Show HN: A new platform for meaningful, balanced debates | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A new platform for meaningful, balanced debates

saysaw.org

50 pointsadrianmacneil45 comments

Interesting experiment. Here's a thought: what if users could break down arguments into smaller "atomic" propositions (yes, this is somewhat inspired by the now defunct philosophy of Logical Atomism).

For example, taken from an actual debate on Saysaw about policing cyber-bullying:

"In theory, yes - but in practice, no. How on earth would we judge what an acceptable thing to say or post actually is? Do we have a mean-tweet checklist? Besides, if people aren't being mean in one place, they'll do it in another - that's the internet for you. People should just learn that their words, in whichever forum or situation they are said, have the power to upset or offend people."

This person's argument seems to consist of a few assertions, themselves debatable (in the literal sense of "can be debated on Saysaw"). These include:

1) We cannot have a reliable method for determining the "acceptability" of content

2) Censoring a bully in one channel of communication will lead them to continue bullying in another

These assumptions could be spun out into their own Saysaw debates, and these debates could be linked to other arguments on the site that use them as a premise. This would provide a rough way to estimate the plausibility of an argument: how much are its premises supported?

This may also have the effect of helping people to drill down to the core of a disagreement. A lot of debates are unproductive because people don't seem to understand what they're actually disagreeing about. Providing an avenue for breaking an argument down into its components may make it easier to locate the actual point(s) of contention.

Anyway, this is just brainstorming... not necessarily a workable system but something to think about.

I agree, if you're going to automate debate, you really need to have your software comprehend what an argument is. I have a design in my head of such a system that I've been wanting to develop for years but have never put it at the front of my priorities. Last time I was pondering implementing it, I looked around online and was disappointed to see that there were about 5 attempts to do structured arguing as a web service, but they were all FAR too informal and unstructured. I don't want a place to chat and type out paragraphs of pros. I want some hardcore step-by-step argumentation! Might as well talk about it, though, as it's interesting.

I'd go back to basics. Take Logic by W C Salmon (http://www.ditext.com/salmon/logic.html) and treat is a user spec. What you want, I think, is a way to structure arguments and catalog them like a wiki. So you have these things that people can interact with:

1. A premise

2. A conclusion

3. An argument

If I'll be allowed to model the data with Haskell data types to give a more formal description:

data Claim = Claim Text

data Premise = Axiom Claim | Conclusion Argument

data Argument = Argument [Premise] Claim

In more verbose English: an Argument is a list of Premises and a final conclusion which is some plain-text Claim. Claims are either facts or axioms that are taken as read. A Premise is either an Axiomatic claim or a Conclusion from another argument.

Only one conclusion can be drawn in an argument at once. If you want to make compound arguments that draw multiple conclusions, that's where the duplicity of a Premise comes in. It is either a plain-text claim, or a reference to another argument's conclusion that has been made earlier.

So putting that into practice:

humans_mortal_claim = Claim "All humans are mortal."

men_humans_claim = Claim "All men are humans."

men_mortality_argument = Argument [humans_mortal_claim ,men_humans_claim] (Claim "All men are mortal.")

Given those claims and argument I can construct a new argument:

plato_manhood_claim = Claim "Plato is a man."

plato_mortality_argument = Argument [plato_manhood_claim ,men_mortality_argument] (Claim "Plato is mortal.")

It's very simple, but it models the argument perfectly -- BUT, with the flexibility of simple English. You don't have to learn first-order logic here or try to parse the English into some formal representation (although I am currently working on such a library for Haskell: http://chrisdone.com/posts/attempto-controlled-english).

Now, that's the data model. The UI would be to represent arguments as squares on the screen consisting of a list of premises that you can add to and a final conclusion. When you add a premise, you can either pick from a catalogue of existing axioms/facts, or choose from existing conclusions of other arguments. The conclusion is a plain text field where you make an original, new claim, derived from the premises.

