[HN Gopher] Show HN: Trophi.com - A forum the represents both si...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Trophi.com - A forum the represents both sides of an
argument
Author : panchoviz
Score : 42 points
Date : 2021-01-25 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.trophi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.trophi.com)
| lolsal wrote:
| Having only two sides to any argument seems like part of the
| problem, not the solution.
| thih9 wrote:
| I don't like how the website just presents an extreme point of
| view without a clear option to engage in a discussion across
| sides (to ask about reasons, etc).
|
| I think instead of giving people a chance to get heard we should
| give people a chance to participate in a respectful dialogue with
| others who think differently.
| lhorie wrote:
| Clicked around a bit and it looks you can only reply to your own
| side?
|
| It's also a bit hard to follow which comments are replies, so UX-
| wise it seems to encourage dropping quick takes and nodding
| along. Case in point, comments seem mostly rehashes of tired
| talking points.
|
| The value of debating IMHO comes from depth, but depth cannot be
| achieved by merely segregating comments into team buckets. It
| requires fostering a culture of willingness to introspect and
| question your own beliefs. Forums like lesswrong are a good
| example of that
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| Congratulations on launching a website, now let me enumerate the
| problems you will now be facing:
|
| * Some arguments do not really have two sides because there is an
| objective truth. The Earth orbits the Sun, humans evolved from
| ape-like ancestors, etc. These were once debatable topics but now
| the issue has been settled and debate is pointless.
|
| * Some arguments do not really have two sides because in reality
| there are multiple viewpoints. Global warming is not real because
| how can we know if it is, global warming is a deliberate hoax,
| global warming is real but not that bad, global warming is real
| and bad but not man made, global warming is real and bad and we
| can do something about it. How does your site help with this kind
| of topic?
|
| * Trolls. The design of your site encourages trollish behavior. I
| am not sure how you plan to moderate harmful or offensive content
| but if you think that people will step up to shout down offensive
| topics you are very wrong. The sensible people will just leave
| and you will be left with only the trolls.
|
| * Moderation. If you site gets any sort of traction you will need
| moderation. Moderation of topics, moderation of comments,
| outright banning users. Put simply, you are going to have to take
| sides defeating the whole "both sides" approach you are trying to
| foster. At the moment, one of the front page topics is how the
| Holocaust could be used for population control - a real nice way
| to introduce your site.
|
| Good luck, but I will not be joining.
| panchoviz wrote:
| Andrew,
|
| Thanks for taking a look and yeah I agree with a lot of your
| points.
|
| I was just trying to start a different type of conversation
| online. I find myself searching for "what the other side
| thinks" alot these days. Maybe this could help bridge the gap a
| bit.
|
| As any forum there will be a need for moderation and at the
| moment this is only a passion project. So I'll do my best I can
| for now.
|
| I went ahead and took that post down. Not sure if I'll be able
| to control everything but like I said I'll do the best that I
| can.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| Philosophically, I think searching out "what the other side
| thinks" is the wrong approach, as it presupposes that there
| are only two sides. I know that a lot of our media is based
| around the two-sides narrative but it really isn't true. Even
| in politics there are as many opinions as there are people.
| If you examine your own beliefs you will probably find that
| you don't really agree with everything on "your own side".
|
| It is not people are quiet about their beliefs - just read
| some of their books/blogs if you want to know how they think.
| Just avoid sites like youtube where people are paid by
| advertising - there you will only get deliberately
| provocative content just to get clicks.
|
| You UI is interesting but I think you are setting yourself up
| for hosting arguments rather than discussion. Sites like
| ycombinator, reddit, twitter, and yes even parlor have the
| cultures they do due to careful (and often unseen)
| moderation. I don't envy the task you have set for yourself.
| high_byte wrote:
| Worth mentioning: kialo.com
| MockObject wrote:
| This is a good idea that has potential. Next I think would be to
| facilitate some guided interaction flow, in terms of responses
| between the sides, and somehow preventing it from devolving into
| a flame war.
| aaron695 wrote:
| I'd ban politics.
|
| Personally I'd find it interesting on science articles.
|
| I'd even pin it to DOIs, keep the media out of it. But media
| articles are shit, which gets people arguing which is what you
| want for clicks..... I'd work towards only DOIs but media science
| articles to start to get numbers.
