Debubble

by apsec112 • 6 years ago

241 92 6 years ago

ThouYS• 6 years ago

Interesting, would love to see some argument graphs included in this. Too often debates don't work because nobody is attacking the arguments, but just some stuff around them, anecdotes, insults, etc.

I would love to see some formalization of attacking an axiom vs attack what follows from that axiom. If you formalize arguments, users could pick if they disagree with the conjecture or what follows from it.

And in the end you could nicely display the entire argument as a graph showing who doesn't agree with what, what gets canceled out by what etc.

Kerrick2• 6 years ago

Isn't this the primary value proposition of Arguman? https://en.arguman.org/everything-in-the-universe-is-either-...

imustbeevil• 6 years ago

I wouldn't find value if arguments about the Confederate flag or the morality of eating meat ended in that level of nonsense.

We're trying to talk about reality in a way where we can make decisions about it. If only 63% of people can agree that "true != false" then it will be impossible to build any arguments on top of priors.

Pfhreak6• 6 years ago

That works fine for simple axioms, but how do you square where science and "popular" opinion differ? Eg, science is pretty clear there is a climate crisis caused by human activity, science is pretty clear that lgbtq+ people are valid, etc. But if you put those up for any sort of agree/disagree metrics it's gonna be a shit show.

People politicize everything right now. I have no idea how wearing a mask to avoid spreading a pandemic somehow became political, but here are.

concordDance6• 6 years ago

science is pretty clear that lgbtq+ people are valid

Um.

That is not a testable phrasing, so I would be immensely surprised if "science" actually said that.

Pretty much all LGBTQ stuff is a question of ethics/morals not facts, so science has nothing to say om the matter. It could turn out that being gay is triggered by a pathogen that would still have no bearing on whether gay marriage should be allowed.

GaryNumanVevo• 6 years ago

I'm sure Debubble.me means well, but misses the mark with respect to why people use Twitter. It's entertainment first and foremost. I would be interested to hear the creator's user research.

Framing every argument as a debate is disingenuous. A debate implies that both sides are of equal merit, debating only works between two people of similar values. I.E. if I'm debating a Nazi, it's hard to "debate" nearly anything in the sphere of politics because they do not believe all people are equal.

Third, what of debates that have largely been settled by consensus? Would a flat earther be able to enter into debates with me whenever I retweet a photo from NASA? Debating assumes that either side is going to play by a certain set of rules. How does this prevent a DDOS via Ad Hominem?

anonytrary2• 6 years ago

I agree that Twitter's main user segment is interested primarily in entertainment. A very small subset of users are actually interested in taking things into idealand. The majority of social tweets are memes, jokes, trolls, and hot takes with a "don't @ me" mentality. The people who want to talk about ideas are probably in private groups, niche subreddits, and forums, but that number at any time is certainly less than the number of people who are looking for entertainment.

sjwright3• 6 years ago

Unfortunately this is the dilemma of new construction: you have to entertain to survive, because nobody wants to talk in an empty room.

Kerrick2• 6 years ago

Even after signing up, I am unable to find any arguments to browse, star, or participate in.

toby• 6 years ago

Same. A matching site should at least seed with some content, I'm just staring at a blank screen.

teddyh2• 6 years ago

By limiting the length and number of responses, the debate is trivially vulnerable to the Gish gallop¹.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

thih93• 6 years ago

Gish gallop seems most effective in live debates and in discussions with limited third party interactions.

Online it should be possible to link a third party article that explains a misconception in detail. Or to request an independent fact check.

It probably won't make Gish gallop completely harmless, but hopefully it would reduce its effectiveness.

recursivecaveat• 6 years ago

The gish gallop is still extremely effective online, as you can see it in widespread use in almost every HN comments section. Simply quote every 3rd sentence of the source comment and reply with 'citation needed'. This takes 30 seconds and will tie up the other side for hours. When they finally collect a reputable source for every claim, just repeat with sample size, perceived bias of the publisher, or 'did they control for X?'. Even if they eventually untangle themselves from this web, you've won anyway because you framed the flame war about the truthfullness of the base facts and not their policy positions.

teddyh2• 6 years ago

Hyperlinks are, like most things, a two-edged sword.

