Application Form Fixed - and - Capturing Questions At Fluidity Forum
Different Levels Of Familiarity & Shared Vocabulary
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How To Capture Questions
A big part of the point of Fluidity Forum has been bringing together different disciplines and perspectives, with an ambition to help translate between different ways of describing the same things. Many attendees will have wildly different levels of familiarity with each other’s areas.
It’s not just a matter of differing levels of knowledge. We can intersubjectively verify that we’re talking about the same thing with the word “car”, or “cat”, by pointing at a car or a cat. But that doesn’t work when it comes to phenomenological experiences that are called “embodied” or “somatic”, or experiences during meditation, or what some in the LessWrong community call “mental moves” or “psychotechnologies”. They’re very challenging to point at. If I attend a session at Fluidity Forum and jump to the conclusion that I know what the presenter means, it’s almost guaranteed to be meaningfully different. We have to check! A huge part of what we want to do, seems to be establishing a shared language to prevent accidentally pointing at two different things with the same word.
Last year I posted a video, “Can We Touch The Emperor’s New Clothes?” In it, I said I don’t want us to pretend we’re on the same page. Or worse, assume that we have a shared understand when we don’t. I encouraged a robust norm of asking for explanations.
During this year’s opening ceremonies, I encouraged people to quickly raise their hand and ask a question if something needs clarification. Make it clear to everyone, that the group is not expected to already know things or say things with the same languaging. It’s normal to be unfamiliar here. We don’t have to collude to pretend that we all have the same vocabulary or assumptions.
On reflection, that method can be disruptive to the flow of a presentation which the presenter has planned out. Those who are prepared for a very substantive deep dive with each other, should not have to keep their conversation at a 101 level for those who are new and need a lot of background context.
We’ll try several approaches at Fluidity Forum 2025. We’ll ask presenters to open the floor for questions for the last ten minutes or so of their time. During talks, we’ll circulate small clipboards among the audience, each bearing a pen and a pad of sticky notes on which to record questions and thoughts. These sticky notes will be captured and tracked, so at any time during the rest of the weekend, conversations about them can take place in impromptu breakout sessions throughout the building with whoever is interested.
What do you think?
-Matt A