I always see people saying that we need a platform to have debates. How Twitter and YouTube comments are a cesspool. Anyone who’s willing to join this kind of

I always see people saying that we need a platform to have debates. How Twitter and YouTube comments are a cesspool. Anyone who’s willing to join this kind of platform aren’t really the people who need help having constructive debates. Humans like debating(arguing) think it’s part of our nature, I’m not sure a platform can solve this problem. It seems like these problems originate at the gathering information stage and our prejudices impact how we interpret the data, so no matter how much data you show someone they will interpret it based on their current belief system. Everything has to be binary, it’s either X or Y. See it commonly in topics like ‘what’s the best application architecture’, as soon as someone says “it depends” you see people rolling their eyes, I think we’re lazy and don’t want to do the necessary research and just want the answers straight away, once we get an answer we’re happy with it and see no need to update our knowledge, that would require us to rethink our beliefs. It’s probably that way for a reason, imagine you had to research again all the beliefs that you consider true, it would take a lot of energy. Even for myself I try to be as open minded as possible, we all have prejudices built into us, they keep us alive, I’m not sure how I can actually change them, I see someone who my brain perceives as being dodgy and I change my behaviour instantly, I react in a way that’s socially acceptable to the context, it’s really uncomfortable to fight these urges. I think news media has caused a lot of the prejudices I have, we assume that some news outlet is honest and is only reporting facts, we just assume everything they say is a fact. If I see someone from Afghanistan my brain is telling me act cautiously around them. I’ve never been to Afghanistan, I don’t know anyone from there yet my brain is sending me signals to be cautious around this person, logically it makes no sense. Probably the years of watching the news when the Afghanistan war was going on has imprinted these beliefs within me. They say travel broadens the mind, think it’s probably the most effective way to get people to change their beliefs. You see first hand that maybe you have inconstancies between your beliefs and reality. Wish these guys all the best but I don’t think people will charge the beliefs through online debate, I hope I’m proved wrong though . Could be cool to keep track on the website so people could acknowledge that they have changed their position on a topic, the data would be interesting.