One important thing is that Doublecrux is not about finding a “shared starting point” (or at least, depends a lot on what you mean by shared-starting-point and I expect a lot of people to get confused). You’re looking for a shared concrete disagreement, and a related-but-different pattern is more like look for what things we agree on so we can remember we’re on the same side which doesn’t necessarily build the skill of productively, thoroughly resolving disagreements.
I do think most of the time, if things are going well, that you’ll have constructed your belief systems such that you’ve already clearly identified cruxes, or when debating you proactively share “this is probably my crux” in a way that makes the Double Crux be a natural extension out of the productive-disagreement-environment. (i.e. when I’m arguing with CFAR-adjaecent-rationalists, we rarely say “let’s have a double crux to resolve this” but we often construct the dialog in a way that has DC thoroughly embedded in its DNA, to the point where it’s not necessary to do it explicitly
school uniforms reduce embarrassment (empirical disagreement, i.e. the crux)
which is good because
I care about the welfare of students (agreement)
If I find the point of agreement and try to work toward the point of disagreement, I expect to come across the crux.
If my beliefs don’t live in this hierarchy, I’m not sure how searching for a crux is supposed to help (aside from telling me to build the hierarchy, which you could tell me directly). If my beliefs already live in this hierarchy, I’m not sure how searching for a crux does more than exploring the hierarchy.
So I feel like “double crux” is sitting on top of another skill, like “build an inferential bridge,” which is actually doing all the work. Especially if you are just using the “DNA” of the technique, it feels like everything being written about double crux is obscuring the fact that you’re actually talking about building inferential bridges. Maybe my takeaway should be something like “the double crux is the way building an inferential bridge leads to resolving disagreements,” and then things like the background of “genuinely care about your conversational partner’s model of the world” filters through a chain like:
double crux is useful
because
double crux is about a disagreement I care about
it’s use comes from letting me
connect the disagreement to explicit belief hierarchies
and
explicit belief hierarchies are good for establishing mutual understanding
So I’m starting to see double crux as a motivational tool, or a concept living within hierarchies of belief, rather than a standalone conceptual tool. But I’m not sure how this relates to the presentation of it I’m seeing here.
Part of my point with the post is that I think Double Crux is just one step in a long list of steps (i.e. the giant list of background skills necessary for it to be useful). I think it’s the next step a chain where every step is necessary.
My belief that Double Crux is getting overloaded to mean both “literally finding the double crux” and “the entire process of productive disagreement” may be a bit of a departure from it’s usual presentation.
I think your current take on it, and mine, may be fairly similar, and that these are in fact different from how it’s usually described.
One important thing is that Doublecrux is not about finding a “shared starting point” (or at least, depends a lot on what you mean by shared-starting-point and I expect a lot of people to get confused). You’re looking for a shared concrete disagreement, and a related-but-different pattern is more like look for what things we agree on so we can remember we’re on the same side which doesn’t necessarily build the skill of productively, thoroughly resolving disagreements.
I do think most of the time, if things are going well, that you’ll have constructed your belief systems such that you’ve already clearly identified cruxes, or when debating you proactively share “this is probably my crux” in a way that makes the Double Crux be a natural extension out of the productive-disagreement-environment. (i.e. when I’m arguing with CFAR-adjaecent-rationalists, we rarely say “let’s have a double crux to resolve this” but we often construct the dialog in a way that has DC thoroughly embedded in its DNA, to the point where it’s not necessary to do it explicitly
I’m imagining a hierarchy of beliefs like:
school uniforms are good (disagreement)
because
school uniforms reduce embarrassment (empirical disagreement, i.e. the crux)
which is good because
I care about the welfare of students (agreement)
If I find the point of agreement and try to work toward the point of disagreement, I expect to come across the crux.
If my beliefs don’t live in this hierarchy, I’m not sure how searching for a crux is supposed to help (aside from telling me to build the hierarchy, which you could tell me directly). If my beliefs already live in this hierarchy, I’m not sure how searching for a crux does more than exploring the hierarchy.
So I feel like “double crux” is sitting on top of another skill, like “build an inferential bridge,” which is actually doing all the work. Especially if you are just using the “DNA” of the technique, it feels like everything being written about double crux is obscuring the fact that you’re actually talking about building inferential bridges. Maybe my takeaway should be something like “the double crux is the way building an inferential bridge leads to resolving disagreements,” and then things like the background of “genuinely care about your conversational partner’s model of the world” filters through a chain like:
double crux is useful
because
double crux is about a disagreement I care about
it’s use comes from letting me
connect the disagreement to explicit belief hierarchies
and
explicit belief hierarchies are good for establishing mutual understanding
So I’m starting to see double crux as a motivational tool, or a concept living within hierarchies of belief, rather than a standalone conceptual tool. But I’m not sure how this relates to the presentation of it I’m seeing here.
Part of my point with the post is that I think Double Crux is just one step in a long list of steps (i.e. the giant list of background skills necessary for it to be useful). I think it’s the next step a chain where every step is necessary.
My belief that Double Crux is getting overloaded to mean both “literally finding the double crux” and “the entire process of productive disagreement” may be a bit of a departure from it’s usual presentation.
I think your current take on it, and mine, may be fairly similar, and that these are in fact different from how it’s usually described.