If you allow hyperlinks, any Gish galloper could also use that to link to enormous texts of gallops with even more misinformation and half-truths.

stepstop• 6 years ago

But context is often lost and then incorrectly inferred. Twitter is one big misunderstanding.

This seems like a misunderstanding of the effect of Twitter. If you click on any individual tweet during a /x thread or debate, you'll see detestable and repugnant replies. People do not want to participate, they just want to criticize

putlake2• 6 years ago

From the name I assumed it was about breaking out of filter bubbles, which is something I'm very interested in. A couple of years ago I created a news mixer that pulled stories from left and right-leaning outlets and intermingled them: https://smashthebubble.com/

Since RSS is pretty much dead, it was hard to find the right feeds for US politics from each source. So you may see some non-political stories there from time to time.

tenuousemphasis• 6 years ago

This seems to make the mistake that by looking at two oppositely biased sources you can come to a reasonable conclusion about truth.

lucio• 6 years ago

at least you'll be aware of bubbles.

senderista• 6 years ago

Why would I want my news to be equal parts Breitbart and Daily Kos?

gurkendoktor• 6 years ago

Maybe the situation was different 35 minutes ago, but neither source is featured on the site. It actually looks pretty decent, but I shouldn't spend more time on US news.

putlake2• 6 years ago

Those aren't among the sources. The sources are listed here: https://smashthebubble.com/about

(National Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, Politico, RealClearPolitics, NewsMax, ThinkProgress, Hot Air, Talking Points Memo, Quillette, The Atlantic)

washicalendar3• 6 years ago

This is my problem with these efforts to get people out of their “bubble.”

I am on the left end of the American political spectrum. I’d Vote Blue no matter what because the other side is too far gone, to the point where it’s not even worth my time or energy to even begin to understand that side. For me, it’s just objectively wrong.

“My” team believes in science. The other team believes that there are shadow forces in the government who control everything and that people on “my” side are devil worshiping pedophiles who believe that my skin color makes me a lesser person or that my Jewish friends are trying to “replace” them.

What’s the point in leaving my bubble?

dcow2• 6 years ago

I’ve been sketching out ideas for a tool that tries to solve the online discussion problem, too. The conclusion I have come to is that you need to actually have a minimum word requirement in addition to a limit. I like the idea of rounds but have always felt structured debate was easily game-able. I think there also needs to be some form of moderation, whether managed or community, whereby interested volunteers can help guide the course of the argument if it starts devolving. I would love to try this tool but I don't use twitter ):

chrisco255• 6 years ago

Ditto. If there is no email sign-up I will not sign up.

Fogest• 6 years ago

This project in discussion is using Twitter so you do require an email and more.

Joeri• 6 years ago

I’ve been thinking for a while along similar lines for a discussion platform, but came to a different conclusion. I think the trick is turning weakness into strength. People really want to fight, they want to make bold statements, and they don’t want to take the time to read or write long nuanced arguments. What if you made something that leaned into that?

I was thinking about a CMV sort of site where you can tweet a reply to a view in support or in disapproval, sorting automatically in two halves of the page, and people can like those tweets. It would allow the strongest pro/con arguments from either side to bubble to the top, and the short length of a tweet and inability to chain multiple together would require succinct and single arguments. The site would rank views by recent replies, which would reward controversy with attention and draw out more responses.

searchableguy2• 6 years ago

The site would rank views by recent replies, which would reward controversy with attention and draw out more responses

How will you stop it from becoming 4chan in a different layout?

flir2• 6 years ago

At this point I'd be much more interested in a tool designed by someone who was an expert in dispute resolution - a relationship counsellor, say. Something that emphasizes points of similarity to build on them, not points of difference to amplify them.

"Debate" is entirely the wrong model. It's about winners and losers. How about a tool for dialogue?

dcow2• 6 years ago

Yup, I’m interested in the policy direction. Assuming a good tool existed, could we use such a tool to drive policy decisions? I think part of the solution is reconnecting people with a channel for political agency.

sethammons• 6 years ago

Look into “non-violent communication.” From their website:

Through the practice of NVC, we can learn to clarify what we are observing, what emotions we are feeling, what values we want to live by, and what we want to ask of ourselves and others. We will no longer need to use the language of blame, judgment or domination. We can experience the deep pleasure of contributing to each others' well being.