But how do you make use of it and deal with real-world contention? So, when someone proposes an argument, I have a set of UI features to help me accept or refuse it. First, I have to go through each of the premises one by one and accept them. If they refer to conclusions of arguments I've already reviewed and accepted before, then they will be pre-accepted. Finally, I decide at the end whether THE PREMISES SUPPORT THE CONCLUSION, and NOT, whether I agree with the conclusion as-is (e.g. I can argue that the moon is made of cheese with valid argumentation, even though it is known to be false).

So you decide that, indeed, the premises support the conclusion, so you mark the argument as valid. HOWEVER, the argument is ONLY accepted if you marked all the premises as accepted. Because, as Salmon clearly states, an argument's conclusion is only considered true if all the premises that support it are true. Indeed, the opposite case may be true: you accept the conclusion, but the argument is invalid. This is the difference between argumentative validity and existential truth.

I believe dealing with both, and being explicit about it, is very handy. In one case pointing them out in the negative is helpful to avoid error. In the other case, saying "I agree with the conclusion even though the argument is invalid to me" or "I don't agree with the conclusion/one of the premises, but the argument itself is valid" is a good way to give encouragement to opponents, that you're not wholesale saying "you're just WRONG". You're saying "this part is not quite acceptable to me, but this part is okay, we just need to work on this bit before I can accept it."

So it may be and should regularly be the case that e.g.

1. I accept all the premises in this argument, but the argument is invalid or incomplete.

2. I accept none or only some of the premises, but the argument itself is valid.

3. I accept none of the premises, but the conclusion I accept.

Now, let's consider the cases of decisions made by a reviewer:

1. Argument is valid, conclusion accepted: this is perfect. This argument can now be considered part of the accepting user(s) knowledge-base.

2. Argument is valid, one or more premises not accepted: more work is needed. The user needs to contest one of the premises and start a new, separate argument, but linked to this premise, to address/resolve it. Some first-class support could be available, like a button to say "Please cite this premise with a source". And the user would get a notification saying "someone wants a citation", or whatever.

3. Argument is invalid: the user needs to start a separate argument to resolve it. One nice feature of the UI could be to select from a list of formal fallacies which the argument exhibits, each of which would have links describing what the fallacy entails. This would help users arguing sincerely to overcome fallacies.

4. Argument is valid, premises accepted, conclusion not accepted: the user has made a mistake in assessing the premises and the argument. You can't have an argument in which all the (accepted) premises support the conclusion, and yet disagree with the conclusion, if you're being sincere. There could be some helpful links about argument structure here.

People would just submit arguments and axiomatic claims into the ether, and other people can come along and accept them or reject them as part of their own personal knowledge-base. I think you would have to distinguish between public and personal "knowledge". It would be like Github, you fork people's arguments/claims by accepting them.

I'm not sure that this would be as awesome as I think it would be, because it'd require a great deal of sincerity. Just thinking about using it rules out a lot of contentious debates which are in essence people expressing their feelings rather than trying to reach the truth. However, it would certainly be an efficient way to nail down precisely where you disagree with someone, because you'd be able to point it out, in the UI. This here, this precise premise I do not accept. And either you both could split it off and argue that premise or just leave cancel the whole debate. Ultimately, it could be a nice knowledge-base. And a way for people who normally wouldn't know the first thing about arguing effectively to, with the AID of the system, develop an intuition for the structure of a decent, honest argument. I'd really try to downplay any "voting" aspect that gives credence to popularity. That would be my dream.

Sorry for spamming your face off. I'll keep this comment for later if I eventually go ahead and implement this.

This gets into something that I think derails a lot of debate when dealing with people of faith. Most people, including religious people, try to argue as if both sides of the argument are starting with the same assumptions, when they're really not. If they accept the same premises for a specific argument, then sure, they can have a meaningful debate about it, but if they don't, and they very frequently don't when it comes to debates involving people of different faiths (including atheism for the sake of semantic convenience), then the debate will just be a shouting match. This idea is often referred to as presuppositionalism, that people have fundamentally different, and frequently irreconcilable, ways of looking at the world, and any argument where the arguers have different presuppositions is therefore futile.

This is relevant, because it seems that the system you propose would make presuppositions very explicit, which would help people with different presuppositions to realize why they are disagreeing instead of just yelling at each other till they go hoarse. It sounds like a very cool system, and I'd love to see it in action.

