Figuring out "what would actually change your mind?" is among the more important rationality skills.

Being able to do change your mind at all is a huge project. But, being able to do it quickly is much more useful than being able to do it at all. Because, then you can interleave the question "what would change my mind?" inside other, more complex planning or thinking.

I find this much easier to learn "for real" when I'm thinking specifically about what would change my mind about my decisionmaking. Sure, I could change my belief about abstract philosophy, or physics, or politics... but most of that doesn't actually impact my behavior. There's no way for reality to "push back" if I'm wrong.

By contrast, each day, I make a lot of decisions. Some of those decisions are expensive – an hour or more of effort. If I'm spending an hour on something, it's often worth spending a minute or two asking "is this the best way to spend the hour?". I usually have at least one opportunity to practice finding notable cruxes.

Previously: "Fluent, Cruxy Predictions" and "Double Crux"

While this post stands alone, I wrote it as [...]

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Outline:

(01:16) Finding Cruxes

(02:15) Helping Reality Punch You In the Face

(06:33) Step by Step

(06:36) Step 1: Get alternatives

(07:29) Step 2: Ask yourself random-ass prompts.

(09:24) 3. Try to find scalar units.

(10:16) 4. Interpolate between extremes and find the threshold of cruxiness

(11:31) 4. Check your intuitive predictions

(11:44) 5. Gain more information

(11:59) 6. Make a call, but keep an eye out

(12:55) Appendix: Doublecrux is not step 1.

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
February 5th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wkDdQrBxoGLqPWh2P/finding-cruxes-help-reality-punch-you-in-the-face

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Finding Cruxes: Help Reality Punch You In the Face” by Raemon

LessWrong (30+ Karma)