I’m most definitely not a self-help book person. A colleague and friend at work introduced me to the book. I found it very convincing for a way to approach communication in a way that tries to make all parties better.

thih93• 6 years ago

I enjoyed the demo debate on the landing page and I'd like to see more.

Are there any examples of this being used by actual users?

searchableguy2• 6 years ago

I like the design of the site. It's simple and easy to follow. I would appreciate if you had more login options and examples than simply twitter. I don't see an option to edit the title or delete a debate/point. I think it would be reasonable to give people option to bury the debate or change the course within a reasonable time period.

Why debubble won't work: https://debubble.me/opi6znpcml

Social media is a net positive: https://debubble.me/axyrntvh4e

Let's debate or debubble?

mrfusion2• 6 years ago

Great idea!

Somewhat offtopic but I’d like to see videos of average or below educated, hyper partisan people debating. I feel like it would be enlightening for people with strong opinions.

aahhahahaaa• 6 years ago

I've watched a lot of congressional debates and I don't think it's very enlightening at all.

mrfusion2• 6 years ago

Someone on HN made a site called “how truthful”. I thought that was a good idea too. Two people create one to debate a topic and they drill down into each fact until they get to something they agree on.

I can’t seem to find it now. It seemed like a good idea.

Edit: found it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21687403. (The video probably explains it best https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=PXvU1h44jVw)

jsf01• 6 years ago

This seems like a good approach. Often we either have a different set of underlying assumptions/facts or different axioms. For the former case, the “how truthful” approach makes a lot of sense.

doc_gunthrop2• 6 years ago

It's far too common for civility to be lost in an online argument. A platform like Debubble may do well to include a reference to Graham's hierarchy of disagreement[1] to keep a debate from going off the rails.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(programmer)#Graha...

Pfhreak6• 6 years ago

Civility is often used as a cudgel against the disadvantaged. Maybe someone lacks the upbringing, or is experiencing emotional distress, or had difficulty articulating their ideas for any reason. While I agree that avoiding ad hominem attacks is good, I don't feel that emotionally charged arguments are bad, for instance.

It's super important to be specific about what 'civil' means, who gets to define it, and who gets to decide when their opponent is being 'uncivilized'.

doc_gunthrop2• 6 years ago

Civility in this case would refer to where the argument being made can be classified in the hierarchy of disagreement. The closer to the top of the pyramid, the more civil the debater's stance.

concordDance6• 6 years ago

I've never seen emotionally charged arguments result in a change of view, just new enemies.

Emotionally charged arguments also seem to always involve rhetoric rather than logic.

adamsea• 6 years ago

Seems like the people who need this the most are the least likely to use it.

brandonmenc• 6 years ago

Have you ever tried to follow or, God forbid, participate in a debate on Twitter or any social network or online forum?

Not for many years because - to paraphrase the comedian Norm Macdonald - social media posts are the equivalent of bathroom graffiti.

imo the medium itself is the problem, and no amount of external tooling will fix that.

devwastaken• 6 years ago

Debate doesn't do well in vague topics and the internet. If you care about the truth then you debate people that have the knowledge you're disagreeing with. That's difficult online because it turns into a sourcefest, where each party just gives links and you have no time to be sorting through that information, nor the expertise necessary to understand it. Like any time psychology studies are brought out. Theres so much work involved in getting to the truth.

I like the idea of how civil courts work with evidence. Each party has weeks to prepare refutal to the other, and no one can communicate with the judge without the other party present.

nihil75• 6 years ago

I'm going to stop clicking on "cryptic" one-word HN posts.

FailMore• 6 years ago

As someone who has promoted debubble in other HN comments [1], I thought I'd share my own discussion platform I'm building too:

Taaalk (https://taaalk.co/) is less focused around debate, and more around exploring topics:

E.g. OCD: https://taaalk.co/t/exploring-obsessive-compulsive-disorder Eating disorders: https://taaalk.co/t/discussing-eating-disorders Bitcoin: https://taaalk.co/t/bitcoin-maxima-other-crypto-things Flag design: https://taaalk.co/t/the-power-and-significance-of-flags Chess: https://taaalk.co/t/how-to-think-about-chess Psychedelics & Mental Health: https://taaalk.co/t/falling-inward-discussing-the-role-of-ps...

