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Unfortunately, Kialo does not have any features for structural reasoning, where the logical connections between arguments are completely formalized and precise.

Unfortunately, Kialo does not have any features for structural reasoning, where the logical connections between arguments are completely formalized and precise. It relies on a human element to check each argument. Edit: How to do this formally? Look at formal systems for hints of how to do it in the 1900s, or category theory for how to do it in the modern day. [0][1] [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1889v2 https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1889v2 [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.00526 https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.00526

themodelplumber 8y ago
That's interesting, is there enough agreement on word-meanings that structural reasoning can coexist in some way (example: Someone could request a rewrite of a post to a structurally-reasoned format), or would the entire messaging system need some kind of re-do?
- worldsayshi 8y ago
  I think such a structural reasoning system needs it's own serious iteration to find the right form. It's a very interesting topic!
ThomPete 8y ago
Good points, these things will come over time thoug. It's a fairly new platform and they are still finding their way. I agree you need much more to make the comments more "unique".
antpls 8y ago
If arguments are too formal, people won't be able to naturally share them. It would become programming in a argumentation DSL. Maybe new NLP algorithms will be able to give you a mapping from natural language to a more formal one.
- worldsayshi 8y ago
  I agree and want to stress how interesting UX and NLP challenge this is. I believe there's a pragmatic solution to it.
  - Kialo 8y ago
    We are all ears :)
    - worldsayshi 8y ago
      In brief: Let's assume that we can build a formal DSL for expressing the discussion that we want to have. Then we can build a parser and natural language "code completer" that looks at your sentences as you type, checks partial sentences against a search index (ideally a well structured one) to lookup their 'type' or does pos-tagging some other way. Then it tries to match the tagged words and their order against the DSL. This matcher should be able to suggest syntactically valid natural language sentences that the user then selects from - as they type. The point of using a search engine (like elastic) is that you can easily match against n-gram/fuzzy versions of the words. So you can write in a sloppy way and still have it be parse-able. (But that's standard code completion I guess.)
      - Kialo 8y ago
        Possible, but how do you explain this to the less technically-minded people?
        worldsayshi 8y ago
        Not sure what you refer to when you are saying "this". The completion part or to explain the domain (of possibilities)? Ideally, if you design it right you shouldn't need to explain the text completion. It adds value by allowing faster typing. So ideally, you shouldn't need to motivate the feature further. It should pay for itself UX wise. This very much depends on you being able to match your DSL to the domain being discussed. If the domain is politics it is very hard but if the domain is discussion meta, it might be easier. Another follow up issue is that you want to do more with the structured text. You want it to be interactive, and have effect on the rest of the UI. You want to reflect the semantics of what you're writing. For example, perhaps you can pick out data points from the DSL interpretation and pull it into a common visualization. Compare with tagging people on Facebook. People do this sort of naturally. This could work in a similar way. Instead of showing suggestions when typing "Bob Smi" it would be suggestions when typing things like "child mortality in ". And the effect of the complete sentence could be to attach relevant data.
jasonhansel 8y ago
Formal logic can help to reveal unstated assumptions in reasoning. But disputes about these unstated assumptions, which often involve abstract ethical or metaphysical claims, can themselves be even more intractable.
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  In fact this is exactly where formal debates between intellectuals often wind up - on debating fundamental concepts in philosophy or science. Any debate that has hope of progressing the state of argumentation about [topic] will include agreements on definitions and fundamental premises so they don't get bogged down there.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    If only. A lot of intellectuals were trained in argumentation but not formal logic. The number of times I see `a => b` be equated to `b => a` is mind-rending, and that's not even getting into issues of causality. A while back someone who stayed himself an intellectual posted a contrapositive of a statement as if it were a brilliant insight.
  - jasonhansel 8y ago
    I'm not sure that getting "bogged down" by such questions is always a bad thing. Often these fundamental issues are, ultimately, the most important.
    - Kialo 8y ago
      Agreed. It seems that the single biggest divider are epistemological systems and the ways people choose which to adhere to. That's a debate which I couldn't convince anyone to start yet.
      - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
        I'll have that debate. I can't seem to find anyone to get into that either. My proposal: You write a Medium post with your argument, I'll respond with my rebuttal/response on Medium. That's how the old guys did it, except with letters.
Kialo 8y ago
We thought about doing something more formal. The problem is, that argument mapping and other formal methods have quite a learning curve and do make it even harder for the general public to read / participate.
- keeler 8y ago
  > The problem is, that argument mapping This strikes me as exactly right. There is no obvious way to formally guarantee that the content of a person's argument actually matches the formal structure that they claim it has.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Honestly, I used Kialo for a bit and found the discussions were so formal that it's discussion lacked all substance and hence all interest (the debate I followed most heavily was the "should an AI be constructed" question). What's interesting about debate on HN, when it is interesting and illuminating, is that each person debating makes their point while changing the framework of discussion, which questions are most important and so-forth. I tend to think that the site could do better just having good moderators setting the terms of debate and letting people put forward their positions from there.
  - Kialo 8y ago
    In a multi thesis discussion (https://www.kialo.com/2027 https://www.kialo.com/2027) you can propose different theses. The problem with evolving theses is that they invalidate a huge amount of claims and require many claims to be edited. Threads, where you are not fixed on a particular thesis are of course often more fun, but bring their own set of problems. When a thread goes on for long enough, the different strands are discussing entirely different bits and pieces and newcomers are completely lost, plus the mixing of claims and commentary...HN is truly exceptional with regards to the quality of contributions and I agree, reading comments here is often a wonderful learning experience, one of the very few sites, where I first open the comments, then the linked article. And yes, we are a bit dry. It's a bit like Wikipedia article editing, less like an enthusiastic commenting thread (https://twitter.com/KialoHQ/status/954461988960251904 https://twitter.com/KialoHQ/status/954461988960251904). But given the nature of our topics, we are happy about things being a bit drier. :) Imagine the outcry if we forbade users to create their own discussions. We wouldn't have that tabs vs spaces debate (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486949) :)