|
| Just my thoughts. I know I'd like to see dissenting and agreeing
| opinions on DOIs, just not sure how you would get there.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| Looks like a website that strives to further good things, such as
| free debate between people of different opinions. Good idea but
| the execution is lacking, I find the UI to be clumsy on full-page
| width. The font is too large and while I don't mind monospace
| fonts usually, it does not look neat for me in this case.
|
| And as others have mentioned, things are rarely a two-sided
| topic. Would it be possible to allow for a topic to have more
| than two sides? n-number of positions to take that are somehow
| pre-picked by the OP?
|
| Also, as others have mentioned, how will you moderate it? Will
| you allow highly controversial topics like those regarding WW2
| and race? Where will you draw the line? The quality of a forum is
| firstly decided by the people who post on the forum, but
| moderators decide who are able to post on a forum, so in effect,
| moderators end up being the final arbiters of forum quality in
| the end.
|
| I would find it very interesting if there was a forum that was
| formal in tone, allowing people to sometimes border on offensive
| but never hateful topics. A forum like that would in theory
| perhaps allow most if not all voices to be heard and talk to one
| another? While such a place probably would not be pleasing to
| most, it seems like something the internet lacks at the moment.
| followbl wrote:
| I really like this - congrats on launching. Really effective UI
| that helps cut through the complexity of single column vertical
| threads.
| brut_m wrote:
| I think this is actually a pretty good start. There are features
| you could add, but overall I enjoyed the way the arguments were
| presented. It didn't do much to change my opinion, but it was
| nice to have each crazy in its own place.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| It's a neat concept, but I think that 'both sides' doesn't work
| in a world with nuance, especially in a world where most (social)
| disputes are moral, teleological, or epistemological
| disagreements masking themselves as disputes of a factual nature.
| I don't think this format is particularly conducive to achieving
| persuasion, synthesis, or producing comparisons between
| equivalent perspectives (some people are _just wrong_ , some
| peoples precepts are so fundamentally incompatible with each-
| other's that their perspectives are like apples and oranges).
| brut_m wrote:
| I think this is pretty good, lots of places to add features but
| it's interesting.
| malikNF wrote:
| I like the idea, I also like how light the webpage is.
|
| Not a fan of the way the usernames and the scores are arranged
| though. Having the username first before the score causes the
| scores to not align properly, and therefore it makes it really
| hard to scan the page for topics worth reading.
| panchoviz wrote:
| Awesome, thanks for the feedback. I've been struggling to come
| up with the best layout (not the best designer). I'll see if I
| can move around the username and score so its easier to read.
| darepublic wrote:
| The problem with this platform is the sides speak only in
| relation to the topic but do not rebut each other. I think there
| needs to be forced rebuttals and I'd one side cannot mount a
| defense against a rebuttal it should be highlighted, to better
| illustrate which side has the weight of evidence
| sputr wrote:
| The First result for me
| (https://www.trophi.com/page/600eb2036c0b5800157eb041) is proof
| why this idea of "all opinions are equal and should be given
| equal opportunity to be heard" is bunk.
|
| Politics is a serious topic with, serious, almost always life-
| changing/defining/ending consequences. Immature people and people
| preoccupied with their own emotional issues should be signaled by
| the community at large that, maybe, they should first take care
| of themselves before they try to change/influence the community.
|
| I'm not saying censure them or "deplatform" them. Just that they
| should not be encouraged/coddled/enabled. We got here because the
| position on people saying stupid stuff about politics in public
| was met with "just leave him/her be, everyone is entitled to
| their opinion". Yes, they are, but if those opinions are stupid
| and spoken in public they should be laughed at so that everyone
| is clear that sharing stupid opinions leads to loss of social
| standing.
| darepublic wrote:
| I don't see the point of this platform being to coddle inferior
| points of view by elevating them to faux equal footing. I think
| if anything having a site like this could illuminate how
| inferior a party's position is on an issue more clearly than
| trying to research yourself. It also may be that both sides are
| not uniformly wrong on all issues, and seeing where this is the
| case is potentially useful. That being said I feel like this
| platform is not going to work simply due to lack of users
| willing to put in the work. I feel like politifact is supposed
| to do the job of this already but since it is owned by
| Democrats(?) People already don't trust it
| michaelt wrote:
| That link doesn't show an inferior point of view being
| elevated to an equal footing.
