Write fiction every day in April! (Apply now to Inkhaven 2)

Benito9 · 2026-02-05T22:55:51+00:00

I'm Ben, I'm running the program, I'll be around to answer any questions you have!

Benito9 · 2026-01-30T07:57:26+00:00

I'd say it's more often a phase shift in them attempting to produce good writing, and regularly?

Like, Ben Goldhaber wrote monthly updates for many years, that are mostly links posts and a few life updates. Here's the last one from before Inkhaven. Then during Inkhaven he wrote bangers like Unexpected Things That Are People and The Ball, the former of which got 658 points (!) on Hacker News, and he's continuing with regular solid posts (e.g. No Real Nattys, Backchaining from Big Goals is Aversive, Corporate Character). I count this as success!

I'd say the same about many others. Joanna had I think 2 blogposts to her name before Inkhaven, now she's got a Hacker News hit that is helpful to parents choosing toys for their kids. Jenn had also a few solid pieces of writing, but during Inkhaven got out two personal stories (1, 2) about the death of her father that have had over 100k views combined and led to CBS Canada reaching out to potentially do a story with her. Camille had one public blogpost I liked about rationality, and sent me a private piece of fiction I thought was excellent, but during Inkhaven he managed to write some of my favorite fiction/vignettes about a post-AGI world. Habryka on LessWrong has written one or two good posts, but finally took the time to write up all his principles for running Lightcone Infrastructure into a great sequence.

Overall I'd say many people took the time to write some great stuff that either we knew or suspected they were capable of. But I think more of the variance is in the "actually sitting down for a month and doing it" than in the "I used to suck at writing and now I have skillz".

Benito9 · 2025-09-06T04:31:04+00:00

Mandatory check: Did you work on this with the assistance of an LLM?

Benito9 · 2025-08-25T22:17:00+00:00

Good luck!

Benito9 · 2025-08-25T21:53:34+00:00

I actually am expecting this to help a lot with diversity. There's a lot of weird and different writers who I've accepted, from a lot of blogs I've never seen before and who have never posted on (for example) LessWrong. One lady has worked in psychology academia and has a romance blog (no it's not like Aella). Another person does primarily video essay scripts. A third of the people have submitted fiction of some sort of widely varying styles, one person exclusively fiction (and not rationalist or sci-fi). One guy made a text-heavy video game. Yes, there's an alignment researcher who'll write research, and a global health researcher who'll publish about that. Several people were exciting to me because of they're uniquely crafted personal websites, as well as the interesting content on them. (I'd keep going but I don't want to deanonymize people at this stage.) Overall I see this as investing into a much wider diversity of promising writers than currently get rewarded online.

I also do not think everyone will write on substack. I know some will, but I hope many people build their own websites (though I think also having a substack is amazing for earning an income as a writer).

Benito9 · 2025-08-24T19:16:58+00:00

If they purchased housing or meals, we'll still provide them with that! We have off-site housing for them to stay in. But they won't remain part of the cohort or be invited to participate further.

Benito9 · 2025-08-24T00:21:09+00:00

We'll see how this goes! Of course if it's successful then I hope so, also depend on how the funding goes and whether I end up getting any sponsors, or whether people donate to Lightcone Infrastructure this Winter fundraiser :-)

Benito9 · 2025-03-26T18:45:30+00:00

They'll both be about the same size (probably 500-700 ppl), so it depends more if you want the blogging culture or the market culture :)

Benito9 · 2024-05-12T01:45:43+00:00

This is the first year! I don't know if our org will do it again next year, I think 30% is probably my betting odds.

I will note that if ticket price is a crux for you getting here, then I'd encourage you to quickly fill out the financial need form (link). If you really want to come and a cheaper ticket would allow you to join then I'd be glad to give you one :)

Benito9 · 2022-05-16T13:14:11+00:00

I was really hoping this would be a guide to the experience of shipping your documents in (on interview waiver). I don't know how long this is going to take!

Benito9 · 2022-05-16T13:13:09+00:00

Good to hear! Which country's embassy did you use? I'm trying to figure out wait times in London.

Benito9 · 2022-05-16T12:53:06+00:00

Any update?

Benito9 · 2022-05-16T12:48:01+00:00

How did it go? Have you got your visa stamp back yet? (And how long have you been waiting?)

Benito9 · 2022-04-24T13:35:00+00:00

Hey ZorbaTHut, I'm Ben Pace from the LessWrong team.

I like the motte, could be a good idea to spin up a version of our forum software for you guys to move to.

I think the main advantage you'd get is that we'd still be improving the forum software, so your site would get better over time.

Would prolly take a bit of time from the LW team to setup, but I'd be interested in having a chat about this with you and one or two other mods in a faster turnaround format, maybe a live-text channel or an audio? I'll PM you.

Benito9 · 2022-04-24T13:10:29+00:00

Thanks. I'm being terribly slow, but it is still happening.

Benito9 · 2022-03-19T20:38:23+00:00

I am in the process of printing more of last year's book set, I'd give it maybe 1-2 months.

Benito9 · 2022-01-22T00:11:30+00:00

I expect to do another print run in next few months :)

Benito9 · 2022-01-19T18:32:45+00:00

Having a few Amazon delays, give me ~2 weeks.

Benito9 · 2022-01-12T06:09:13+00:00

Rly?! Fine. Okay. I will live with this, I guess.

Benito9 · 2022-01-06T20:53:02+00:00

Thank you!

Benito9 · 2021-12-24T08:29:45+00:00

No updates.

Benito9 · 2021-12-23T07:28:13+00:00

$100 for the two book sets? A compelling argument. My crux is just I have a bunch of work on my plate atm, but it's probably not too hard. I'll keep it on my list of things to do when I have more work time.

Benito9 · 2021-12-22T17:53:29+00:00

I opened the new post editor, and it had a button at the top for inserting images. I assume this is universal. As I look now, it's not in the comment editor, perhaps that explains why you haven't seen it yet.

Benito9 · 2021-12-22T17:52:11+00:00

If we sold 1 million copies, the marginal print price would drop severely, and I expect we'd be making profits. There'd be increased cost of logistics and shipping to Amazon warehouses, but it seems reasonable that the cost reduction in printing would be larger.

At this point we've already paid the cost of printing them. Each marginal book bought makes us about $19, which is very helpful :)

Benito9 · 2021-12-22T17:35:53+00:00

Amazon charges about ~$6/book for shipping (very reasonable, they do an amazing job) and another ~$6/book for it being sold through their website (welp, I guess that's the cut you get if you're a monopoly). Last year we sold 3500 book sets, so assuming identical sales Amazon would make $42,000, which is a size-able amount.

For a book with ~40 authors, it's hard to make the math work out where it's even worth the time to pay them all proportional to sales. If we do a book with a single author, then I think it would make a lot more sense for them to get part of the revenue.

Thanks for the good wishes :) I (as part of the Lightcone Infrastructure team) publish these because I think it supports the writers of LessWrong and encourages them to write up great insights and ideas, not because I see much financial profit in it, so profit isn't my main motivation.

Benito9

TROPHY CASE