There’d likely be a multi-step plan, which depends on whether your goals are more “raise the sanity waterline” or “build an intellectual hub that makes rapid progress on important issues.”
Step 1: Practice it in the rationality community. Generally get people on board with the notion that if there’s an actually-important disagreement, that people try to resolve it. This would require a few public examples of productive disagreement and double crux (I agree that lack-of-those is a major issue).
Then, when people have a private dispute, they come back saying “Hey this is what we talked about, this was what we agreed on, and this is any meta-issues we stumbled upon that we think others should know about re: productive disagreement.”
Step 2: Do that in semi-public places (facebook, other communities we’re part of, etc), in a way that let’s nearby intellectual communities get a sense of it. (Maybe if we can come up with clear examples and better introduction articles, it’d be good to share those). The next time you get into a political argument with your uncle, rather than angrily yell at each other, try to meet privately and talk to each other and share it with your family. (Note: I have some uncles for whom I think this would work and some for whom it definitely wouldn’t)
(This will require effort and emotional labor that may be uncomfortable)
Step 3: After getting some practice doing productive disagreement and/or Double Crux in particular with random people, do it in somewhat higher stakes environment. Try it when a dispute comes up at your company. (This may only work if you have the sort of company that already at least nominally values truthseeking/transparency/etc so that it feels like a natural extension of the company culture rather than a totally weird thing you’re shoving into it)
Step 4: A lot of things could go wrong in between steps 1-3, but afterwards basically make deliberate efforts to expand it into wider circles (I would not leap to “try to get politicians to do it” and the like. Instead, try to invoke it in places where there isn’t so much social penalty for changing minds. (In the world where this works, I think it works by raising so sanity waterline so high that politicians fall underneath it, not by trying to get politicians to jump on board)
There’d likely be a multi-step plan, which depends on whether your goals are more “raise the sanity waterline” or “build an intellectual hub that makes rapid progress on important issues.”
Step 1: Practice it in the rationality community. Generally get people on board with the notion that if there’s an actually-important disagreement, that people try to resolve it. This would require a few public examples of productive disagreement and double crux (I agree that lack-of-those is a major issue).
Then, when people have a private dispute, they come back saying “Hey this is what we talked about, this was what we agreed on, and this is any meta-issues we stumbled upon that we think others should know about re: productive disagreement.”
Step 2: Do that in semi-public places (facebook, other communities we’re part of, etc), in a way that let’s nearby intellectual communities get a sense of it. (Maybe if we can come up with clear examples and better introduction articles, it’d be good to share those). The next time you get into a political argument with your uncle, rather than angrily yell at each other, try to meet privately and talk to each other and share it with your family. (Note: I have some uncles for whom I think this would work and some for whom it definitely wouldn’t)
(This will require effort and emotional labor that may be uncomfortable)
Step 3: After getting some practice doing productive disagreement and/or Double Crux in particular with random people, do it in somewhat higher stakes environment. Try it when a dispute comes up at your company. (This may only work if you have the sort of company that already at least nominally values truthseeking/transparency/etc so that it feels like a natural extension of the company culture rather than a totally weird thing you’re shoving into it)
Step 4: A lot of things could go wrong in between steps 1-3, but afterwards basically make deliberate efforts to expand it into wider circles (I would not leap to “try to get politicians to do it” and the like. Instead, try to invoke it in places where there isn’t so much social penalty for changing minds. (In the world where this works, I think it works by raising so sanity waterline so high that politicians fall underneath it, not by trying to get politicians to jump on board)