As of today, everyone is able to create a new type of content on LessWrong: Dialogues.

In contrast with posts, which are for monologues, and comment sections, which are spaces for everyone to talk to everyone, a dialogue is a space for a few invited people to speak with each other.

I'm personally very excited about this as a way for people to produce lots of in-depth explanations of their world-models in public.

I think dialogues enable this in a way that feels easier — instead of writing an explanation for anyone who reads, you're communicating with the particular person you're talking with — and giving the readers a lot of rich nuance I normally only find when I overhear people talk in person.

In the rest of this post I'll explain the feature, and then encourage you to find a partner in the comments to try it out with.

What do dialogues look like?

Here is a screenshot of a dialogue with 3 users.

Behind the scenes, the editor interface is a bit different from other editors we've seen on the internet. It's inspired by collaborating in google docs, where you're all editing a document simultaneously, and you can see the other person's writing in-progress.

You can also submit a response with Cmd-Enter / Ctrl-Enter.

This also allows all participants to draft thoughtful replies simultaneously, and be able to see what the other person is planning to talk about next.

How do I create a dialogue?

First, hit the "New Dialogue" button in the menu in the top-right of the website.

This pops up a box where you are invited to give your dialogue a title and invite some people.

Then you'll be taken to the editor page!

Now you can start writing. The other dialogue participants will receive a notification and the dialogue will appear in their drafts. (Only invite people to dialogues with their consent!)

What are some already published dialogues?

Here are some links to published dialogues that have been using this feature.

Thomas Kwa's MIRI research experience (by Thomas Kwa, peterbarnett, Vivek Hebbar, Jeremy Gillen, jacobjacob & Raemon)
Navigating an ecosystem that might or might not be bad for the world (by habryka & kave)
Joseph Bloom on choosing AI Alignment over bio, what many aspiring researchers get wrong, and more (interview) (by Ruby & Joseph Bloom)
What is the optimal frontier for due diligence? (by RobertM & Ruby)
Feedback-loops, Deliberate Practice, and Tran

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