I think it was a long time ago that I discussed a similar tool with friends (essentially a way of mapping out an argument, and listing out premises/arguments/conclusions). The feedback I got most often:

"Yeah that would be cool, but that feels like a chore, and I wouldn't really use it".

I wish sawsay the best of luck, and some points to perhaps keep in mind:

- Make the platform fun. This is going make or break the service -- at-least for popular use.

- Spend a lot of time iterating/evolving the UX so what is essentially a hard task, is broken naturally into very simple parts.

Woah! This would be so cool. So here's my tl;dr of this:

A post would include:

- Premise (a set of aximotic claims, or previous conclusions from other posts)

- A list of arguments.

The reply to this, would:

- point out which premise you disagree with

- Add new premises (which may invalidate previous arguments)

- Add new arguments based on your premises

We can also perhaps maintain a global pool of premises for that debate so when a new comer comes in, he can look at all the points raised by everyone, and taking them into account, post his or her own argument. Perhaps premises maybe remove-able from this pool if a consensus is reached that it is invalid (or perhaps when the original poster is convinced, and he or she chooses to retract it).

Did i get it right?

Interesting ideas - definitely going to give this more thought. Saysaw wasn't initially intended to be such a formal process as this would alienate the majority of users (I can imagine my mum trying to use StackOverflow), but theres definitely value in something along the lines of what you described. It would be a completely different audience & business model though, probably similar to stackoverflow's, and would probably take a bit more than a week to build :-) Email info@saysaw.org if you want to discuss more

Wow, please do go ahead and make it happen :) I'd love to contribute to such a project.

I actually came here to say this. This breaking-down process to turn complex arguments into a tree of simple statements that can be debated more objectively and with less controversy was the core of a similar platform that existed a few years ago, but which has since been discontinued, called Ideagraph.

I collected all the remains of the website I could find some weeks ago here: http://imgur.com/a/bAmcV. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a web archive version.

I've been hoping the concept would surface again, and this Saysaw is quite close, but doesn't take the concept of distributed debate quite as far.

EDIT: To be perfectly clear, since the blurbs in the link above make no mention of the working mechanism of the site: Ideagraph worked by allowing each statement to be voted up or down, or subdivided into its component ideas. This could happen multiple times, creating a deep tree structure, where only leaf nodes could be voted on; the score of the parent nodes would be automatically calculated from its children, all the way to the top (the high-level arguments). Also, any node could be linked to another part of the tree, which they describe as "Facts concluded in one debate by one group of people are reused in other debates." The whole thing was built on top of MediaWiki, to provide the wiki features of distributed editing, edit history, etc. (and also because the idea came from an attempt to improve Wikipedia discussions). But mediawiki obviously that wasn't the ideal platform to build such a system, and I believe it's one of the reasons the project was eventually discontinued.

Thanks md224, yes thats a great idea, something like you described is being planned right now. Definitely a challenge to implement well while keeping it an easy/fun/accessible interface. Typical users would get totally lost in something like stackoverflow.

This is an awesome idea! I like thinking of arguments/debates as almost like a logical/mathematical argument (thanks to a lot of people, but most recently Day9 of Starcraft community fame) and this would make that explicit and therefore quite cool, in my opinion.

I've had this exact same thought process come back several times over the years, like an itch that ought to be scratched, but I haven't ever been able to nail down how I think the interface should actually work to facilitate the idea.

Yes I think it would be cool if debates could be broken into smaller issues which faced off against each other. See also http://idebate.org/debatabase

I have thought about this before and came to the same conclusion. If you want a serious debate site, then you have to dig deeper to resolve the finer points that make up a broader issue.

Ah another Opinion Network™[0][1]

Serious criticism - what's the goal of these sites? What problems are they solving?

Debates and opinions are, in my opinion, eternal. (high user engagement ya!) My understanding is that these sites want to collectively either catalog the debate (so the debate becomes eternally dynamic) or end the debate (so the debate becomes static). However there is one flaw - without full context (or lack of missing context), trying to catalog subjectivity is near impossible.

