Yeah that seems to be the most serious one, and the only one I could see that I had a real issue with.

What claims were fabricated, specifically? It seems like mostly minor stuff. As in, a man with visual agnosia probably did mistake very different objects, like his wife or his hat, though maybe Sacks created that specific situation where he mistook his wife for his hat just for dramatic effect. It's shitty that he would do that, but I still feel that whatever I believed after reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat I was probably right to believe, because the major details are probably true?

Hey, I did Halfhaven, and I'm not sure it's right to say it's really a faster pace than Inkhaven, since Inkhaven was an in-person residency where the residents were working either part-time or not at all, and could focus entirely on writing. Halfhaven, on the other hand, was something you did in addition to your normal life.

I kind of agree that one post a day (or every other day) feels too frequent, but also, too frequent for what? Is the goal to produce great posts during the event, or to improve as a writer? I think the optimal frequency for these two goals are likely different. If the goal is to get better at writing quickly, then I'm reminded of the story people quote from the book Art & Fear:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

It may be the case that the optimal pace for learning will simply feel too fast, because it's not the optimal pace for exploiting your existing skills to make great posts (in the short term).

Thanks! I wasn't sure anyone was even reading them until the end, but apparently people liked them. Now I wish I'd had a bit more time to read more of the posts to seek out ones I liked, especially in this last one when I was busy and only read a handful.

And thanks about The Confession. I think most of the fiction I write doesn't fit here on LessWrong so I mostly just write it and then nobody sees it. I'm trying to get better at having protagonists that are actually trying to do something, rather than just ending up in a situation. In general I'd like to have a better understanding of what story is, so later maybe I can bring some storytelling ability back into my nonfiction writing.

We just need to invent a device that reliably shoots you in the head if you experience any suffering above a certain threshold.

I don't fully buy this alternate explanation, because I find the same increase in literacy when I read older books that were not so popular even when they were published. I've even read some letters written by normal people in the '70s, and they seemed to be shockingly literate for normal people.

That said, I'm sure the effect you're pointing to is real, I just don't think it's the whole story.

I don't mind if Homer Simpson sutures my wounds, as long as there's a pathway to me getting in front of a real brilliant person if I have a tricky health problem. The problems start when Homer Simpson starts thinking he's brilliant and starts blaming you when he can't figure out what's wrong with you. And when you can't tell him apart from the real brilliant people.

I don't think it's wildly popular, but it has around 500 reviews on the Canadian Amazon, which seems okay for a reference book, and is similar to the number of reviews for If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. I think they keep making new editions because it's popular enough. I don't know how to estimate more precisely than that.

Thanks for the context.

I just wrote a comment defending sneering recently on LessWrong, and I think this is a good time to put my beliefs into action.

You may feel smart, but your comment does not convey any of that intelligence, if you have it. You may be very confident in your opinions, but you are doing nothing to confer that confidence to anyone else. If you want me to believe what you believe, you'll have to be convincing. A digital temper tantrum won't do it.