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

But it's also much harder to argue about truths. People in my circles say things like "I did a lot of research and this new mRNA vaccine is dangerous."

And there's absolutely no way to disagree with that, because they can't present the research and you can't read for yourself what it was. You can't critique the author/organization, you can't dispute any "facts" in the article, etc.

I think in-person can be good for very high level arguments, like "I believe in personal responsibility," and figuring out "I like this person even though I disagree with them." And terrible for intricate arguments like "gun restrictions will save lives," covid policy, etc etc.

I would like to see a shift back to previous times, where nobody was outing their political beliefs, and everyone didn't pretend to be an expert on domestic policies, covid, foreign policy, minimum wage, inflation, and everything else that they feel inclined to chime in about.

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.

In your CCP example: I gain nothing by getting convinced one way or the other, and neither does anyone in China gain or lose anything from me getting convinced. Unlike you and your wife's relationship, you and I don't even truly care if we sympathize with each other or not (us being internet strangers and all). Case in point, have you ever done anything for your nearest Falun Dafa crowd? Personally, I don't plan on getting involved with them, even if I have been convinced of the persecution claims (and the same goes for east africa, venezuela, abused puppies, etc).

The fundamental paradox of debating, IMHO, is that debating is inherently a selfish endeavor: a lot of people do it for self-satisfaction, not because they are trying to accomplish something. 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 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.

Re: curation - In school settings, for example, the curation is done by the teacher (rather than the students who are actively trying to "win" the argument). Curation is needed to avoid redundancy and to ensure factuality.

Impartiality is needed in order to not alienate the parties: it undermines respect for the tool if one allows loaded keywords to be put into it. Debaters' choice of words are often "tainted" by their biases (especially if they believe in what they are defending), and there's usually a more neutral way to rephrase something someone said. More generally, though, sometimes the best arguments don't always show up at the heat of the moment, but upon offline reflection, or based on careful research.

What would be cool is something analogous to the "slowest horse" puzzle (given two people, race them to determine who has the slowest horse - the solution of which is to have them mount their opponent's horse), but in a sort of collaborative setting. I.e. people would be teamed up so as to collaboratively come up with the strongest argument against their own beliefs.

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.