-next-door-shower) got the closest. More thoughts on the struggle in a bit.

* * *

On my first day, I figured that I'd first bash out something easy and then work on my difficult main goal. Motorsport is an easy topic so I sat down thinking I'd write [The skills and physics of high-performance driving](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tFjuJQfwLWLbuNaQ7/the-skills-and-physics-of-high-performance-driving-pt-1), but then it occured to me that I had thoughts to say about discussing the hardness of things in general, and that became my first post (and second most successful post). Something I wrote on the spur of the moment.

On days when I didn't feel up to the hard writing, I wrote filler: the motorsport stuff. That was much better received than I expected.

[Out-paternalizing the government (getting oxygen for my baby)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3CKvhF8DBnYd7anFx/out-paternalizing-the-government-getting-oxygen-for-my-baby) was also filler. I found the oxygen/dive shop/ABO thing amusing. "Agency to do your own medicine better than the default" is a perenially popular genre. The libertarian angle was me trying to make it more interesting. Watching the karma jump around, I know it got several strong downvotes and I feel sympathetic to the people who complain about not knowing why.

"[Don't grow your org fast](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3RjJ8ehttJ78tqPa3/don-t-grow-your-org-fast)" was triggered by a Lightcone team discussion of hiring. I had one interesting thought there but then figured it was a good post to flesh out the whole argument. I don't feel I did a great job and reception was meh, supporting that.

On Sunday I thought I'd write out a general orientation piece about state of the world, and somehow that triggered the thought "[I'll be sad to lose the puzzles](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6tEXnTp7fcs2KhXMk/i-ll-be-sad-to-lose-the-puzzles)" , which had the feel of post that was good and would be popular. I think it hit the sweet spot of not something said often but a lot of people resonate with. I've been thinking *yeah, if you write applause lights you get karma.*  
  
I have a draft "What's hard about running LessWrong?" I'm keen to write, but it's a hard one.

* * *

Alright, so the patterns...

The stuff that was easy to write about seemed to get the best reception. The stuff I thought was most interesting, novel, and valuable flopped.

Perhaps I violated the Pinkerian edict of Classic Style: "The writer knows the truth before putting it into words; he is not using the occasion of writing to sort out what he thinks." In fact, very much so. The thoughts about cognition and RL were new, I hadn't finished thinking them through, and was hoping to lay the track immediately before the train arrive.

Not having the thoughts ordered in my own head, it was hard to order them all.

In contrast, I've given a "what's hard about motorsport" is content I have explained many times and have clear in my head. Other stuff...the ideas were just simple.

I've been repeatedly surprised that when I think I'm writing about something so simple and obvious it's probably boring, I can end up getting a really good reception. 

Also something something inferential distance? 

And man, it's generally frustrating that pieces I write quickly in a couple of hours routinely outdo the big interesting idea I'd been working on for a lot longer. I wrote [Conversational Cultures: Combat vs Nurture (V2)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ExssKjAaXEEYcnzPd/conversational-cultures-combat-vs-nurture-v2)  in four hours. A lot more went in [Plans are Recursive & Why This is Important](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xrrycug4DWSdqBhjQ/plans-are-recursive-and-why-this-is-important) which I thing is more interesting and more important.

* * *

It's late and I'm trying to get other things done before the end of the day. Inkhaven writing is rushed. There's something to be said for claypots and I've learned stuff just pushing myself to write. (More posts written than in the last how many years?)  
  
Also I feel it didn't work to think deep and explain hard new ideas. I've basically done zero editing passes where I reworked a post. Cut sections. Reordered sections. Rewrote them. Made the language better.  
  
I think I'm not really capable of writing and doing those in "one sitting" (where "one sitting is kind of like a day". My brain is fried. So all my Inkhaven pieces got minimal iteration and that was fine for the easy stuff, but not for the bigger idea.

I suspect the Cognition-RL series might have come out better as a single large post. Writing it that way would have forced me to flesh out the entire argument chain. Instead I was writing one day at a time, not sure where I was going. It also meant each day I was repeating content because I didn't trust that people had read the prior post.

I had thought chopping up a big thing into multiple pieces would be fine, even let me cover each piece better, but without better lookahead, I think it degraded things.

* * *

To close off this ramble, I'm a bit disheartened. My fun easy writing was more popular than my attempts at substantive intellectual progress contribution. It's okay that it flopped, and it makes sense that kind of writing's harder, it's just a disappointing update about the writing incentive landscape.  
  
I'm yet to think how I'd adjust Inkhaven to get me better results.

[^18yreju60k1]: The coaches were helpful but I didn't feel like I was being guided into Greatness. It was also a bit jarring when coaches would tell me my writing strong, tight, interesting, good, whatever; and then the readers didn't seem to agree.