themodelplumber 8y ago

That's interesting, is there enough agreement on word-meanings that structural reasoning can coexist in some way (example: Someone could request a rewrite of a post to a structurally-reasoned format), or would the entire messaging system need some kind of re-do?

worldsayshi 8y ago
I think such a structural reasoning system needs it's own serious iteration to find the right form. It's a very interesting topic!

ThomPete 8y ago

Good points, these things will come over time thoug. It's a fairly new platform and they are still finding their way. I agree you need much more to make the comments more "unique".

antpls 8y ago

If arguments are too formal, people won't be able to naturally share them. It would become programming in a argumentation DSL. Maybe new NLP algorithms will be able to give you a mapping from natural language to a more formal one.

worldsayshi 8y ago
I agree and want to stress how interesting UX and NLP challenge this is. I believe there's a pragmatic solution to it.
- Kialo 8y ago
  We are all ears :)
  - worldsayshi 8y ago
    In brief: Let's assume that we can build a formal DSL for expressing the discussion that we want to have. Then we can build a parser and natural language "code completer" that looks at your sentences as you type, checks partial sentences against a search index (ideally a well structured one) to lookup their 'type' or does pos-tagging some other way. Then it tries to match the tagged words and their order against the DSL. This matcher should be able to suggest syntactically valid natural language sentences that the user then selects from - as they type. The point of using a search engine (like elastic) is that you can easily match against n-gram/fuzzy versions of the words. So you can write in a sloppy way and still have it be parse-able. (But that's standard code completion I guess.)
    - Kialo 8y ago
      Possible, but how do you explain this to the less technically-minded people?
      - worldsayshi 8y ago
        Not sure what you refer to when you are saying "this". The completion part or to explain the domain (of possibilities)? Ideally, if you design it right you shouldn't need to explain the text completion. It adds value by allowing faster typing. So ideally, you shouldn't need to motivate the feature further. It should pay for itself UX wise. This very much depends on you being able to match your DSL to the domain being discussed. If the domain is politics it is very hard but if the domain is discussion meta, it might be easier. Another follow up issue is that you want to do more with the structured text. You want it to be interactive, and have effect on the rest of the UI. You want to reflect the semantics of what you're writing. For example, perhaps you can pick out data points from the DSL interpretation and pull it into a common visualization. Compare with tagging people on Facebook. People do this sort of naturally. This could work in a similar way. Instead of showing suggestions when typing "Bob Smi" it would be suggestions when typing things like "child mortality in ". And the effect of the complete sentence could be to attach relevant data.

