Another issue I’ve run into, somewhat confused about the right way to think about:
Recently, jimrandomh and I were having a debate about the new shortform features. I was in favor of a quick, hacky solution that just automated the system we were already using (i.e. “shortform” just means “you create a post called ‘shortform’ and then write comments on it). I expected to spend maybe 3 days on it, and then move onto other things. I mostly wanted to create features for it that would also be useful for non-shortform things (i.e. I wanted people to be able to subscribe to shortform feeds, but I also wanted people to be able to subscribe to posts generally).
Jim wanted to treat shortform more as a first class feature, with special UI and care taken to make it seem like not a random hacked together thing.
The conversation ended up touching on many things including:
are hacked-together-looking features fine, or bad?
is it okay for shortform feeds to have custom moderation settings? (I said yes, Jim said no)
how important is it to limit the number of different content-types on a website? (I thought managing complexity and avoiding making a new content type was fairly important, I think Jim thought it was ‘sort of’ important but less so)
We ended up successfully coming to a compromise on how to move forward, but not really resolving any of those issues.
And, a few weeks later… I have moved closer to Jim’s position. But mostly for reasons unrelated to anything we talked about. (I’d summarize the change as mostly “hmm, now that I see shortform in action and how people are relating to it, it seems useful to lean in harder towards making it good.” I still think hacked-together-looking features are fine, but it seems more strategically valuable to lean into it, hacky or no. We’ve spent 4 weeks on it instead of 3 days and I think it makes sense to spend more. Partly the shift is about the relative-value of the “push shortform” strategy vs the “open questions” strategy (which is what I would have previously pushed)
Now, doublecrux is ideally supposed to result in an experiment you can run. “Actually build the feature and see how you feel” is sort of obvious as an experiment to run. But, also an expensive one.
I feel like I’m supposed to learn some sort of lesson from this but not sure which one. “Start building a feature and see how you feel” seems a pretty okay, practical strategy. But I’m dissatisfied with it for purposes of developing good disagreement-resolution skills. Sometimes there won’t be a ‘fairly reasonable experiment’.
I have some sense that in the moment, it was possible for me to do some kind of “Step backwards and think about what might actually change my mind about the original disagreement, *without* getting bogged down in the weeds of Jim’s sub-cruxes.”
Another issue I’ve run into, somewhat confused about the right way to think about:
Recently, jimrandomh and I were having a debate about the new shortform features. I was in favor of a quick, hacky solution that just automated the system we were already using (i.e. “shortform” just means “you create a post called ‘shortform’ and then write comments on it). I expected to spend maybe 3 days on it, and then move onto other things. I mostly wanted to create features for it that would also be useful for non-shortform things (i.e. I wanted people to be able to subscribe to shortform feeds, but I also wanted people to be able to subscribe to posts generally).
Jim wanted to treat shortform more as a first class feature, with special UI and care taken to make it seem like not a random hacked together thing.
The conversation ended up touching on many things including:
are hacked-together-looking features fine, or bad?
is it okay for shortform feeds to have custom moderation settings? (I said yes, Jim said no)
how important is it to limit the number of different content-types on a website? (I thought managing complexity and avoiding making a new content type was fairly important, I think Jim thought it was ‘sort of’ important but less so)
We ended up successfully coming to a compromise on how to move forward, but not really resolving any of those issues.
And, a few weeks later… I have moved closer to Jim’s position. But mostly for reasons unrelated to anything we talked about. (I’d summarize the change as mostly “hmm, now that I see shortform in action and how people are relating to it, it seems useful to lean in harder towards making it good.” I still think hacked-together-looking features are fine, but it seems more strategically valuable to lean into it, hacky or no. We’ve spent 4 weeks on it instead of 3 days and I think it makes sense to spend more. Partly the shift is about the relative-value of the “push shortform” strategy vs the “open questions” strategy (which is what I would have previously pushed)
Now, doublecrux is ideally supposed to result in an experiment you can run. “Actually build the feature and see how you feel” is sort of obvious as an experiment to run. But, also an expensive one.
I feel like I’m supposed to learn some sort of lesson from this but not sure which one. “Start building a feature and see how you feel” seems a pretty okay, practical strategy. But I’m dissatisfied with it for purposes of developing good disagreement-resolution skills. Sometimes there won’t be a ‘fairly reasonable experiment’.
I have some sense that in the moment, it was possible for me to do some kind of “Step backwards and think about what might actually change my mind about the original disagreement, *without* getting bogged down in the weeds of Jim’s sub-cruxes.”
Pedantic correction: We didn’t spend 4 weeks on it; while 4 weeks did pass, there was a lot of other stuff going on during that interval.