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

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• rvz 6y ago
  > 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 https://arguman.org
  • debator 6y ago
    Thanks for the link to arguman. Looks really interesting. I'm not the biggest fan of the visual tree and would prefer people not to stray from plain text entry as much as possible - but maybe of course this is not possible!
• surfer7837 6y ago
  Debates should be in person, I don't think the Internet is the best medium for it. Feel free to disagree with me, but it's a lot harder to lose your cool in person compared to online
  • mod 6y ago
    I agree that it's a lot harder to lose your cool or offend someone. 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.
    • debator 6y ago
      Yep, its always "you need to read this to understand", or here is a statistic that proves my point. > 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.
  • 6y ago
• nodesocket 6y ago
  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.
  • debator 6y ago
    > I don't think it's possible anymore to have thoughtful, intelligent political discussions online with both sides. I agree. And that makes it a problem worth solving. I just feel deeply that there is the right UX, and moderation knobs to tweak that can bring it back from the brink.
• psyc 6y ago
  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.
  • debator 6y ago
    Haha. Handling commonly repeated argument forms would be a good feature. Instead of a lengthy comment, just click the "fire in a crowded theater" rebuttal and save everyone some time.
• Hnsuz 6y ago
  Blah.. HN shadowban you quite fast
• emptysongglass 6y ago
  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.
  • lhorie 6y ago
    I think the question to ask is "what would someone gain from getting convinced about some specific statement?" 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.
    • debator 6y ago
      > 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 that is most people's motive though and it can be mutually beneficial. I think there is an innate satisfaction in acquiring new knowledge or a new perspective. And the applications of this can be very wide-reaching. > "what would someone gain from getting convinced about some specific statement?" If you can bring someone in from a political extreme then that is making the world a better place.
• eecks 6y ago
  Simply, no.
• lhorie 6y ago
  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. </two-cents>
  • debator 6y ago
    > What I really want is for more people to make good faith efforts to make substantive arguments against their own opinions Agree! A big cause of the divide is that people don't understand each other's arguments. When you are in a debate club, the side you have to debate for is decided by a coin flip. And there is no better way to truly understand the other point of view than when you try your hardest to win a debate arguing for something you disagree with. > and learn to recognize the usage of fallacies Yep, this is exactly the driver behind the idea. > dispassionate impartial curation Could you please explain this?
    • lhorie 6y ago
      Yeah, debate clubs often have many of the elements I alluded to. 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.
• GuB-42 6y ago
  HN is also the place where political topics are quickly flagged and die. Even topics like women in tech that could be interesting typically don't last long because the discussion can't help but turn political. I think that's for the best, there are places other than HN to talk politics. It also means, as you said, that HN is not the right place to ask. Now if you just want to bring back the old art of rethoric instead of the negatively charged "political debates". You may have a bit more chance.
  • debator 6y ago
    > Now if you just want to bring back the old art of rethoric instead of the negatively charged "political debates". You may have a bit more chance. This is the idea. > I think that's for the best, there are places other than HN to talk politics. Such as? I struggle to find a neutral place to have an intellectual debate. Many reddits are very restrictive and because of the polarization of the US, its very difficult to find a place where mods can be neutral. HN is such an intelligent and well-read community and it seems like there are a lot of people who would love to debate but plain text back and forth with ad-hoc moderation prevent it.
• drost 6y ago
  I would be. Some of the problems with online debate is that you don't know who you are arguing with and you don't know what positions they actually hold. If you can solve those, I'm in
  • debator 6y ago
    > you don't know who you are arguing with and you don't know what positions they actually hold. 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.
• AlleyTrotter 6y ago
  great idea. put politics somewhere we who wish to can ignore it. Love the idea john
• AlleyTrotter 6y ago
  Great idea! Put politics where it can easily be ignored. Not everyone is rabid right or left Amen
• catacombs 6y ago
  Absolutely not. Want to debate? Do it in person. > I am envisaging a platform that allows the community to structure and "type-check" (loosely) arguments. No one should try to profit off political discourse.
• BnMcGn 6y ago
  Heh. I'm probably your competitor. But, yes, I think you are on to something. My email is in my profile. Drop me a line if you would like to exchange ideas.
• kwdc 6y ago
  Personally, I'd prefer you just create a proof of concept, put it up somewhere and simply post a Show HN. Then do your thing. Improve it. Figure out the kinks. Maybe post the Show HN after these have gone through a few iterations? Maybe not. Sometimes its good to see the early stages.