|
| It shows two dumb posts placed side by side.
| vannevar wrote:
| Argument mapping is a pretty well-established genre
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map), and over the years
| there have been many software incarnations of it. I think one
| reason that it hasn't caught on as a way of resolving political
| issues is simply that many people, if not most, are not
| interested in rational argument. They have an objective in mind
| that they did not arrive at by reasoning it out, and now they
| want to achieve that objective. To them, argument simply gets in
| the way of a decision that they have already made.
| jl2718 wrote:
| Have you ever considered that the point of engaging your
| argument in a rational structured manner against skeptics is to
| discover how you might be wrong, and not how they might be?
| vannevar wrote:
| I've not only considered it, I actively do it on a regular
| basis. My point was not to suggest argument mapping is
| useless, it was only to observe that it's never caught on as
| a social way to resolve political disputes, and to offer a
| possible reason.
| keiferski wrote:
| Controversial issues aren't about logic or arguments. They're
| about sociopolitical issues, economics, and who has the most
| effective marketing plan.
|
| I'd really love to see a site that tries to dispassionately
| explain _why_ the Flat Earth movement exists (hint: it 's
| probably not because a bunch of people _really_ believe the Earth
| is flat) instead of just berating people for being dumb and
| wrong. You will never convince anyone of anything by calling them
| stupid.
| lhorie wrote:
| My understanding is that there are a few different factors:
|
| For many of them, there's something to be gained (e.g.
| financially via a youtube channel, or even just karma points),
| which keeps engagement from fizzling out
|
| There's also the age old cultism phenomenon: people want to be
| part of something, because it feeds their ego somehow (e.g.
| "pff, look at those sheep") and/or because of some sense of
| community ("oh wow, I never thought so many people thought like
| me")
|
| And the thread that unifies everything is the belief they are
| scientifically correct because they are applying empirical
| observation. Of course, the unfortunate gap is that they don't
| truly understand how to use/interpret the tools of the
| scientific method (e.g. they may not know how to empirically
| derive physics equations from experiments, or they may not
| understand concepts like falsibiability, or even account for
| blind spots in "common sense" such as why are tides a thing,
| etc)
| jacobmischka wrote:
| This exactly. No attempt at forcing logical or unbiased
| discourse will ever work, because people simply are not
| persuaded by logical argument, regardless of how many
| irrefutable facts are presented.
|
| It's a laudable and understandable goal to try to fix online
| discourse using clever tech, but I am highly skeptical it will
| ever work, because people simply do not care to have their
| minds changed.
|
| I'm unsure what the actual solution to this, if there ever will
| be one. Improving population education as a whole seems to me
| to be the only way, but I fear that even if possible that will
| take so long that it will no longer matter.
|
| I legitimately fear that ultimately human beings are not
| evolved enough to be able to effectively manage the effortless
| global communication systems that we've developed.
| Jonovono wrote:
| The flat earth doc (Behind the Curve) made a point that stuck
| with me. We are all flat earthers in some way in our life,
| where we don't accurately look at reality. I'm sure everyone
| can find something in their life where they are a 'flat
| earther'.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| On the other hand it has been proven that the earth is not flat
| thousands of years ago. The effort to do so is surprisingly
| limited. Basically you need to dig a hole in the ground and
| reason about the angles of the sun rays if I remember
| correctly.
| jl2718 wrote:
| To me, the flat earth movement is about scientific
| epistemiology in the form of advancing the most ridiculous
| argument devoid of social consequence. It's basically the same
| thing as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The real question is
| whether facts and explanations are declared by an authority, or
| whether they must be proven laboriously to each individual
| prior to acceptance. If flat earth cannot be easily disproven
| to an individual, imagine what else we may have been led to
| believe on the authority of a third-grade textbook or a
| 30-second news report. I think their message, assuming the best
| of them, is not that we should accept ridiculous ideas like
| flat earth, but that we should be less certain about many
| things that we really don't know very well.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Wouldn't there be a lot better examples to use, instead of
| one that is trivially disprovable? Or is that the point - how
| many critics of the FES have never done the experimentation
| themselves?
|
| In a way, this feels like a DOS attack. We don't have the
| time or ability to run our own experiments on things that
| matter.
