You want to choose topics which can be fruitfully discussed in ten to twenty minutes.
It hasn’t been my experience that any topic of any real import or depth can be fruitfully discussed in ten to twenty minutes. Can you give some real-world examples of topics that fit this criterion?
Second: how do you deal with the fact that parts of a person’s view on any given topic are often hard to disentangle from one another? And, separately (but relatedly to the first part): suppose we pick a topic to discuss for ten minutes, but find that our disagreement about it stems from deeper differences, and lead to other topics, etc. How to deal with such cases (which seem to me to be quite common)?
Its perhaps best to give concrete examples. This is roughly the set of topics we discussed in the CFAR Double Crux. It seemed possible to discuss these frutifully in a small length of time. (I didn’t put this in the article because I really want to avoid people making this thread into a discussion of CFAR’s value)
-- How much learning in person being qualitatively different from learning via blogs
-- Whether its an isolated demand for rigor to judge CFAR relative to the best self improvement techniques you could use (since few people use those). Is CFAR competitive relative to things like ‘many hours of private tutoring’.
-- How much of the value of CFAR comes form the curriculum and how much comes from the Alumni Network and Events
-- What percentage of one’s money and effort should people generally be spending on self improvement
-- How skeptical should we be about the CFAR studies
You should ask to discuss topics where either agreement seems relatively easy to reach or you want to get more details from your partner. You might want details because they have info you don’t, because you want to ask some key questions or because you want to hear their model explained at length. If a disagreement about a crux seems especially deep you should add it to the list of ‘prickly cruxes’ and handle it in step6.
In general the goal is to make progress and find non-obvious statements you can both agree to. This requires focsing the discussion on areas where progress is likely. In the case of the CFAR doucle crux I felt I learned alot and got a much better model of which people will benefit from CFAR. The goal is to make genuine mutually agreed upon headway not nescessarily to resolve all disagreement.
Thanks for writing this up!
I do have some questions. First:
It hasn’t been my experience that any topic of any real import or depth can be fruitfully discussed in ten to twenty minutes. Can you give some real-world examples of topics that fit this criterion?
Second: how do you deal with the fact that parts of a person’s view on any given topic are often hard to disentangle from one another? And, separately (but relatedly to the first part): suppose we pick a topic to discuss for ten minutes, but find that our disagreement about it stems from deeper differences, and lead to other topics, etc. How to deal with such cases (which seem to me to be quite common)?
Its perhaps best to give concrete examples. This is roughly the set of topics we discussed in the CFAR Double Crux. It seemed possible to discuss these frutifully in a small length of time. (I didn’t put this in the article because I really want to avoid people making this thread into a discussion of CFAR’s value)
-- How much learning in person being qualitatively different from learning via blogs
-- Whether its an isolated demand for rigor to judge CFAR relative to the best self improvement techniques you could use (since few people use those). Is CFAR competitive relative to things like ‘many hours of private tutoring’.
-- How much of the value of CFAR comes form the curriculum and how much comes from the Alumni Network and Events
-- What percentage of one’s money and effort should people generally be spending on self improvement
-- How skeptical should we be about the CFAR studies
You should ask to discuss topics where either agreement seems relatively easy to reach or you want to get more details from your partner. You might want details because they have info you don’t, because you want to ask some key questions or because you want to hear their model explained at length. If a disagreement about a crux seems especially deep you should add it to the list of ‘prickly cruxes’ and handle it in step6.
In general the goal is to make progress and find non-obvious statements you can both agree to. This requires focsing the discussion on areas where progress is likely. In the case of the CFAR doucle crux I felt I learned alot and got a much better model of which people will benefit from CFAR. The goal is to make genuine mutually agreed upon headway not nescessarily to resolve all disagreement.