Written Public Positions
also Write down your positions
Putting your positions into public, stable writing (or endorsing someone else's) so disagreements are addressable and others can correct you.
Written public positions are CF’s prescription that, as you learn, you should gather or compose writing — kept publicly available in a stable, long-term way — that states what you believe to your satisfaction. Don’t merely learn things; get them in writing. You can endorse existing material (a link, a citation) instead of writing your own, but only if you treat it exactly as if you wrote it today: referring someone to a source means accepting responsibility for the whole referenced passage as your own answer.
The point is to make disagreement addressable. Vague intentions to “seek truth” and “use good judgement” don’t specify what to do; a fixed written position lets a stranger — with no credentials or social standing — locate precisely where they think you err and offer a correction. So this is the precondition for Paths Forward and the kind of objective, public error-correction CF wants. It rests on fallibilism: since no idea can be justified and you might be mistaken, you need a standing mechanism by which already-known better ideas can reach you.
Crucially, CF says less than half your writing should be positive exposition; the rest must answer anticipated questions, rebut criticisms, and refute rival positions. Built this way, most inquiries are answered by reference, with cheap “bridging material” connecting a general principle to a specific question — making the practice efficient rather than the endless litter-collection critics fear.
This connects to taking responsibility for your ideas and the use of representatives who can defend overlapping positions, and it supports the single-answer principle by fixing one stated view to be tested.