| jl2718 wrote:
| I'm surprised at the dogmatism and ad-hominem employed as
| resistance to presenting any argument supporting an opinion that
| opposes mainstream consensus. Here is an excellent talk on
| scientific epistemology, one which I happen to strongly disagree
| with, but it presents the point directly:
| https://youtu.be/RxyQNEVOElU
| varispeed wrote:
| I wish there was a site that would recognise common manipulation
| techniques in the text and based on that give it some sort of
| trustworthiness score. This could be then embedded in a search
| engine. It also work as a browser's plugin and highlight text
| that contains such patterns, so that the reader could be made
| aware that the publisher is trying to manipulate. You don't need
| to actually verify whether the content of the message is true or
| not, but a reader knowing that text is trying to manipulate, they
| could try to verify the story themselves.
| clarkevans wrote:
| This approach doesn't seem to consider evidence.
|
| For reasonable dialogue, various sides have to come to an
| agreement of shared evidence. In this case, there is no listing
| of evidence, hence those involved still talk past each other
| because it does not build a shared understanding.
|
| There is also the burden of evidence. Those making
| unsubstantiated claims often do so quite freely without much
| effort; this often incorrectly places the burden on those to
| disprove sometimes extraordinary claims. Moreover, in these
| cases, reporting circumstantial evidence that shows the
| underlying claim is highly unlikely can have the opposite of the
| intended effect.
| MockObject wrote:
| Here are some ideas that might inspire you.
|
| "E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime refers to a
| version of the English language that excludes all forms of the
| verb to be, including all conjugations, contractions and archaic
| forms... advocates also suggest that use of E-Prime leads to a
| less dogmatic style of language that reduces the possibility of
| misunderstanding or conflict" [1]
|
| "Verifiability principle, a philosophical doctrine fundamental to
| the school of Logical Positivism holding that a statement is
| meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable." [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
|
| [2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/verifiability-principle
| keiferski wrote:
| _Therefore I took a delight in it, practising it continually,
| and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of
| superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which
| they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of
| which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining
| victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved._
|
| _I continued this method some few years, but gradually left
| it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of
| modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced anything that
| may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or
| any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but
| rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it
| appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such
| reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not
| mistaken._
|
| _This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when
| I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions and persuade men
| into measures that I have been from time to time engaged in
| promoting; and, as the chief ends of conversion are to inform
| or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-
| meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing
| good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to
| disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of
| those purpose for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving
| or receiving information or pleasure._
|
| _For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in
| advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent
| a candid attention. If you wish information and improvement
| from the knowledge of others, and yet, at the same time,
| express yourself as firmly fixed in your present opinions,
| modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will
| probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your
| error._
|
| - The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
| ilaksh wrote:
| Also check out improvethenews.org and the work of Jonathan Haidt.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Giant waste of time to debate people online. You never get
| _anything_ out of it.
| [deleted]
| joohwan wrote:
| I personally find the font very hard on the eyes.
| windex wrote:
| This "both sides of an argument" thing is poisoning logic.
| Somethings dont have 2 sides. The earth is round, for instance.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| And climate change! And my opinions on gun control!
|
| Which arguments are "allowed" to have a side? Given the recent
| disregard for the concept of freedom of speech, this site seems
| quaint.
|
| These websites always seem to be like an episode of Big
| Talk.[1] "Alright, let's get this sorted! Does God exist, yes
| or no?"
|
| 1 - https://youtu.be/EUbjpwyesk0
| est wrote:
| > Somethings dont have 2 sides. The earth is round, for
| instance
|
| Not exactly round, but it's an ellipsoid with an uneven
| surface.
| lhorie wrote:
| Ellipsoids are round, just not radially symmetrical.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| You are technically correct (the best kind of correct) but
| the Earth IS round for most intents and purposes. Only people
| who need very accurate maps care that it is not.
|
| If the Earth was shrunk down to bowling ball size and taken
| to a lane it would be just as spherical as any of the other
| balls.
| musicale wrote:
| I have verified this experimentally.
| lukifer wrote:
| "When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong.
| When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong.
| But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just
| as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is
| wronger than both of them put together."
|
| - Isaac Asimov
| Karunamon wrote:
| And those incorrect arguments can be listed and directly
| refuted.
