"Can we build a better Public Doublecrux?"

Something I'd like to try at LessOnline is to somehow iterate on the "Public Doublecrux" format.

Public Doublecrux is a more truthseeking oriented version of Public Debate. (The goal of a debate is to change your opponent's mind or the public's mind. The goal of a doublecrux is more like "work with your partner to figure out if you should change your mind, and vice vera")

Reasons to want to do _public_ doublecrux include:

• it helps showcase subtle mental moves that are hard to write down explicitly (i.e. tacit knowledge transfer)
• there's still something good and exciting about seeing high profile smart people talk about ideas. Having some variant of that format seems good for LessOnline. And having at least 1-2 "doublecruxes" rather than "debates" or "panels" or "interviews" seems good for culture setting.

Historically I think public doublecruxes have had some problems:

• two people actually changing *their* minds tend to get into idiosyncratic frames that are hard for observers to understand. You're chasing *your* cruxes, rather than presenting "generally compelling arguments." This tends to get into weeds and go down rabbit holes
• – having the audience there makes it a bit more awkward and performative.

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With that in mind, here are some ideas:

• Maybe have the double cruxers in a private room, with videocameras. The talk is broadcast live to other conference-goers, but the actual chat is in a nice cozy room.
• Have _two_ (or three?) dedicated facilitators. One is in the room with the doublecruxers, focused on helping them steer towards useful questions. (this has been tried before seems to go well if the facilitator prepares). The SECOND (and maybe third) facilitator hangs out with the audience outside, and is focused on tracking "what is the audience confused about?". The audience participates in a live google doc where they're organizing the conversational threads and asking questions.
  
  (the first facilitator is periodically surreptitiously checking the google doc or chat and sometimes asking the Doublecruxers questions about it)
• it's possibly worth investing in developing a doublcrux process that's explicitly optimized for public consumption. This might be as simple as having the facilitator periodically asking participants to recap the open threads, what the goal of the current rabbit hole is, etc. But, like, brainstorming and doing "user tests" of it might be worthwhile.

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Anyway those are some thoughts for now. Curious if anyone's got takes.

So there's "being honest" and "trying to convince people of things you think are true", and I think those are at least somewhat different projects. I feel like the first is more obviously good than the second.

I would first ask "what's my goal" (and, doublecheck why it's your goal and if you're being honest with yourself). Like, "I want to be able to say my true thoughts out loud and have an honest open relationship with my relatives" is different from "i don't want my relatives to believe false things" (the win-condition for the former is about you, the latter is about them). The latter is subtly different from "I want to have presented my best case to them, that they'll actually listen to, but then let them make up their own mind."

I'd also note there are additional soft skills you can gain like:

• feeling safe/nonjudgmental to talk to
• making it feel safe for people to give up ideology (via living-through-example as someone who is happy without being religious)
• helping people grieve/orient

Young people (metaphorically or literally) are welcome! 

Are the disagree reacts with ‘small icons are good for this reason (enough to override other concerns)’ or ‘I didn’t update previously?’

I aspire to a kind of honesty that's similar to what's described here. I thought maybe this post was going overboard, but then it kept including caveats that feel similar to the caveats and specifics I go for.

One thing I might add or rephrase:

I think doing a good job with honesty, and having it be actually helpful, includes having a bunch of related soft social skills. 

Sometimes the truth hurts people (which might in turn hurt you). One attitude here is "whelp, then either I must not care as much about truth as I thought (because you aren't willing to inflict or take on that hurt) or I'm just going to deal with a bunch of random costs for sticking with the truth". But another attitude is "learn the goddamn communication skills to present important truths in a way that hurts less."

(while you're still gaining those skills, one solution is various flavors of meta-honesty, which you touch on here. i.e. be clear to people 'hey, I won't directly lie, and I will try to tell you useful, unbiased info, but I won't always go out of my way to do so'. Another is to be like 'nope, I'mma be deeply honest all the times even when I'm too clumsy to do it without causing harm', which comes with upsides and downsides)

There's soft skills in "communicating to others without hurting them", (i.e. "tact") and there are also soft skills for absorbing information that might have otherwise hurt you, without getting hurt.  (i.e. "thick skin"). Both seem worth investing in, if you want a world with more honesty in it.

I've recently updated on how useful it'd be to have small icons representing users. Previously some people were like "it'll help me scan the comment section for people!" and I was like "...yeah that seems true, but I'm scared of this site feeling like facebook, or worse, LinkedIn."

I'm not sure whether that was the right tradeoff, but, I was recently sold after realizing how space-efficient it is for showing lots of commenters. Like, in slack or facebook, you'll see things like:

This'd be really helpful, esp. in the Quick Takes and Popular comments sections, where you can see which people you know/like have commented to a thing

how old are your kids? (also how much experience do you have, how many times has this happened?)

I don't have advice-born-of-experience, but I have some guesses that depend a bit on the context.

I maybe want to clarify: there will still be presentations at LessOnline, we're just trying to design the event such that they're clearly more of a secondary thing.

I do think being one syllable is pretty valuable. Although AI Org watch might be fine (kinda rolls off the tongue worse)

The ferrett.