I think a major reason that online arguments don't lead to persuasion much of the time is their format. In the Change My View sub-reddit and elsewhere, people t

I think a major reason that online arguments don't lead to persuasion much of the time is their format. In the Change My View sub-reddit and elsewhere, people tend to write in blocks of unstructured text--paragraphs--that allow them to express whatever they want to, which may not be coherent or actually respond directly to the assertions of the person they're replying to. I'm now working full-time on what used to be a side project that tries to solve this problem: https://sequiturs.com https://sequiturs.com. Arguments on Sequiturs consist of a series of statements divided into premises and conclusions. This format creates in the reader an expectation of coherence, an expectation that there is a logical progression from some starting point to some conclusion. In my experience this format is extremely effective at causing the author of an argument to boil it down to the bare essentials. If someone else thinks the argument is flawed, he/she can point to a specific numbered step in the argument to identify very concretely what he/she disagrees with. Here's an example of what this looks like, with an example argument I wrote up about why backdoors around encryption are a bad idea: https://sequiturs.com/arguments/tech-companies-should-not-be-required-to-provide-law-enforcement-with-a-backdoor-to-bypass-encryption https://sequiturs.com/arguments/tech-companies-should-not-be... I'm very hopeful about the prospects of this format for improving the quality of debates online, and, compared to the unstructured status quo, I think it's a lot more conducive to participants in an exchange understanding clearly where they disagree with others and why. There are some great insights in this thread about the nature of arguing online, and I'd love to hear what you all think about the approach that Sequiturs takes.