| zbyte64 wrote:
| By the time they have been refuted there's a stack of new
| arguments. Checkmate atheists.
| yodelshady wrote:
| By sane people, they already have been. I have no need or
| desire to "engage with" the idea the Holocaust is a good way
| to control population (not a hypothetical, that's on the
| front page as I visited).
|
| That's not rational debate, "marketplace of ideas", or
| whatever you want to call it. It's screeching until everyone
| else realises there's nothing to gain from being there, and
| leaves.
| mancerayder wrote:
| That's true, but that's the price we pay for open discussion.
| I'll take faulty logic that needs correction over a Philosopher
| King-style oversight. Because I don't trust oversight not on
| the question of the Earth's shape, but rather on controversial
| or grey areas where Fact Checkers might be tempted to feel are
| in scope for correcting.
| panchoviz wrote:
| I agree, but maybe the flat earthers need to see how their
| argument doesn't hold up to logic from the other side.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Have you ever tried to argue with someone who is into
| conspiracy theories?
|
| One of my former best friends went down the deep end. It
| started with 9/11 conspiracies and just spiralled down from
| there.
|
| I engaged with him, because I care deeply about him, but it
| just got worse and worse. Initially it was 9/11 and questions
| about wealth and power distribution and there are some valid
| questions that can be asked (although all the 9/11 stuff is
| bonkers). It soon became crazier and crazier, it was about
| "energy from the vacuum" (essentially a code-word for
| perpetual motion), how Gates is trying to sterilize the
| population through vaccination.
|
| The irony was that he was seeing himself as a freedom fighter
| who is speaking the truth to prevent the next fascist regime,
| completely ignoring that many of the people he followed or
| supported were literal Nazis.
|
| Engaging with him was not possible. He would bombard me with
| links that somehow were supposed to proof his point. If I
| brought up counterarguments, he would say that he has strong
| evidence that one can not believe mainstream media, science,
| logic ... And that I'm just a sheep blindly following
| "propaganda" and he knows better.
|
| There was absolutely no way of getting through to him or
| engaging in any kind of discussion. This was just his
| monologues and flooding me links (many I suspect he did not
| even read/watch).
|
| In the end I had to cut contact, because it was affecting me
| mentally, the interactions would just leave me exhausted
| angry and incredibly sad.
|
| I don't have a solution, we need to somehow find a way of how
| people can be drawn into these crazy web of conspiracies and
| I don't think that creating forums were these crazy things
| are debated like they are valid opinions is an answer.
| prohobo wrote:
| That only happens if they are engaged in healthy discussion.
| A flame war separated into two columns isn't that.
| Freaken wrote:
| At a certain point, people get in this so deep that it
| becomes a religion, and unfortunately logic doesn't help in
| these cases.
| smt88 wrote:
| Flat earthers are not going to change their minds based on
| logic. They are bombarded with evidence and logic any time
| they mention their beliefs. Contrary information often
| entrenches their wrong beliefs even further.
| iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote:
| A bigger challenge is that arguments on issues are often
| actually a proxy for some deeper cause: climate change debates
| ostensibly are about science, but seem mostly about whether we
| redistribute wealth or exercise control over people. Same with
| e.g. wearing masks. People try to craft arguments based on
| science, but the science is almost as irrelevant as it is
| obvious, the real question people are debating is perspective
| on how government can limit freedom.
|
| People like to hide behind "science says this" because there is
| usually objective science available, but science provides facts
| about cause and effect, not priorities, which is what leads to
| debate, and often blatant distortion of facts. I think a bigger
| challenge than presenting both sides of an argument is actually
| getting to the core of what is being debated.
| Nowado wrote:
| Or worse cases, where there's more than 2 sides and design
| decision stops you from noticing it.
| zbyte64 wrote:
| My family was surprised by the insurrection because the two
| sides presented didn't consider that a realistic possibility.
| But if one was to listen to leftist podcasts covering the IDW
| (Intellectual Dark Web) then it's far less surprising.
| Manufacturing consent is real.
| mistermann wrote:
| Can you expand on what you mean by this?
| jjj123 wrote:
| Not the OP but I had the same thought.
|
| I get frustrated by the "both sides" presented by
| mainstream media like the NYT, CNN, etc. it's always
| democrats on one side, republicans on the other, as if
| there's not an entire political spectrum that expands
| beyond those two.