To contrast this with StackOverflow for example, the context is less important. If someone says "ActiveRecord errors out for undefined local variable" and someone gives an answer, I can effectively take the same logic and apply to my own context. This is not the same for every subject in the world. Also, what Spolsky has correctly identified is that trying to be THE q&a for everything is a poor design decision, because the name (and thus environment of the community) adds to the context of the questioning. (try asking "What should my salary be" in StackOverflow and you'll be sent right to Programmers SE site).

Whenever I see these sites, my gut reaction will always be "wishful thinking". Good luck though!

[0]https://www.quora.com/

[1]https://state.com/

I agree with you that figuring out how to structure debates in an automated fashion is a Hard Problem, but that's not the only way a debate site can add value. Finding primary sources and extracting relevant information from them is such a difficult process that disturbingly few people do it, even though it really ought to be central to a good debate. Reducing friction in the resource-finding process, curating already-discovered relevant resources (one sentence summaries + search), figuring out a way to reward evidence-based arguments, and punishing fabrications would all be huge value-adds. The real trick, of course, is figuring out how to keep people at the lower end of the spectrum engaged.

I recently had the pleasant surprise of stumbling across procon.org, which appears to address some of those value-add categories (it looks curated, so there's still space for somebody to automate the process, thereby extending it to small or recent issues). I was investigating healthcare reform, so I landed here:

http://healthcarereform.procon.org

Pay particular attention to to "Projects" sidebar on the left. It's a goldmine of relevant quantitative information and the arguments surrounding their interpretation. This is what arguments should look like. Anyone who can figure out how to structure a forum system to organically generate something akin to the "Projects" sidebar might have a shot at making themselves a "citation hub" and becoming the Wikipedia of arguments.

The world doesn't need another opinion network, but it does need another way to argue, and such a site might arise out of an especially clever opinion network.

To be fair, HN is also an Opinion Network, so the same logic could be applied. People love to discuss things, and without experimentation with different formats, we would all still be using usenet (or sitting around a dinner table, which would arguably be better).

This was a personal project of a friend of mine though, hacked together in 5 days to learn Rails. So I believe it was less about "What problem is this solving?", and more "What would be a cool thing to build?".

Totally. Sorry if I detracted from your friend's development, but I thought a criticism over the explicit purpose of the site was important for the overall meta-discourse of this topic. Kudos to him or her for a job well done!

The site seems to encourage questions with simple yes/no answers, and to solicit sentence- or paragraph-length blurbs from commenters. Furthermore, since comments aren't obviously linked to the opposing statements that evoked them, it's hard to get a sense of dialog (as opposed to a bunch of people stating their opinions in a void). How likely is a meaningful, balanced exchange of views to proceed from that?

Indeed, I already see some signs of behavior that could lead to flame wars. One question begins, "Seatbelt fines are a joke...", which hardly seems likely to create an atmosphere of balanced, thoughtful comments. One comment on whether parents should be allowed to drug children on long flights advocates making it mandatory. Another question seems to be predicated on a news story (should a family get $200k?), but the context of the question is completely missing.

All good points @dmlorenzetti - bear in mind it was designed/built on zero budget in under a week so issues like you mention will take time to properly solve. The site is getting a lot of interest now so we'll hopefully have the resources to solve, or at least attempt to solve some of the more pressing conceptual issues.

I see the main barrier to developing a "platform for meaningful, balanced debates" as one of semantic clarity, not discourse-level organization.

I cannot truthfully answer most of the questions I see on the site, because they have variable answers depending on what amount of game theory I apply to my thought processes:

* 1-step strategy: I answer by interpreting the words and phrases in the question exactly how I, personally, define them, with no regard to how widespread an interpretation like mine is.

* 2-step strategy: I attempt to discern the majoritarian interpretation of the question and answer accordingly.

* 3-or-more-step strategy: I attempt to mix my own interpretations with majoritarian ones to answer in a way that will maximize the propagation of my actual view and all its nuances.

The third option, in this case, is leading me to eschew voting and commenting on the platform altogether.[1] Though I am glad that it's led me to organize my thoughts on this matter.

