I think @slatestarcodex 's Adversarial Collaborations project (slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/26/adv…) is fascinating and deeply productive. @mpershan's participation is a bonus. THAT SAID, I'm not sure @slatestarcodex understands its actual value. 1/ Extrapolating from what he expressed disappointment about, he seems to have hoped (a) that people might significantly change their positions, and (b) that the products would be in any way definitive treatments of the topics. To me, neither of these was a reasonable hope. 2/

Was thinking about an exercise in a textbook (@emilyriehl's Cat Thy in Context). It referred to a def given in a previous exercise, which I had "already done." Nonetheless, my understanding of that def was clearly insufficient to the present purpose. 1/ After being stuck for a while, I finally asked myself to build some sort of visualization of the previous definition. Once I found a mental image that worked for me, the answer to the exercise was clear. But it struck me that nothing had prompted me to do this beyond being 2/