Before placing a new person and question in the tree, make sure the question fits there in the tree, the question is written well, and the person fits the question.

https://whimsical.com/2SWK8zVG8iysFUAfeM2n1h

Canvas

Does not have to be 2d

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/7db69544-38f0-4d61-b359-0546dadca753/Untitled.png

First, does the question fit?

  1. Child answers should be both "necessary" and "significant" for parent answers. The person who will be parent turtle should see the child question as a very significant and relevant step on the way to answering the parent question. And furthermore, it should seem impossible to have answers for the parent question without those also being answers for the child question. Another way of saying this is that the parent question "contains" the child question.

    <aside> 🏷 Mark errors with ⚠️NS (not significant) or ⚠️NN (not necessary)

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  2. Good branching at each level. Ideally, the branching groups people together according to the natural fault lines that emerge from how individual curiosities and values differ, so that similarly curious people are grouped together lower in the tree. And as you do this, try to avoid putting more than three subturtles below a parent. Each turtle should ideally have three or fewer direct child turtles.

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    Mark errors with ⚠️BB (bad branching) or ⚠️TMS (too many subquestions)

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  3. Readiness to resource. The turtle with a higher-level question should be able to help their child turtles find their dream team (the best people in the world to help with their question), give them infrastructure to run experiments on, and time and space for reflection. Parent turtles will "adopt", resource, and regularly Turtle Check with the people immediately below them.

    <aside> 🏷 Mark errors with ⚠️UNREADY

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Things that don't matter

  1. OK to Have Multiple Questions for One Turtle. One person may be in the question tree in more than one position, if they have more than one question they are capable of Being Super Turtle-y about, and if more than one parent turtle adopts them.
  2. OK to Have Multiple Parents for One Question. One question may be in the tree in more than one position, and thus with more than one parent turtle, provided the above rules are satisfied for each position.

<aside> 👉 See also Turtle Check, a meeting that's about parent and child turtles getting together to apply these rules.

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