Insider info from the Inkhaven Writer’s Residency @ Lighthaven: we’re being given swanky enamel Prestige Pins with the Inkhaven logo on them.
But not just anyone gets a Prestige Pin.
The pins were created to encourage us to spread our creative wings and try different things. In order to earn a pin, you must have published an Inkhaven post that falls into EACH of seven categories: Fiction, Emperical, Informational, Persuasive, Humour, Advice, and Personal.
The program was announced a couple of days ago. I had already written in 6⁄7 posts and I was planning to write a humour-ish post anyways, so last night I requested a pin and this morning the team signed off on it. I am now the owner of an Inkhaven Prestige Pin.
Woo!
This makes me think, though. Was this an experiment, and have I been had?
I think part of the ethos of the Inkhaven Residency¹ is to cultivate and encourage agency and self-motivation through a high pressure environment. Having published 32,958 words at Inkhaven at the time of writing, I’m pretty astonished with how much I’ve output here. I never would have done this if I wasn’t shoved into a weird compound in Berkeley with 54 53 other weirdos.
I am quite pleased with this. I feel like I had more of a “you can just do things” drive a few years ago when I was in university, and I really think this month might be getting me out of that creative rut.
But if the purpose of Inkhaven is (in part) to curate our internal locus of agency, isn’t it odd that we were suddenly given a very clearly external motivator— a enamel flame for us moths to fly to? It feels a bit odd to me.
After all, many of us came to Inkhaven with very clear writing objectives: some people here write exclusively about AI safety, AI policy, or AI technical stuff. Some of us are travel and lifestyle bloggers, and some of us are etymologists. Curation of one’s voice is another motif of the experience, and by forcing ourselves to write fiction or sature when that’s very much not our niche… is that productive?
Maybe. Certainly many talents and niches aren’t fully realised until they are thrust upon us. The enamel pin is a target for us archers to hit, but the real learning happens as we take aim.
But at the same time it’s a little funny that this high stakes program of self actualisation introduced the Prestige Pin two thirds of the way through. What an inversion of our personal creative expression to hand us a bullet point list and give us a “while supplies last!” marketing pitch.
It certainly worked on me.²
On Saturday the organisers are holding an open exhibition for the Residency— the Inkhaven Fair— here at Lighthaven. Come check it out. You might get to watch all the Prestige Pin awardees be publicly humiliated for being sheep rather than Real Bloggers.
[1] - I have spent weeks wondering what exactly the ethos of this program is— a program on which Lightcone Infrastructure reportedly loses tens of thousands of dollars on each time they run it. I have thoughts on this but I won’t fully write it up until May.
[2] - I’d again like it on record that I had already met most of the requirements for the pin. But maybe my only “humour” post wouldn’t have been written in quite the same style if there wasn’t a Prestige Pin on the line...
If Lesswrong had certain prestige pins, like Pokemon badges, I would write on LW more often. The idea of a trinket that expresses social status to a niche group of people in-the-know, is so sticky to my brain.
If LW did this, I think they could sell the badges for $30-50 each, and you only ‘unlock’ those purchases in the store when you—for example—have 10 posts hit the front page, or have made 100 useful wiki edits, or got to 1000 Karma.
Oh, and then they could do special badges for Petrov Day participants! And April fools! And my god, a Shoggoth Enamel pin would be one of my most prized possessions (Only available to purchase during Fooming Shoggoth concerts).
I do like where your head’s at, though. As a new LessWrong user who loves nothing more than in-group signalling, I’m a little sad at the total lack of LW/Lightcone merch available.
I have a Redbubble store, where I sell some Rationalist merch. All the Rationalist stuff (expect for a few items I was too lazy to change the setting on) are sold at cost, and I make no money from them. However, they’re honestly not very good, and I mainly put the rationalist stuff up there, because I wanted to a “notice confusion” phone case.
I think it’s ~silly that Lightcone doesn’t have a merch store, because I’d buy the shit out of Lesswrong merch. Like, I also imagine Shoggoth Blind boxes, like PopMart. Which I would easily spend $200 on to buy all an entire carton of (if it’s guaranteed that the carton contains all the variants)
I think “Lightcone Brand Paperclips” is also another cute, untapped market.
Insider info from the Inkhaven Writer’s Residency @ Lighthaven: we’re being given swanky enamel Prestige Pins with the Inkhaven logo on them.
