Difference between revisions of "Structured debate"

Revision as of 21:26, 13 April 2013

About

Structured debate is a process for maximizing the rationality of a debate. It assumes that the intent of debate is to determine the most likely truth when there is disagreement and that any party may be using invalid reasoning or incorrect facts. It relies on an ability to reliably reach consensus about whether reasoning is logical regardless of consensus on the conclusions.

Structured debate provides a system for keeping track of the status of every point and counterpoint that has been raised in a debate. It allows multiple participants to make contributions simultaneously (which would not be possible in a spoken debate), permitting much more thorough fact-checking than in other forms of debate and ensuring that all positions have an opportunity to assert their objections to any given conclusion.

Implementation

InstaGov's debate mapper module is a software implementation of the structured debate methodology

Terminology

An argument is a set of assertions that logically draw a conclusion from a set of premises.
Any argument is in a false state if either the logic or the premises are disputed.
Arguments disputing another argument is called a counterargument.
Any counterargument is itself an argument, and may be further disputed.
An argument is in a true state unless it is countered by one or more counterarguments which are themselves in a true state.

See /rules for more detail.

In theory, a structured debate can be held in an unstructured plaintext discussion environment such as Google+ or Facebook; rules and an example for doing this are here. This format does require significantly more discipline from the participants, however.

Process

Anyone may start a debate at any time; debate starts with an assertion of fact (the "prime assertion"), preferably defended by /supporting arguments.
Anyone may add /counter arguments or additional supporting arguments to this assertion at any time.
Each supporting or countering argument is itself an assertion, and may be further supported or countered at any time.
Debate continues indefinitely.
- The design currently presumes that the final state of the prime assertion will eventually settle down to being true or false, as nobody will have any additional points to add; in practicality, decisions based on the debate's outcome will need to be made at specific times, and debates should be held in such a way that the final state will be likely to have settled down by the time any decision must be made.
- There should probably also be a minimum amount of time between the last state-change and the actual decision, so as to negate the effects of last-minute /counterpoint spamming.

Individual debate venues may wish to make changes or additions to the procedural rules in order to accommodate their specific needs and circumstances.

Ecosystem Features

Linking: In order to negate the need to replay existing debates within new contexts, any given point in a debate can be made dynamically dependent on the outcome of another debate.
Categorization: any given point within a debate may touch on one or more topics of general interest, and should be findable by anyone exploring that topic. A system for managing crowdsourced topic-tagging is under development.

Usability Features

Additional features not essential to the basic concept but which makes it more usable:

Text search: search within a branch for specific text or patterns
Notifications: users should be able to set a preference indicating that they do (or do not) want to be notified (by any of various methods) when any of the following occurs for any given debate point:
- the point's status changes (from true to false or vice-versa)
- anyone edits the point's text
- the status of any subpoint changes
- anyone adds a new support or counter point

There may be other usability features we will want to include.