What I'd really like to see in a discussion platform is more tightly networked semantics. Something more powerful than straight hyperlinking. Something that automates the conversion of broadcast and multicast text blocks (like forum posts) into tailored unicast ones (like private messages). Something that gives each user the background and definition set they need to interpret the content accurately. An API for people -- a PPI?

I really don't know how to make this happen. Arguably it's the sociological question of the century, the P vs. NP of human interaction. Maybe even the best first step is a platform like Saysaw. It's hard to say. But right now, I feel like there hasn't been any real progress since email or phpBB.

[1] This is also what made me stop using OkCupid. If anyone wants to take these thoughts on discussion platforms and apply them to a new dating platform, that'd be fantastic.

It's a good point, that different interpretations of the same sentence can lead to pointless debate. Unfortunately, I guess the main way to improve semantic clarity around an argument would be with more information up front, which would simultaneously raise the barrier to entry. Right now Saysaw aims to boil complex issues down into something which can quickly and easily provide a general overview of public opinion.

Perhaps the answer is to allow 'splitting' an debate when it becomes clear that more than one issue is really being discussed. That would mean you could retain the simplicity and low barrier to entry, while avoiding situations where discussions get off topic.

> It's a good point, that different interpretations of the same sentence can lead to pointless debate.

I'd take it even further -- different interpretations of the same sentence always lead to pointless debate except to the extent that such debate is expressly aimed at maximizing mutual understanding of the semantic interpretations (rather than the derivative views) of all parties involved. The focus should be on dissolving the question[1], then opinion comes into the picture whenever dissolution fails.

> Unfortunately, I guess the main way to improve semantic clarity around an argument would be with more information up front, which would simultaneously raise the barrier to entry.

True. Right now the size of the discussion is inversely proportional to its complexity. I think we all overestimated how much that would change due to the architecture of the internet.

> Perhaps the answer is to allow 'splitting' an debate when it becomes clear that more than one issue is really being discussed. That would mean you could retain the simplicity and low barrier to entry, while avoiding situations where discussions get off topic.

It makes me really optimistic that your mind went directly to that. "Semantic threading" as a replacement to "people threading" is the core of what I'd like see in a discussion platform that actually hopes to achieve the goal of "meaningful, balanced debates".

Taking that to the extreme, I've long wanted a platform that takes the form of a single discussion, where structured branching and merging from various parts in the discussion makes a lot of the actual writing redundant. Though I'm not sure what sort of effects on motivation that would have -- people like to feel like they're contributing in a more substantive manner than "me too", and there's often an unwillingness to quote oneself which could dramatically slow down conversation when the community is still small. If I ever get around to specifying a protocol or building a service like that myself, I suspect that it would make the most sense to specify the protocol as an extension of git or build the service on top of github.

[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/

When I look at the page now, I see a number of leading, loaded talking points that—to me—are anything but balanced:

- The Winter Olympics is inherently elitist

- seatbelt fines are a joke - people should be responsible for their own safety

- Is it fair that a family should be given $200000 because their situation made for a good news story?

- Its ok for parents to drug their children on long flights

It's understandable that a site full of user-generated content is going to have some content that's detrimental or counter to the site's goals (in this case, fostering opinions that are "aware and respectful of the other side"[1]), but I would consider curating the front page so that stuff doesn't appear front and center to color a first impression.

[1]: https://www.saysaw.org/about

Definitely a good point itafroma. The idea is that people can post their own opinions that can be agreed or disagreed with, but you're right the homepage should be curated. I certainly don't agree with a lot of what's on there, but a good topic is one which gains interest and provokes a useful discussion.

Interesting idea, but it looks like it turns into just a vote, which doesn't work. A problem: even in the small positions, what if you agree with one part and not the other? Just in:

    >[1]Seatbelt fines are a joke - [2]people should be responsible for their own safety

I see multiple parts. Implicit is three: seat belts only affect your own safety. Maybe there could be a system where you can separate sub parts and debate them.

Edit: Sorry, I see md224 said something similar already.