But not just anyone gets a Prestige Pin.
The pins were created to encourage us to spread our creative wings and try different things. In order to earn a pin, you must have published an Inkhaven post that falls into EACH of seven categories: Fiction, Emperical, Informational, Persuasive, Humour, Advice, and Personal.
The program was announced a couple of days ago. I had already written in 6⁄7 posts and I was planning to write a humour-ish post anyways, so last night I requested a pin and this morning the team signed off on it. I am now the owner of an Inkhaven Prestige Pin.
Woo!
This makes me think, though. Was this an experiment, and have I been had?
I think part of the ethos of the Inkhaven Residency¹ is to cultivate and encourage agency and self-motivation through a high pressure environment. Having published 32,958 words at Inkhaven at the time of writing, I’m pretty astonished with how much I’ve output here. I never would have done this if I wasn’t shoved into a weird compound in Berkeley with
5453 other weirdos.I am quite pleased with this. I feel like I had more of a “you can just do things” drive a few years ago when I was in university, and I really think this month might be getting me out of that creative rut.
But if the purpose of Inkhaven is (in part) to curate our internal locus of agency, isn’t it odd that we were suddenly given a very clearly external motivator— a enamel flame for us moths to fly to? It feels a bit odd to me.
After all, many of us came to Inkhaven with very clear writing objectives: some people here write exclusively about AI safety, AI policy, or AI technical stuff. Some of us are travel and lifestyle bloggers, and some of us are etymologists. Curation of one’s voice is another motif of the experience, and by forcing ourselves to write fiction or sature when that’s very much not our niche… is that productive?
Maybe. Certainly many talents and niches aren’t fully realised until they are thrust upon us. The enamel pin is a target for us archers to hit, but the real learning happens as we take aim.
But at the same time it’s a little funny that this high stakes program of self actualisation introduced the Prestige Pin two thirds of the way through. What an inversion of our personal creative expression to hand us a bullet point list and give us a “while supplies last!” marketing pitch.
It certainly worked on me.²
On Saturday the organisers are holding an open exhibition for the Residency— the Inkhaven Fair— here at Lighthaven. Come check it out. You might get to watch all the Prestige Pin awardees be publicly humiliated for being sheep rather than Real Bloggers.
[1] - I have spent weeks wondering what exactly the ethos of this program is— a program on which Lightcone Infrastructure reportedly loses tens of thousands of dollars on each time they run it. I have thoughts on this but I won’t fully write it up until May.
[2] - I’d again like it on record that I had already met most of the requirements for the pin. But maybe my only “humour” post wouldn’t have been written in quite the same style if there wasn’t a Prestige Pin on the line...
If Lesswrong had certain prestige pins, like Pokemon badges, I would write on LW more often. The idea of a trinket that expresses social status to a niche group of people in-the-know, is so sticky to my brain.
If LW did this, I think they could sell the badges for $30-50 each, and you only ‘unlock’ those purchases in the store when you—for example—have 10 posts hit the front page, or have made 100 useful wiki edits, or got to 1000 Karma.
Oh, and then they could do special badges for Petrov Day participants! And April fools! And my god, a Shoggoth Enamel pin would be one of my most prized possessions (Only available to purchase during Fooming Shoggoth concerts).
I’m going to go research enamel pin creation now.
P.S. Can we see a photo of your pin?!
Be in awe of my Prestige.
I do like where your head’s at, though. As a new LessWrong user who loves nothing more than in-group signalling, I’m a little sad at the total lack of LW/Lightcone merch available.
I bow at your majesty. It is a lovely pin, sir.
I have a Redbubble store, where I sell some Rationalist merch. All the Rationalist stuff (expect for a few items I was too lazy to change the setting on) are sold at cost, and I make no money from them. However, they’re honestly not very good, and I mainly put the rationalist stuff up there, because I wanted to a “notice confusion” phone case.
I think it’s ~silly that Lightcone doesn’t have a merch store, because I’d buy the shit out of Lesswrong merch. Like, I also imagine Shoggoth Blind boxes, like PopMart. Which I would easily spend $200 on to buy all an entire carton of (if it’s guaranteed that the carton contains all the variants)
I think “Lightcone Brand Paperclips” is also another cute, untapped market.
Shoggoth Pin Mockup: And according to Custom Ink it’s only $909 USD to get 150 of these shipped to me in Australia! If I was rich, I would do this.