Flaws

/counterpoint spam: Dishonest participants may repeatedly raise spurious objections solely for the purpose of keeping the correct conclusion in a state of presumed falsehood.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-[[category:concepts]]
+[[category:tools]]
 ==About==
-Political arguments often become very complex, requiring accurate conclusions from a variety of fields. Most &ndash; perhaps all &ndash; people do not have sufficient time to acquire all the necessary knowledge, much less the memory capacity to be aware of all the given facts at one time.
+[[Structured debate]] is a process for maximizing the [[rational debate|rationality of a debate]]. It assumes that the intent of debate is to determine the most likely truth when there is disagreement and that any party may be using invalid reasoning or incorrect facts. It relies on an ability to reliably reach consensus about whether reasoning is logical regardless of consensus on the conclusions.
-Worse, political interests will often imply or state falsehoods regarding these facts, interpret ambiguity in their favor, or claim ambiguity where none exists &ndash; leading even those with the best of intentions into conclusions that are false and actions that are likely to be destructive or wasteful.
+Structured debate provides a system for keeping track of the status of every point and counterpoint that has been raised in a debate. It allows multiple participants to make contributions simultaneously (which would not be possible in a spoken debate), permitting much more thorough fact-checking than in other forms of debate and ensuring that all positions have an opportunity to assert their objections to any given conclusion.
+==Implementation==
+InstaGov's [[debate mapper]] module is a software implementation of the structured debate methodology
-Furthermore, in a typical discussion, many points may be left unanswered. A debater who does not scrupulously itemize every point made by her/his opponent and answer them one by one may even leave onlookers with the ''impression'' that every opposing point has been answered when in fact s/he cannot satisfactorily answer them.
+===Terminology===
+# An '''[[issuepedia:argument|argument]]''' is a set of assertions that logically draw a conclusion from a set of premises.
+# Any argument is in a '''false state''' if either the logic or the premises are '''disputed'''.
+# Arguments disputing another argument is called a '''counterargument'''.
+# Any counterargument is itself an argument, and may be further disputed.
+# An argument is in a '''true state''' unless it is countered by one or more counterarguments which are themselves in a true state.
-It is therefore necessary to have some kind of system for keeping track of the structure of an argument in order to be certain that all points raised are answered. Making this structure publicly editable allows those with specialized knowledge to do fact-checking in their area of knowledge, and to make sure that no incorrect assertions are allowed to stand unanswered.
+See [[/rules]] for more detail.
-This is the purpose of the [[debate mapper]] module of [[InstaGov]], and the purpose of the proposed [[/rules]]. In theory, a structured debate can be held in an unstructured plaintext discussion environment such as Google+; rules and an example for doing this are [[/rules/plaintext|here]].
+In theory, a structured debate can be held in an unstructured plaintext discussion environment such as Google+ or Facebook; rules and an example for doing this are [[/rules/plaintext|here]]. This format does require significantly more discipline from the participants, however.
+===Process===
+* Anyone may start a debate at any time; debate starts with an assertion of fact (the "prime assertion"), preferably defended by [[/supporting argument]]s.
+* Anyone may add [[/counter argument]]s or additional supporting arguments to this assertion at any time.
+* Each supporting or countering argument is itself an assertion, and may be further supported or countered at any time.
+* Debate continues indefinitely.
+** The design currently presumes that the final state of the prime assertion will eventually settle down to being true or false, as nobody will have any additional points to add; in practicality, decisions based on the debate's outcome will need to be made at specific times, and debates should be held in such a way that the final state will be likely to have settled down by the time any decision must be made.
+** There should probably also be a minimum amount of time between the last state-change and the actual decision, so as to negate the effects of last-minute [[/counterpoint spam]]ming.
+Individual debate venues may wish to make changes or additions to the procedural rules in order to accommodate their specific needs and circumstances.
+===Ecosystem Features===
+* '''Linking''': In order to negate the need to replay existing debates within new contexts, any given point in a debate can be made dynamically dependent on the outcome of another debate.
+* '''Categorization''': any given point within a debate may touch on one or more topics of general interest, and should be findable by anyone exploring that topic. ''A system for managing [[icms:Crowdsourced taxonomy|crowdsourced topic-tagging]] is under development.''
+===Usability Features===
+Additional features not essential to the basic concept but which makes it more usable:
+* '''Text search''': search within a branch for specific text or patterns
+* '''Notifications''': users should be able to set a preference indicating that they do (or do not) want to be notified (by any of various methods) when any of the following occurs for any given debate point:
+** the point's status changes (from true to false or vice-versa)
+** anyone edits the point's text
+** the status of any subpoint changes
+** anyone adds a new support or counter point
+There may be other usability features we will want to include.
+==Flaws==
+* [[/counterpoint spam]]: Dishonest participants may repeatedly raise spurious objections solely for the purpose of keeping the correct conclusion in a state of presumed falsehood.