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23728449

aabbcc1241• 6 years ago

Can I just signup with email/username and password? Why require social auth?

laughinghan5• 6 years ago

IMHO this largely only solves problems caused by Twitter's idiosyncratic design, and does little for the deeper problems that cause debates to be toxic.

Much more interesting would be a debate format in two phases:

Phase 1: just identify what we agree and disagree about. Are there things we actually agree about but are using different words for? Are we using the same words to mean different things? Are there two competing concerns we accuse each other of denying, when we actually both agree on them and are just valuing them differently?

The goal would be to create a document that outlines things we agree on and disagree on, and identifies whether the disagreement is factual/empirical, values, or logic (hopefully there will be zero of these, but it might be possible). We should be able to fully agree on the contents of this document. If there's ever anything you simply can't believe the other side disagrees with you about, try to clarify what the deeper disagreement is.

Important rule during Phase 1: no persuading. We're not allowed say anything to try to persuade the other side, we're only allowed to ask clarifying questions about the other side's position, and clarify our own positions, because the goal is not to change anyone's mind, only to understand, identify, and document what we agree and disagree about.

Phase 2: persuade away. It should be much easier to have a civil and respectful discussion if we each understand the other's side, their values, and what empirical facts they disagree with the evidence on.

(I do really like that Debubble doesn't allow bystanders to "cheer for their side", they can only star the whole debate—I'm stealing that.)

lopmotr• 6 years ago

How can people be motivated to put the mental effort into understanding the other person's point of view? Participants are still volunteers, not workers, and that's unpleasant work.

laughinghan5• 6 years ago

Good point! I have no idea.

If someone specifically desires to shout into the void, I don't have any ideas on how to convince them otherwise. However, if they claim they want to actually convince other people to change their mind, maybe they'll both agree that this system will help frame the discussion.

After all, people already voluntarily put a lot of effort into heated Internet arguments already, I'm just hoping to nudge that energy in a productive direction.

If you have better ideas on how to motivate them, I'm all ears!

avmich• 6 years ago

Participants are still volunteers, not workers, and that's unpleasant work.

For some, learning why world works a certain way is an interesting, even captivating activity. For some others it's an unpleasant work.

washicalendar3• 6 years ago

This is a lot of words, but at the end of the day, people who believe in Q conspiracy bullshit are lost causes and their viewpoint or beliefs are simply not worth the time, effort, energy, or patience to understand because there is nothing to understand and nothing to emphasize with because it is all unsound bullshit.

It may be true that there are always two/both sides, but it’s definitely not true that both sides are equal, or both sides are worthwhile.

And for me, this is the core problem here with “breaking out of your bubble.” I DONT want to see outside my bubble because it’s just not worth the time. Now, I know this makes me sound like a closed minded bigot. I’d agree that was the case if the people outside of my “bubble” are arguing about sound things and not conspiracy bullshit, but they aren’t.

It’s a fact that 5G isn’t causing coronavirus, and I’m not going to leave my bubble to put up with your bullshit. It might as well be a fact that HRC did not run a pedophile pizza ring, and there is no point in me listening to that side because it’s completely nonsense.

Both sides are not equal. Both sides are not worth listening to.

One more edit: this website looks like a combination of r/changemyview and r/unpopularopinion. The former is full of trolls who have no intention of listening, and the latter which are people posting about positions they don’t agree with in a way to make themselves feel like a victim, all for internet karma.

concordDance6• 6 years ago

Even if you disagree with a group, talking to them can still be a fascinating experience.

I learnt a lot talking to devote muslims, young earth creationists and race realists.

narrator• 6 years ago

Back when Peak Oil was a big meme (2008) I got in a long debate with environmental doomers who believed the world was going to spiral into complete and total collapse and depopulation within a couple of years. I was probably the lone voice of optimism on this particular board and I carefully debated them over a long period of time and learned a lot about research, persuasion, arguing and rhetoric even when I was getting flamed like crazy on every other response.

