debator

Mmm...impartial curation is certainly difficult to find online. I also wonder how it is in today's political climate compared with 10 years ago - even with teachers. Probably the biggest challenge to the whole concept. I think any system needs to be designed without a reliance on such an authority. But then all you have is some kind of voting or reputation system. How do you develop a karma system optimized for impartiality - that's something for me to sleep on.

> people would be teamed up so as to collaboratively come up with the strongest argument against their own beliefs.

Awesome idea. Will definitely think on this!

Haha. Handling commonly repeated argument forms would be a good feature. Instead of a lengthy comment, just click the "fire in a crowded theater" rebuttal and save everyone some time.

> I don't think it's possible anymore to have thoughtful, intelligent political discussions online with both sides.

I agree. And that makes it a problem worth solving. I just feel deeply that there is the right UX, and moderation knobs to tweak that can bring it back from the brink.

But you'll be back the next day. Can you be banned without the chamber voting on it in some way?

> Personally, I just acknowledge the selfish motive and use debating as a tool for bringing out ideas from others that I might not have thought of myself, so that I can then incorporate those ideas into my own mental framework of the topic.

I think that is most people's motive though and it can be mutually beneficial. I think there is an innate satisfaction in acquiring new knowledge or a new perspective. And the applications of this can be very wide-reaching.

> "what would someone gain from getting convinced about some specific statement?"

If you can bring someone in from a political extreme then that is making the world a better place.

What we need is people to be properly incentivized to win whilst arguing the opposing view. From this exercise you will come to understand your opponents view perfectly.

But its a difficult exercise to do without the proper incentive. You can't just say "congrats you won...because the side you had is right". You have to want to win. You would be forced to empathize with the other's situation.

For me, lack of understanding of the other side's argument is the biggest problem with discourse today.

Thanks for the link to arguman. Looks really interesting.

I'm not the biggest fan of the visual tree and would prefer people not to stray from plain text entry as much as possible - but maybe of course this is not possible!

> you don't know who you are arguing with and you don't know what positions they actually hold.

Good point. A lot of argumentation comes down to whether the arguments they make are consistent across similar arguments they make.

Knowing who they are I think is less important.

> Now if you just want to bring back the old art of rethoric instead of the negatively charged "political debates". You may have a bit more chance.

This is the idea.

> I think that's for the best, there are places other than HN to talk politics.

Such as? I struggle to find a neutral place to have an intellectual debate. Many reddits are very restrictive and because of the polarization of the US, its very difficult to find a place where mods can be neutral.

HN is such an intelligent and well-read community and it seems like there are a lot of people who would love to debate but plain text back and forth with ad-hoc moderation prevent it.

Wouldn't it be great though if there was such a platform where you could lose your cool with someone without having to be banned, moderated, etc. The ad-hominem part of the argument would be simply flagged as such. Kind of like Westminster parlimentary debate - insults fly all the time, but no one can be cancelled or banned.

Yep, its always "you need to read this to understand", or here is a statistic that proves my point.

> I think in-person can be good for very high level arguments,

Its good for exploration. But there needs to be trust between the parties in that no-one is trying to one-up the other or win some argument - this makes people defensive. Also arguing in front of others can cause this defensive effect as well.

> My grandmother (RIP) said in her youth (1930s), they didn't know how their neighbor voted, how their teachers voted, and they might not even know how their spouse voted. I like that.

100%. You want to maximize as many opportunities for people to get along with each other as much as possible despite their differences. People's views will change and evolve over time and very rarely from intimidation or pressure.

> What I really want is for more people to make good faith efforts to make substantive arguments against their own opinions

Agree! A big cause of the divide is that people don't understand each other's arguments.

When you are in a debate club, the side you have to debate for is decided by a coin flip. And there is no better way to truly understand the other point of view than when you try your hardest to win a debate arguing for something you disagree with.

> and learn to recognize the usage of fallacies

Yep, this is exactly the driver behind the idea.

> dispassionate impartial curation

Could you please explain this?