Show HN: Sequiturs – a platform for rigorous, digestible arguments | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Sequiturs – a platform for rigorous, digestible arguments

sequiturs.com

14 pointsihinsdale10 comments

I think this could be a great application to debate software technology choices or best practices, discussion types often locked on StackExchange sites as opinion-based [1].

Many discussions could benefit from the breakdown of arguments into individual premises like "this language supports concurrency natively" and "this language has been in production at X companies for Y years". And, since users can pose counter arguments, it's OK if different users end up at different conclusions.

[1] https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252854/why-doesnt-s...

Yes! I completely agree. Sequiturs is a great fit for these opinionated discussions that don't work in Stack Overflow's Q&A format.

Here's an example of debating a technology choice on Sequiturs: https://sequiturs.com/arguments/a-beginning-programmer-who-n...

I'm getting `NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID` when visiting, just fyi. (I didn't go beyond that, fwiw)

Woah. Thanks for the heads-up. I'm unable to reproduce that in Chrome or Firefox but I'll look into it. I ran the Qualys SSL test on sequiturs.com just yesterday and got an A+!

EDIT: I encountered a transient NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID a while back as well, actually. I've just replaced the Comodo cert I was using with one issued by Amazon. Would be very interested to know that it works for you now!

Appears to be loading happily now :)

Cool, thanks.

Creator of Sequiturs here. Very happy to receive your feedback and answer questions!

I'll pose a question to get things started:

What do you think of the argument format that Sequiturs uses, namely, a series of premises and conclusions?

I think this format has enormous value. It makes an argument much simpler to parse, compared to reading paragraphs, and if I disagree with the argument, I can easily express my disagreement by referencing the specific step(s) I disagree with. It has a lot of other neat advantages, such as allowing arguments to build upon each other, or to contradict each other, very precisely.

On the other hand, we're not all used to breaking arguments down into this format. You might be familiar with it if you took a philosophy or law class, but otherwise there's a bit of a learning curve. I believe the benefits of the format clearly outweigh this learning cost, but it's an open question what the market thinks about that.

I think it would help discuss validity of an argument very efficiently. I often find myself having to parse premises out of prose in order to express what I disagree with and as surprising as it sounds sometimes it gets difficult because the author might like being wordy.

Cool. On Sequiturs each step in an argument is called a proposition; a proposition can be used in an argument as either a premise or a conclusion. Propositions are sort of the atomic element of content on Sequiturs, since they can be reused across arguments. Soon, propositions will have their own pages, so that users can efficiently explore all the arguments where the proposition is used, as well as vote on whether the proposition is true or false and discuss that.

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