When you say "they are wasting your time", it's that you just don't enjoy debating. You want everyone to tell you quickly you're right and move on to whatever you're actually interested in, like art appreciation or shopping for home decor at antique stores.

Debating with someone who actually wants to get to the truth of a matter is a real pleasure for me. It's also occasionally fun to deal with fallacious arguers by using their own fallacy against them. There are debates I don't have time for, but I don't get angry at people who even propose a debate. What can be annoying is when the mainstream has weighed in on something and they're wrong and armies of people come in to a debate half-way through and completely ignore all the argument so far and just try and push through with their version of the truth through a denial of service attack on the debate by them all repeating the same thing they heard on mass media.

laughinghan5• 6 years ago

I'm confused. In both Debubble and my vaguely sketched out proposal, you can't be forced into a debate with someone you have no interest talking to. You have to voluntarily start a conversation with them.

Surely there is at least someone in the world who, unlike your 3 examples of conspiracy theorists, you would consider a reasonable person, but who also disagrees with you about something important?

r/changemyview has the same problem I criticized Debubble for, which is not addressing the deeper problems that cause debates to be toxic. r/changemyview's only rules are basic no-trolling civility rules, whereas my proposed rules are MUCH stricter: during phase 1, you're literally not allowed to argue. Making arguments is banned, you're only allowed to ask and answer clarifying questions during phase 1.

In a discussion with someone who is reasonable but disagrees with you about something important, can you imagine a framework like that being helpful? How would you improve them?

(I also believe that, even if you couldn't possibly learn anything about 5G or coronavirus from someone who believes 5G causes coronavirus, you may be able to learn what causes someone to start believing such nonsense, and how we as a society can mitigate this kind of misinformation.)

pjc503• 6 years ago

The two major problems with this are "values" and "forward looking statements".

Coronavirus in particular has brought out a lot of the usual arguments about the value of human life versus economic value. But an even bigger problem is "if we do X, then Y" where the causality is anything less than perfectly individual and clear. Hence a lot of the global warming dispute.

A surprising amount of the most vicious arguments are power-relations driven and collapse to "my convenience or freedom is more important than your or someone else's life". You can't rationalise your way out of that one.

laughinghan5• 6 years ago

I think a global warming debate could be quite enlightening. I am not a climate scientist, so if I were to discuss global warming with someone else who wasn't a climate scientist, the questions I would be most curious about are: do they acknowledge that there's a scientific consensus? If they don't believe a consensus exists, that's a present-day, non-forward-looking fact that someone could be convinced of. If they believe they know better than the consensus, I'd at least be interested in learning why in more detail than just "they're irrational".

I don't believe for a second anyone would actually admit to believing that "my convenience is more important than the certain loss of your life". There are situations where I would agree my freedom is more important than your life, self-defense being the obvious example. Even if that's logically what they're saying and don't realize it, I believe that for the overwhelming majority of people, if delivered in the right context, in the right tone, by the right person, they could be lead to empathize and see why that's not right.

Sohcahtoa82• 6 years ago

Are we using the same words to mean different things?

This is a big one when it comes to talking about "socialism".

Bernie Sanders's brand of socialism does not match the textbook definition of socialism. It's still capitalist, but with wealth distribution through government assistance programs and services. Yet when people on the right are criticizing socialism, they're usually criticizing the textbook definition.

It's basically summed up with this meme: https://i.imgur.com/tVB77jV.jpg

We can't debate socialism until we agree on what we mean by "socialism".

laughinghan5• 6 years ago

Let's say it does not match what many Americans think of when they hear "socialism". There's no such thing as a "textbook definition" of socialism.

undoware• 6 years ago

I would like to suggest that the attempts to solve 'toxicity' in social media are actually an attempt to relativize the latent, normalized, usual-amount white supremacism, heteronormativity, ableism and patriarchy that most makers -- being privileged enough to have the resources to make -- are filtered for ahead of time.

Put a way that you find easier to read: You're halfway between 'oh shit I'm like that' and 'yes I appreciate the needs but we couldn't possibly XYZ' and you, like everyone else, is having to pick a side. That's not 'toxicity', that's just the ongoing war. And for those of us whose survival depends on the outcome, the war is not figurative; it is quite literal.