|
| The effect is it limits the "allowed" perspectives to
| within those two bounds. This is often exploited by those
| in power to control the bounds of possibility (that's the
| manufacturing consent part).
| Nowado wrote:
| 'pro and con' for case is a very strong design choice. What
| if it's an open problem. What if It's a wrong question,
| based on poor representation of the problem?
|
| I'm actually making tool for this exact same thing and the
| issue is most noticeable in kialo (which I argue is the
| same thing, with more mature UI). If you made all the
| research, conversations and planning to know, that
| answering this 'A or B' problem solves it, then Kialo (or
| that app) are perfectly fine tools. But most of the time
| people don't.
|
| https://www.loomio.org is another attempt at solving the
| same problem. It does provide some improvements, but also
| fails in interesting ways (mostly, I think, through not
| considering temporality very seriously).
| mistermann wrote:
| > 'pro and con' for case is a very strong design choice.
| What if it's an open problem. What if It's a wrong
| question, based on poor representation of the problem?
|
| Ok I see, and yes I agree.
|
| Although to me, I don't think this is necessarily as big
| of a problem as people _seem unable to stop_ making it
| out to be, which I tried to point out in my comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25904058
|
| As I see it, the _fundamental_ problem is the infinitely
| dimensional (recursively self-referencing, paradoxical,
| etc) nature of reality. A "right way" to model it is
| impossible - the best we can do is try to find a "good
| enough" (across all variables) approach, acknowledge (and
| gather opinions on) where we have fallen short and could
| improve, and iterate as you go. Kind of like life itself,
| "coincidentally".
|
| In the super short run, even adding a "middle" column
| would be a huge improvement.
|
| > I'm actually making tool for this exact same thing and
| the issue is most noticeable in kialo (which I argue is
| the same thing, with more mature UI). If you made all the
| research, conversations and planning to know, that
| answering this 'A or B' problem solves it, then Kialo (or
| that app) are perfectly fine tools. But most of the time
| people don't.
|
| > https://www.loomio.org is another attempt at solving
| the same problem. It does provide some improvements, but
| also fails in interesting ways (mostly, I think, through
| not considering temporality very seriously).
|
| I think this is the most interesting (and largely
| unrecognized) niche out there - in no small part due to
| the obvious inherent complexity and no obvious business
| model, but I feel like those may not even be the main
| reason - I truly that this space is "hard to see" for
| most people.
|
| As for design of your product, what do you think of these
| pie-in-the-sky ideas (from the link above):
|
| > I think that approaches like this website are a not yet
| a perfect solution, but it feels like a step in the right
| direction. An improved implementation would have some
| clever means of allowing a crowd-sourced decomposition of
| the issue into it's constituent entities and behaviors,
| graphically displayed in some magical way to maximize the
| likelihood of everyone seeing the big picture free from
| misunderstanding, which "all" parties could agree upon
| (no agreement means more refinement is needed) and refer
| to in their arguments (so we're all talking about the
| same thing), and arguments/thinking could take place with
| precision (attached to the the specific entities and
| behaviors where the true disagreement resides).
|
| > A lot of people may have a strong aversion to this
| approach as it would turn easy argumentation into a
| painstakingly laborious & pedantic process, which is a
| natural consequence of using slow but accurate cognitive
| processing, rather than fast but unreliable heuristic
| processing (the root problem in the first place).
| Arguments under such a methodology would also more
| closely resemble the scientific method, or systems
| analysis in software (where one does not simply throw
| together an analysis and insist that it is 100% free of
| material flaws).
|
| So if you take Trophi as a working prototype, could we
| add a _second phase_ onto an argument, where "someone
| smart and unbiased" goes through all the arguments, and
| decomposes them into some "proper" representation,
| essentially comprehensively aggregating all the distinct
| points made in the arguments into a master summary,
| ideally with some sort of a "properly representational
| structure" between all the points. Perhaps then, in a
| phase 3, there could be voting &/or further discussion on
| this summary, the results of which would be passed back
| through phase 2 to expand and refine the model, also
| noting where _genuine_ disagreement remains (
| _specifically where_ in the complex, multidimensional
| model), and this process is repeated _indefinitely_ - and
| when some new event occurs in reality, then that could be
| run through this very same process, updating the
| _multiple related models_ based on the results of the
| process.