Appreciate the feedback guys - i should be clear though that the site was designed & built by one developer (me) in one week with a total spend of around $90 on the ssl cert. more of an experiment initially but is evolving into potentially a new concept. Not necessarily trying to create the perfect architecture/semantics for a debate, more aiming to make it fun & constructive - a place where people can quickly see the best ofboth sides of a topic/argument. But as i say its still evolving

Nice job making the site!

I have seen a few examples of this sort of thing in the past. I think the term they tend to center around is "Argument Mapping" which is a technique that has a loosely-defined set of best practices. Judgments or Lemmas, counterpoints and rebuttals.

I also think they tend to be limited because while they display the structure of counterpoints, there isn't any attempt to actually be logical through boolean or causal logic - necessary and sufficient thinking.

Here is a youtube video showing an example of justifying a conclusion with actual causal logic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD9R89tCIM0#t=197

The conclusion is trivial (whether I should buy a MBP 15") but the structure is similar to what is discussed downthread here - logical atomism, conclusions being premises for further conclusions, counterpoints, etc.

I've been working on my own time on making a web-based tool that has somewhat related features, but it takes time since it requires tracking actual truth states of contentions.

If any off-HN discussion has started up from this thread, I'd like to participate.

It's an interesting concept. Reading some of the comments here, I think there's a fine line to tread between creating something which is too formal, structured and academic, and something which is too gimmicky and meaningless, and actually de-values people's opinions. There must be a middle ground here though - or are they mutually exclusive? There is a fundamental difference in an opinion and an argument, and I wonder if some of the formal aspects (i.e structure) of an argument could be utilised to make this a place for intelligent discussion, discouraging opinions which are just opinions. The ability to research and reference related content could be crucial here. On another note, would be interesting to be able to see the stats related to opinions/arguments easily - the data could provide some really interesting info, if enough users got on board.

Why must I share my gender to have an opinion?

Likely later provides interesting data.

Not the OP and only guessing, but I made a similar site 10+ years ago and initially incorporated questions about gender and age so I could show how opinions varied by age group, etc.

I ended up winding that back and the site became simpler but far less interesting as a result.

I guess a good compromise would be to make that decision optional and up to the user.

Quick feedback: I didn't immediately interpret the little diagrams as being a balance scale. Without reading the numbers, I was equating higher with better, rather than lower with heavier from the weight of votes.

Cool idea! Only critique is the lack of contrast makes it difficult to read

I also have difficulty reading this site.

I really don't understand why, if I sign in with Facebook, you need to access my friends list. So I tried to sign up without Facebook, and I don't understand why you requested I choose one of two genders, or that I need to choose any gender at all. Maybe those things are important for participation in a fair and balanced debate, but it was enough to discourage me from signing up at this time.

Sorry about this, we actually don't use your friends list at all, it's just part of the default Facebook permissions. Facebook connect is purely used to simplify signup/login and the site is never going to automatically post on your wall or contact your friends. There is actually a discussion re. gender fields here - https://www.saysaw.org/topics/48-web-services-should-not-ask... you may want to add to

I like it! The quality of the content would come, of course, from the ability of users to debate well. Constructing a well-formed argument is very much a learned skill.

My only criticism concerns the color scheme - it might be my monitor calibration, but there's just not enough contrast on the screen for me to easily follow the text. Everything's too light.

Reminds me of this: http://web.archive.org/web/20071219073644/http://jyte.com/

Back in the day when OpenID was still the future.

So delightfully Web 2.0.

To see how the average aesthetic of the web has changed, compare jyte, http://web.archive.org/web/20070622000055/http://janrain.com... and http://web.archive.org/web/20070620031338/https://pibb.com/ to http://janrain.com

I have friends who disagree (they come out of Palestine/Isreal) but I think most people are really about the Yankees vs. the Red Sox and putting things head to head leads to real user engagement.

Here's another one, pretty well done: http://www.naqeshny.com/?locale=en

Thanks bgnm, will increase the contrast. I built it in a week by myself so theres still a lot to do!

Hey adrianmacneil or ebyc1234 could you email me when you get a chance? somid3@gmail.com

wow, I really like this idea. Going to dig a bit deeper into it.

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