I want this post to be a good one.
It matters to me that I publish a clear beginning and end to my writing program. I like the symmetry and I like the structure. My goal is to write a detailed reflection, and I have a suspicion that this won’t work if I wait until the middle of May to write it. I know I won’t have time to complete it in the next seven days. I also know I don’t have time to let this piece mature now.
This catch-22 has been my Inkhaven experience.
I feel a little bit like I failed. I have a list of more than fifty planned articles in front of me, but not only did I skip the serious ones—the two-to-three most important pieces I planned to develop throughout the entire program—I didn’t even hit the easy essays. I nearly failed halfway through and leaned on that experience as an excuse to submit six semi-unhinged “slopstreams.” They took perhaps twenty minutes apiece.
There are even more articles that I posted with notes explaining how I still see them as drafts. I just wasn’t prepared enough, or perhaps not brave enough, to finish and publish them. I never completed Erdős #2, and I never sent that email.
I entered this program with a chance to write the things that have been on my mind for months, but my to-do list didn’t shrink. It grew. I am now more behind than ever.
And yet
And yet
I meet someone in a liminal space, watching them as their world goes viral. I feel bizarrely honored to have been able to share even a small fraction of this experience.
I participated in a simulation, a simulacrum, a war game of the future of AI. My role was to (pretend to be) the US government. It made me realize just how central a role this is likely to become. I chatted with two people afterwards who—just maybe—could change my life.
Have you heard of Blood on the Clocktower? It’s an incredible game. It’s everything great about Mafia minus everything bad. I could play it forever—and that’s kind of what we did at Bodega Bay. We just kept playing, over and over, in the hexagonal tower room.
I sat down with someone who truly belongs to and truly believes in the AI safety mission. He gave fantastic advice. It might become my roadmap.
I went to the community meeting of a perfectible programming language. If you forced me, right now, to pick one thing that is going to become importance, it would be Lean.
One resident, with deep expertise in pharmacology, might have figured out my bizarre allergy. I’m adding ‘research Lectins’ to the list.
I ran around as an unhinged investigative reporter, snarkily commenting on and judging everyone I met. It was quite entertaining.
I participated in Kyle Scott’s stage execution, playing the role of the town crier. It was an Inkhaven Fair production that we put on last minute and yet somehow executed without a hitch. I was wearing a mediaeval shirt with a bow tie, a vest, and a red sash tied around my waist. My job was to conduct a mob they screamed for blood and ink. It was tremendously fun. I’m told my eyes sparkled.
I stumbled out of bed one morning to see Ben Sturgeon staring at the creek in the middle of campus. It was strange, but I shrugged and walked past to grab my bag, which I had left in the office last night. I returned and he was still standing there. He pointed to the rot at the stump and said something, and I realized that the tree had collapsed the night before. It was lying sideways in a little garden, still fluffy and green.
I think this is a parable for something. I’m not sure what.
I had Scott Alexander’s undivided attention for twelve minutes and used it to ask for help with my omnipresent executive dysfunction. He gave me one practical bit of advice, one medical recommendation, one book to read, one commitment device, and one question to ponder. All five were personalized.
There is a part of the retrospective narrative that is supposed to suggest a lesson. My experience was [blank], and my failures are [detailed above], but actually I learned a valuable lesson. I now understand myself and can walk forward confident as a clam or some such nonsense.
Well, to borrow a phrase from Claude’s favorite resident, I won’t do this maneuver. I truly, deeply wish I had published more. At the very least, I should have finished my second Erdős post.
I arrived here just a few days after attending a wonderful intercollegiate dialogue event. I have a piece, written nowhere in the physical world, titled Stitch by Stitch. It’s a personal and powerful call to action. I have a very long, detailed-and-ephemeral research article (admittedly this one has a few paper notes) examining how to effective leverage elections to positively improve policy.
I want to have, out there in the world, an introduction to the frontier of AI-for-math. There are really cool things happening, and I’ve read about so many of them. I want to share!
But these are pieces that I planned to write. I didn’t write them. I didn’t come particularly close. That’s a real failure. Don’t take it away from me.
Scott Alexander’s children are adorable. Andrew Gelman really likes to munch on celery. Jasmine Sun literally glows. Aella is very good at defusing social anxiety. Gwern likes to interrogate people in an intense-yet-clarifying way. Steve Hsu is both an elite networker and a deeply approachable mentor. Alexander Wales provides excellent, crisp advice that somehow always touches grass. Justis Mills is the goat.
I wrote a slop post as a submission for the Manifund essay contest. It was truly not very good. I had a nine-sentence outline prepared at 10:30 pm and just spammed out some words onto the page. I stayed up until 4 am editing it after the fact, threw in some semi-clever detail, and reflected a little on my forecast.
It wasn’t great. It was rushed. It was good enough to win me a ticket to Manifest.
It was good enough to win second place.
I had some of the most satisfying conversations I’ve ever been able to initiate. This community just doesn’t judge you if you do something weird. It’s taken for granted, or else treated with a head tilt and a good-faith request for an explanation. I’ve known people for a mere five minutes, yet being here means it’s okay for me to interrogate them about why they prefer barista coffee. With deliberate intent, if you know, you know.
I have never before experienced a community where I’m not worried about coming across as impolitic, unafraid that people may judge me as I walk around with no shoes, and have no sense that I need to avoid driving for deeply technical answers. I’ve lived in communities that welcome each, but never all at once.
This place is wonderful.
Ben Pace is telling me that the true meaning of Inkhaven isn’t due on the same deadline as today’s essay. I wonder what would happen if it were. I don’t think it would work. I don’t think anyone here can tell you the true meaning.
If they did, I wouldn’t trust them.
This post isn’t ready. It’s unfocused and awkward and rough around the edges. The line divisions don’t really work and I’m not taking the time to integrate them. There are many vignettes, even some core memories, that I have failed to include.
As I sit here now, writing on a rooftop, I’m looking out across the Lighthaven campus. It’s a beautiful evening. The sun is setting, karaoke is playing, and I can see eight of my friends sitting around a fire. It’s an image ripped straight out of a movie.
I’m going to join them.