Beware, your bias is manifesting.

Pfhreak6• 6 years ago

I definitely had the first impression that this site was selling "sealioning as a service", and agree that trying to get people to "debate me, bro" is fundamentally not understanding the problem on social media.

Marginalized people are not interested in having to debate their existence to every person who feels entitled to challenge them.

sjwright3• 6 years ago

That's an astonishingly narrow interpretation of what ails social media, and I would submit are echos of problems that rest many layers above bedrock. Closer to bedrock is how the human psyche responds to the unfathomable scale and signal amplification algorithms which pervade all online culture.

Put simply, the internet cannot be expected to cure the human condition. We're not well suited to living in a world where community means millions of people. Aggregate human behaviour becomes too predictable at scale, and in turn more easily hackable.

And this ends up making people post intentionally inflammatory comments, such as an inference that privilege or resources reliably insulate people from loss or marginalisation. Individual humans from all strata are complex and deserve more respect than a game of intersectional olympics. My advice is to try to treat all people as individuals, no matter how satisfying it might be to marginalise groups as privileged, toxic or biased.

Hyolobrika• 6 years ago

| Debubble will make sure you wait for your turn before you can deliver your arguments. What if you forget to say something when you first make the post? | It will also limit each response to 1500 characters (roughly one page) and the entire debate to 12 turns. This bit seems unnecessarily limiting to me.

User232• 6 years ago

I admire anyone who makes an effort to improve things and this is no exception. In this particular case the author would be well served to review Aristotle's Rhetoric[1] to understand why this particular effort is doomed to fail. The short version is that Twitter is by design an absurdly rhetorical platform, and any attempt to inject dialectic into it is, well, pissing into the ocean as it were.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/

platz• 6 years ago

Twitter is by design an absurdly rhetorical platform

Interesting claim but you don't explain your case for why this is so - I doubt Aristotle would say much about twitter either.

Thorentis• 6 years ago

Twitter was never designed for back and forth communication. It was intended for people to broadcast their current thoughts (in 140 chars or less) to the world, and expect nothing back. It is only recently that threads, and DMs have been retro-fitted to the platform. But these have never felt to me, like native parts of the platform. And the styling and way in which the feed works doesn't seem to encourage debate as much as it simple encourages isolated "soundbites".

I think there could be an interest market-gap for an experimental social network that does encourage active dialogue. I think the key part to reform would be the feed. Maybe instead of seeing the top level post as you scroll, you scroll past a tag cloud? Or an AI generate summary of the thread so far. Or the 3 latest comments are shown rather than the first one (so it would be more like walking past a group conversation and deciding if at that moment it was worth joining). That last idea could be interesting to explore.

wenc3• 6 years ago

As a peripheral point, I have witnessed an improved quality in conversations where certain ground rules are applied, and that the participants accept in good faith. There's a performative aspect to rhetoric that a well-developed system can disincentivize. For instance, on Twitter, there's always the peanut gallery cheering one side or another, which distorts participants' incentives completely. They cannot be honest with themselves because of the need to "perform", i.e. to say clever/snarky things.

This is why people who are truly interested in learning from others on Twitter open up their DMs -- one-on-one conversations produce much higher signal-to-noise because the performative aspect of a tweetstorm is removed and there's more of a desire to slow down and really address each other rather than the mob. (DMs aren't perfect -- trolls will DM too -- but OTOH you can get DMs that are in good faith).

I think it is possible to "design" a good conversation. To some extent many of the rules are self-evident and intuitive to most adults. The problem is that in the heat of debate, we forget them and need third party moderation as a form of accountability.

One of the main ways to improve adversarial conversations is to apply techniques to move conversations from the lower brain (which governs fight/flight responses) to the upper brain (executive functioning, neocortex). Books like Difficult Conversations, Nonviolent Communication, Imago technique, etc. all start from different priors but mostly converge to this prescription due to the commonality of human psychology. Most people just want to be heard and to be validated (as smart, socially "woke", etc.) -- some will resort to manipulation to get there, but if these things can be achieved without manipulation, then the desire for deploying rhetoric is reduced.

