Meandering conversations were important to him, because it gave them space to actually think. I pointed to examples of meetings that I thought had gone well, that ended will google docs full of what I thought had been useful ideas and developments. And he said “those all seemed like examples of mediocre meetings to me – we had a lot of ideas, sure. But I didn’t feel like I actually got to come to a real decision about anything important.”
Interesting that you choose this as an example, since my immediate reaction to your opening was, “Hold Off On Proposing Solutions.” More precisely, my reaction was that I recall Eliezer saying he recommended this before any other practical rule of rationality (to a specific mostly white male audience, anyway) and yet you didn’t seem to have established that people agree with you on what the problem is.
It sounds like you got there eventually, assuming “the right path for the organization” is a meaningful category.
I think the disagreement was on a slightly different axis. It’s not enough to hold off on proposing solutions. It’s particular flavors and approaches to doing so.
One thing (which me-at-the-beginning-of-the-example would have liked), is that we do some sort of process like:
Everyone thinks independently for N minutes about what considerations are relevant, without proposing solutions
Everyone shares those thoughts, and discusses them a while
Everyone thinks independently for another N minutes about potential solutions in light of those considerations.
We discuss those thoughts
We eventually try to converge on a solution.
...with each section being somewhat time-boxed (You could fine-tune the time boxing, possibly repeating some steps, depending on how important the decision was and how much time you had)
But something about the overall process of time-boxing intrinsically got in the way of the type of thinking that this person felt they needed.
Interesting that you choose this as an example, since my immediate reaction to your opening was, “Hold Off On Proposing Solutions.” More precisely, my reaction was that I recall Eliezer saying he recommended this before any other practical rule of rationality (to a specific mostly white male audience, anyway) and yet you didn’t seem to have established that people agree with you on what the problem is.
It sounds like you got there eventually, assuming “the right path for the organization” is a meaningful category.
I think the disagreement was on a slightly different axis. It’s not enough to hold off on proposing solutions. It’s particular flavors and approaches to doing so.
One thing (which me-at-the-beginning-of-the-example would have liked), is that we do some sort of process like:
Everyone thinks independently for N minutes about what considerations are relevant, without proposing solutions
Everyone shares those thoughts, and discusses them a while
Everyone thinks independently for another N minutes about potential solutions in light of those considerations.
We discuss those thoughts
We eventually try to converge on a solution.
...with each section being somewhat time-boxed (You could fine-tune the time boxing, possibly repeating some steps, depending on how important the decision was and how much time you had)
But something about the overall process of time-boxing intrinsically got in the way of the type of thinking that this person felt they needed.