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And Competitive Sensemaking by John Nerst
Here’s some further reasons to be encouraged by where Fluidity Forum is at this point. For 2026, we changed the process for applying, so that previous attendees may just pay for the upcoming event before they’ve filled out the application with what they’re going to do at the event. Lots of them did so! We ended up with enough to pay our advance expenses much earlier than we ever have before.
If you’re one of those, you have a non-financial IOU: don’t forget to fill out your application! We really need your info sooner than later. Your outpouring of support has been amazing, but we need your presence, not just your money.
Fluidity Forum 2026 will be September 17 - 20, 2026. Please apply!
Competitive Sensemaking
At the Fluidity Forum meeting this week, I brought up “Competitive Sensemaking: An Update To Common Sense On Disagreement” by John Nerst. It seems to me like it’s central to the goals of Fluidity Forum. I’ll be speaking about it at this month’s Fluidity Lyceum (where one attendee describes a book they read, and everyone discusses it).
Dichotomies
It’s hard to describe what Fluidity Forum is because it can be hard to describe the dichotomies which Fluidity Forum seeks to bring together in co-existence. In “Competitive Sensemaking”, Nerst introduced several more, including but not limited to:
Ways of managing stress. A “task bucket” person is comfortable with leaving outstanding tasks as long as they don’t overflow. A “task plate” person feels distressed by any “open tickets” and must clear everything before feeling at peace.
Some people think in non-verbal, abstract concepts. Others “hear” their thoughts as sentences in their head.
Functionalists assume social institutions exist for a reason which was once necessary (one hears “Chesterton’s Fence” mentioned in that context). Critical theorists assume institutions are arbitrary tools used by the powerful to oppress the weak.
Epistemic rationality is the pursuit of an accurate model of the world. Instrumental rationality is using beliefs (even inaccurate ones) to effectively achieve social or personal goals.
“Planters” enjoy bold speculation and ambitious new theories. “Weeders” focus on concrete facts and debunking.
Counts As
Perhaps the biggest pair, according to “Competitive Sensemaking”, is decoupling and coupling. When we’re coupling, we view ideas holistically through their social implications. When we decouple, we isolate ideas from their social context to follow formal rules; the decoupling mindset to approaching one’s thoughts is comparable to experimental scientists isolating their test subject from potentially confounding variables. John Nerst shows how both of these are limited and lead to problems, but sense can best be made through their combination. Hence the “competitive” in the book title.
Nerst shows how “is” statements usually smuggle in a “should”. He recommends that when there’s a disagreement over how to define a word, switch from asking “is this that” to “should this count as that”. Who does it count for? And for what purpose? And why? This exposes how “is” claims are often negotiations over how to treat something (a “should”).
The next time I hear someone make a claim about what one of these words “is” or “isn’t”, I hope this method can help the conversation continue instead of just trailing off. Magic. Politics. God. Art. Consciousness. Ask yourself, and the person you disagree with, why you both want [this] to count as (to be treated as) [that] or as [not that]. Then you can begin to the actual negotiation of how you want the group to treat it. The discussion gets more tractable.
Matters Of Model
Nerst’s deeper point is that much of what we argue about lives in a middle territory between fact and slogan, as a third thing. Not matters of fact or matters of value, but what he calls “matters of model.”
“Dolphins are mammals” or “Spain is a monarchy” are relatively close to pure fact. Nerst says with them, we hold one end of reality fixed (observational reality) and are not discussing the social end of reality. By contrast, I could list a bunch of pure slogans here, but I’m worried that would algorithmically poison something at some point in the tech chain. With slogans, we hold the social end of reality fixed and are not actually discussing the other end of reality: he says:
“Whether AI art ‘is art’ has virtually nothing to do with its concrete properties and everything to do with what status it deserves.”
Where we get into the most trouble is with compounds of observation and value that resist easy separation. These include claims that something “is rigged”, “isn’t proven”, “is ruined”, “is a nothingburger”, “is determinist”, or “is unfair”, and so on. What counts as “a disease” or “a drug” or “oppression” or “healthy”? These are actually built on top of our choices of the dimensions along which to categorize both physical and social reality which bear on a decision simultaneously. Those choices are models, and it helps to notice and make visible multiple alternatives.
When we talk past each other, it might seem like an argument about facts or slogans, but the communication gap is probably an unseen difference in models.
“Liberalism is the acknowledgement that contemporary societies are trading zones, and that attempts at enforcing a single dominant shared reality are inescapably authoritarian. Paradoxically, this requires insisting on common ground, but on a level above the specific. It means having to agree on processes rather than outcomes, on rules rather than teams.”
I like that as a central concept for Fluidity Forum.
-Matt