Having a system helps create a platform for civil discourse by allowing oneself to guided by a system, which frees one up from decisions and nudges one toward higher-order executive functioning.

tptacek2• 6 years ago

My brain shut down completely reading this, before I could really evaluate whether it had any validity, when I read "This is why people who are truly interested in learning from others on Twitter open up their DMs". Lots of people can't have their DMs open, lest they be flooded with abuse.

User232• 6 years ago

As far as I can tell hackernews is the local optimum for what you describe. The site is far from perfect and so am I, but I have a better chance of substantive discussion of topics that are interesting, difficult, or both here than anywhere else I've found on the Internet in recent memory.

Snark and irony are both discouraged here, which I appreciate all the more given my unfortunate inclination towards both. It's evident though that conversation is far more intellectually nourishing when they are held to a minimum.

anonytrary2• 6 years ago

Wow, this is a brilliant landing page. The use of the product to justify the product is very clever.

sjwright3• 6 years ago

I applaud the OP for experimenting with new ideas in this space, as every idea is worth trying. And honestly given how bad this space is, I actually wonder if the only bad ideas are the ones we've already tried. Still, the cynic in me is unconvinced that Twitter could ever be a jumping-off point for valuable debate, no matter how brilliant the landing pad might be.

As the operator and lead moderator of a large community it's been my observation that there are three things which most reliably derail challenging conversations:

1. The assumption that words are reliable. It's almost impossible to converse on contentious topics without using words and idioms that become corrupted in transmission because Avery speaks "Avery's English" and Quinn speaks "Quinn's English"—two languages which appear identical on the surface, and seem identical when interrogated but are actually slightly different in the most perniciously subtle of ways. This makes it impossible for Avery to know how to craft sentences which are received as intended. Or even to recognise that corruption occurred; we tend to interpret these corruptions as part of the disagreement, not part of a language barrier.

2. The tendency of people to so identify with their ideas, that criticisms of ideas automatically translate into criticisms of them as a person. This can be mitigated in part with the use of careful, defensive qualifiers, but ultimately this requires acts of consciousness-raising and a deep well of good faith by all parties. I'm not optimistic that deep wells of good faith can be constructed for impersonal, online debates with your ideological opposites.

3. The unwillingness of people to accept retractions of prior statements. All too often I see debate fall apart because Quinn says something inartful and Avery jumps on a misunderstanding of it. This almost always ends one of two ways: either (a) Quinn doubles down out of a tendency to never admit fault, or (b) Quinn attempts to clarify or retract the original statement, but Avery dismisses the clarification/retraction and pursue the original phrasing as "revealing what Quinn really thinks."

If I were forced to invent a debate platform, my first experiment would be to require all formal responses be preceded by an interposed round of validation: a mandatory restating of the argument you're about to respond to using different words. Not until your interlocutor is satisfied with your restatement would you be able to post an actual response with counter-arguments. And rather than having spectators vote on arguments, they would vote/comment exclusively on the quality of (and goodwill shown in) the restatements—with bonus points for a successful steelmanning. There would certainly be no attempt to infer a "winner" of any debate by any statistical means.

This almost certainly fail as being too infuriating for anyone used to the "submit" button having immediate results.

The_rationalist• 6 years ago

What are some others websites that attempts to improve debate quality?

I know Kialo https://www.kialo.com And https://argdown.org

I would love to know more!

mekkkkkk2• 6 years ago

So... is having the debates somewhere else than on Twitter unthinkable? I don't understand which problem this solves that isn't largely undermined by still using the platform.

EDIT: Disregard this. Not sure why I thought they were using Twitter for the back and forth.

Thorrez• 6 years ago

Does it take place on Twitter? It says 1500 characters per turn, that doesn't sound like it would be on Twitter.

It also says people will cheer for the entire conversation rather than a single participant. That also doesn't sound like it would be on Twitter.

mekkkkkk2• 6 years ago

You are probably correct, I must've misunderstood. Thank you.

kraftyo• 6 years ago

If anyone is interested I am building something similar that is way more revolutionary. If you are naive like me and think u can change the world - looking for a technical co-founder to join me :))

Debubble

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