jasonhansel 8y ago

Formal logic can help to reveal unstated assumptions in reasoning. But disputes about these unstated assumptions, which often involve abstract ethical or metaphysical claims, can themselves be even more intractable.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago
In fact this is exactly where formal debates between intellectuals often wind up - on debating fundamental concepts in philosophy or science. Any debate that has hope of progressing the state of argumentation about [topic] will include agreements on definitions and fundamental premises so they don't get bogged down there.
- dnautics 8y ago
  If only. A lot of intellectuals were trained in argumentation but not formal logic. The number of times I see `a => b` be equated to `b => a` is mind-rending, and that's not even getting into issues of causality. A while back someone who stayed himself an intellectual posted a contrapositive of a statement as if it were a brilliant insight.
- jasonhansel 8y ago
  I'm not sure that getting "bogged down" by such questions is always a bad thing. Often these fundamental issues are, ultimately, the most important.
  - Kialo 8y ago
    Agreed. It seems that the single biggest divider are epistemological systems and the ways people choose which to adhere to. That's a debate which I couldn't convince anyone to start yet.
    - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
      I'll have that debate. I can't seem to find anyone to get into that either. My proposal: You write a Medium post with your argument, I'll respond with my rebuttal/response on Medium. That's how the old guys did it, except with letters.

Kialo 8y ago

We thought about doing something more formal. The problem is, that argument mapping and other formal methods have quite a learning curve and do make it even harder for the general public to read / participate.

keeler 8y ago
> The problem is, that argument mapping This strikes me as exactly right. There is no obvious way to formally guarantee that the content of a person's argument actually matches the formal structure that they claim it has.
joe_the_user 8y ago
Honestly, I used Kialo for a bit and found the discussions were so formal that it's discussion lacked all substance and hence all interest (the debate I followed most heavily was the "should an AI be constructed" question). What's interesting about debate on HN, when it is interesting and illuminating, is that each person debating makes their point while changing the framework of discussion, which questions are most important and so-forth. I tend to think that the site could do better just having good moderators setting the terms of debate and letting people put forward their positions from there.
- Kialo 8y ago
  In a multi thesis discussion (https://www.kialo.com/2027 https://www.kialo.com/2027) you can propose different theses. The problem with evolving theses is that they invalidate a huge amount of claims and require many claims to be edited. Threads, where you are not fixed on a particular thesis are of course often more fun, but bring their own set of problems. When a thread goes on for long enough, the different strands are discussing entirely different bits and pieces and newcomers are completely lost, plus the mixing of claims and commentary...HN is truly exceptional with regards to the quality of contributions and I agree, reading comments here is often a wonderful learning experience, one of the very few sites, where I first open the comments, then the linked article. And yes, we are a bit dry. It's a bit like Wikipedia article editing, less like an enthusiastic commenting thread (https://twitter.com/KialoHQ/status/954461988960251904 https://twitter.com/KialoHQ/status/954461988960251904). But given the nature of our topics, we are happy about things being a bit drier. :) Imagine the outcry if we forbade users to create their own discussions. We wouldn't have that tabs vs spaces debate (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486949) :)