As far as I understand, the important part is working to find a crux such that if it is resolved would bring the participants into agreement. It’s a way of focusing a discussion on a more concrete operationalization of a disagreement rather than trading pieces of rhetoric that aren’t likely to change anything.
I think you probably understand what the double crux is (which isn’t especially novel). I’d guess CFAR doesn’t claim to have invented the double crux so much as come up with general methods/algorithms to actually go about more reliably finding them.
As a mathematical analogy, it’s easy to check if a * b = c but not necessarily easy to find a and b only given c. This is the basis for public key cryptography. In this analogy, c is the argument and finding a and b is like finding a double crux.
Double Crux
As far as I understand, the important part is working to find a crux such that if it is resolved would bring the participants into agreement. It’s a way of focusing a discussion on a more concrete operationalization of a disagreement rather than trading pieces of rhetoric that aren’t likely to change anything.
I think you probably understand what the double crux is (which isn’t especially novel). I’d guess CFAR doesn’t claim to have invented the double crux so much as come up with general methods/algorithms to actually go about more reliably finding them.
As a mathematical analogy, it’s easy to check if a * b = c but not necessarily easy to find a and b only given c. This is the basis for public key cryptography. In this analogy, c is the argument and finding a and b is like finding a double crux.