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Ask HN: Would anyone be interested in a Hacker News to debate politics?

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Ask HN: Would anyone be interested in a Hacker News to debate politics?

#1

Post by debator »

HN is usually not the right place for heated debate. Discussions end up in flame wars, vitriolic language, and the moderation is very ad-hoc. But people definitely love to debate.

I am envisaging a platform that allows the community to structure and "type-check" (loosely) arguments.

The key I feel is to allow people to post as they normally would and then allow annotation tools to structure arguments. Essentially a super easy UX to carry out [argument mapping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map).

The goal would be to find as much as possible that people agree on (definitions, evidence) and then to focus the arguments on the specific points of contention.

I can imagine a template of logical argument forms such a "X should do Y when Z" which would need to be filled in for an argument to be valid.

Its usually difficult to come to an objective truth when arguing, so another key point is tracking consistency of argument. This is a great way to invalidate an argument. If someone makes a claim like "X should do Y when Z", if they are caught saying "X should not do Y when something similar to Z" then its a great way to invalidate an argument and unearth bias without having to examine the rest of the argument.

I want to bring back the art of debate!

Re: Ask HN: Would anyone be interested in a Hacker News to debate politics?

#3

Post by rvz »

> Would anyone be interested in a Hacker News to debate politics?

I would. It should allow arguments from across the political spectrum to be heard and having their claims and evidence fact-checked from various sources whilst presenting their arguments.

I think you may be certainly interested in this platform: Arguman (an argument analysis platform), unless you have already looked at it. [0]

> I want to bring back the art of debate!

Good. This should be interesting.

[0] https://arguman.org

Re: Ask HN: Would anyone be interested in a Hacker News to debate politics?

#5

Post by nodesocket »

Here is the problem, people herd to communities that embrace their own ideology and beliefs. This has only gotten exponentially worse in the last four years.

Conservative / libertarian ideas are mostly downvoted, oppressed, blasted, brushed away on left leaning sites and left leaning ideology the same on conservative / libertarian sites. The echo chamber and mob mentality problem.

I don't think it's possible anymore to have thoughtful, intelligent political discussions online with both sides. There is just to much standing on the pedestal of moral political and ethical superiority.

Re: Ask HN: Would anyone be interested in a Hacker News to debate politics?

#6

Post by psyc »

I’m on board provided you automatically text-replace stuff like “your right to swing your fist ends where...”, “fire in a crowded theater”, “private companies can do what they want”, “free speech isn’t absolute”, etc with hilarious statements that make the commenter look foolish.

Re: Ask HN: Would anyone be interested in a Hacker News to debate politics?

#8

Post by emptysongglass »

I just don't think that debate is a good tool for getting sympathy for one's ideas. Look at how we are here on HN with the CCP is bad/CCP is vilified debate. No one is going to convince me that the CCP isn't committing genocide and I'm not going to convince anyone that the CCP is. (Dang, this is not me trying to start a nationalistic flamewar: I actually deleted a comment I wrote earlier after reflecting on what it was doing.)

I don't know. I really do want to understand the other side's ideas but we need a better method than debate because debate is fundamentally about winning. Try it with your partner: if either side wins everyone loses.

Where my wife and I find the love and communion is when we soften. And if we've been quarreling a lot often the thing for us is taking a psychedelic together and then crying our eyes out in a long embrace. Very healing and the furthest thing I can imagine from debate.

I don't know how to love someone who advocates for a country doing genocide. Or who says the satellite photos we see are not evidence of genocide. And I'm using this most extreme example to illustrate that there may not be a point of reconciliation: only people feeling good about winning.

Re: Ask HN: Would anyone be interested in a Hacker News to debate politics?

#10

Post by lhorie »

Honestly, no. I get enough partisanship and parroting in the news already; we don't need more people trying to convince others that they are right and only succeeding in either breeding echo chambers or talking past each other. In my opinion, the "art of debating" is merely a means to an end: the goal is to arrive at a deeper level of understanding about a topic.

What I really want is for more people to make good faith efforts to make substantive arguments against their own opinions, and learn to recognize the usage of fallacies (ad hominems, etc) and other forms of "pop politics" ("X said Y, which implies some character flaw!")

Argument maps are certainly a useful tool to have, but IMHO, one does not arrive at good charts through arguing in debates (especially heated ones!), but through dispassionate impartial curation.

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