|
| Obviously this is an incredibly ambitious idea, and is
| fraught with difficulties ( _gosh, why is reality so darn
| complicated!!_ ), but even a half-assed version of it
| might provide some value - and, perhaps along the way,
| the true nature of reality might slowly start to dawn on
| some people, which plausibly might improve the
| performance of the participants in the overall process,
| _recursively over time_.
| MockObject wrote:
| There may be more than two sides to a question posed on
| this website, but the site only offers two columns.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Indeed. I notice "The Holocaust could be used as population
| control" has appeared on the list.
|
| Just because a human can put together a thought, doesn't make
| it good.
| mistermann wrote:
| I would say that this very common phenomenon of people
| _rhetorically /cognitively framing_ disagreements between
| people as "both sides", which seems to be commonly interpreted
| (and I assume, _intended_ ) as something like "the 'wrong' side
| is asserting that these things are 'equivalent/identically
| equal', which is obviously not true, and therefore their entire
| argument can be dismissed" is _poisoning reality_.
|
| I think that approaches like this website are a not yet a
| perfect solution [1], but it feels like a step in the right
| direction. An improved implementation would have some clever
| means of allowing a crowd-sourced decomposition of the issue
| into it's constituent entities and behaviors, graphically
| displayed in some magical way to maximize the likelihood of
| everyone seeing the big picture free from misunderstanding,
| which "all" parties could agree upon (no agreement means more
| refinement is needed) and refer to in their arguments (so we're
| all talking about the same thing), and arguments/thinking could
| take place _with precision_ ( _attached_ to the the _specific_
| entities and behaviors where the true disagreement resides).
|
| A lot of people may have a strong aversion to this approach as
| it would turn easy argumentation into a painstakingly laborious
| & pedantic process, which is a natural consequence of using
| _slow but accurate_ cognitive processing, rather than _fast but
| unreliable_ heuristic processing (the root problem in the first
| place). Arguments under such a methodology would also more
| closely resemble the scientific method, or systems analysis in
| software (where one does not simply throw together an analysis
| and _insist_ that it is 100% free of material flaws).
|
| See also:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903747 The First result
| for me (https://www.trophi.com/page/600eb2036c0b5800157eb041)
| is proof why _this idea of "all opinions are equal_ and should
| be given equal opportunity to be heard" is bunk.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903962 I don't see the
| point of this platform being to coddle inferior points of view
| by elevating them to _faux equal footing_.
|
| This logically flawed "both sides" _heuristic_ has become
| extremely broadly distributed through the system. It very
| commonly makes an _explicit appearance_ in culture war
| arguments, and it is surely invisibly participating in
| cognitive processing even where it does not make a visible
| appearance.
|
| I wonder how many of these bug-ridden heuristics are out there
| in the wild (there are several others present in this thread
| already, with only 36 comments), messing up execution for
| reasons that are not apparent from the UI perspective? If you
| think of reality as a system (which it technically is) that you
| had been hired to debug and fix, how might one go about
| locating all/most instances of such bugs, and then how would
| you fix them, considering we do not have direct access to the
| source code, but rather can only "write" to it via the api's
| that have been made available to us?
|
| [1] Someone points out that a _sub-component of_ a more
| elaborate platform already exists:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25904525
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map
|
| I expect most of the necessary components already exist as
| features embedded in other platforms, if they could all be
| mashed up together into a new "Collective Cognition" platform
| of some sort, I think we'd have something really useful on our
| hands.
|
| The biggest missing piece that I can see is a means (a user
| interface for) decomposing complex problem spaces, and then
| (more difficultly), a way to visually(?) represent this high
| dimensional space that is understandable to a very broad cross-
| section of people (in the shorter run, even something that only
| "smarter" people could understand would be a good start).
|
| _Does anyone know of any existing systems out there for the
| "visual" representation of highly dimensional spaces, in a
| manner that makes it easy/easier to understand for teams_? UML,
| sequence diagrams, etc are the only approaches I have any
| awareness of.
| MockObject wrote:
| The argument does have two sides, even though one side has
| loads of evidence and the other doesn't.
|
| The other side doesn't just go away. It's kept away by constant
| refutation.
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