[neilv]

> This inspired me to adopt the same strategy with my books: I invite Tufts students to help me write my books by sharing the penultimate draft with them in a seminar, where they are all encouraged to point out errors, challenge arguments, demand more clarity, and in general complain about anything that strikes them as amiss.

Two professors from whom I was fortunate to learn, who did something like this in classes:

* Marvin Minsky (MIT) -- While he was researching The Emotion Machine, class sessions would often be him talking about whatever he'd been working on earlier that day, and related thoughts from his formidable knowledge, and people would ask questions and share information. For example, one day, general anesthesia came up, and a physician/surgeon who was sitting in on class that day added to that (something about, in some cases, the patient is conscious but doesn't remember after, which was a memorable idea to hear).

* Peter Wegner (Brown U.) -- He was working on theory of interactive models of computation (e.g., whether interacting objects were reducible to Turing Machines), and some days would put up drafts of a paper on a projector, for class discussion around them. IIRC, he'd first read sections of the paper, and then ask questions of the class around that. Of course, we learned more than he did, but perhaps we were also a helpful rubber duck on some ideas he was thinking through.

Also, drafts of textbooks are a thing: Leslie Kaelbling (then Brown U.) arranged to use draft copies of Norvig & Russell's intro AI book, which were two comb-bound volumes with unfinished bits, and IIRC we could feed back comments.

Which reminds me of the time I was taking classes at the community college, and the author of one of the textbooks was in the department (though not my instructor), so I wrote down some comments as I worked though the book. The author seemed kind and delighted to be getting book feedback from a student, even though I assume now that my comments weren't of any help.

[SamBam]

While I probably would be happy to be in Daniel Dennett's class and engage seriously with his unfinished manuscript, I actually had a philosophy (of mind, as well) professor like this in my own university, and it was a lot less fun. Probably because this professor was no Daniel Dennett, and so his ideas were really just rehashings of other people's ideas – a primer, really, on work on consciousness.

I just felt like we were being kind of used as free editors, rather than peers to engage with the intellectual ideas.

[felipefar]

There are even more ways to benefit your work from other more mundane activities.

It helps a lot to find a day job where you can learn a skill that will help on one independent project you will tackle. It's a great idea as well to test ideas and arguments when having a casual conversation with someone: it both deepens the conversation and you have a better feel about how your opinion will be received.