Show HN: Trophi.com – A forum the represents both sides of an argument
trophi.com
trophi.com
I'd really love to see a site that tries to dispassionately explain why the Flat Earth movement exists (hint: it's probably not because a bunch of people really believe the Earth is flat) instead of just berating people for being dumb and wrong. You will never convince anyone of anything by calling them stupid.
It's a laudable and understandable goal to try to fix online discourse using clever tech, but I am highly skeptical it will ever work, because people simply do not care to have their minds changed.
I'm unsure what the actual solution to this, if there ever will be one. Improving population education as a whole seems to me to be the only way, but I fear that even if possible that will take so long that it will no longer matter.
I legitimately fear that ultimately human beings are not evolved enough to be able to effectively manage the effortless global communication systems that we've developed.
In a way, this feels like a DOS attack. We don’t have the time or ability to run our own experiments on things that matter.
Scientologists would be a closer match.
For many of them, there's something to be gained (e.g. financially via a youtube channel, or even just karma points), which keeps engagement from fizzling out
There's also the age old cultism phenomenon: people want to be part of something, because it feeds their ego somehow (e.g. "pff, look at those sheep") and/or because of some sense of community ("oh wow, I never thought so many people thought like me")
And the thread that unifies everything is the belief they are scientifically correct because they are applying empirical observation. Of course, the unfortunate gap is that they don't truly understand how to use/interpret the tools of the scientific method (e.g. they may not know how to empirically derive physics equations from experiments, or they may not understand concepts like falsibiability, or even account for blind spots in "common sense" such as why are tides a thing, etc)
It's also a bit hard to follow which comments are replies, so UX-wise it seems to encourage dropping quick takes and nodding along. Case in point, comments seem mostly rehashes of tired talking points.
The value of debating IMHO comes from depth, but depth cannot be achieved by merely segregating comments into team buckets. It requires fostering a culture of willingness to introspect and question your own beliefs. Forums like lesswrong are a good example of that
"E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime refers to a version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb to be, including all conjugations, contractions and archaic forms... advocates also suggest that use of E-Prime leads to a less dogmatic style of language that reduces the possibility of misunderstanding or conflict" [1]
"Verifiability principle, a philosophical doctrine fundamental to the school of Logical Positivism holding that a statement is meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable." [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
[2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/verifiability-principle
I continued this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced anything that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken.
This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engaged in promoting; and, as the chief ends of conversion are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purpose for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure.
For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet, at the same time, express yourself as firmly fixed in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error.
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Not exactly round, but it's an ellipsoid with an uneven surface.
- Isaac Asimov
If the Earth was shrunk down to bowling ball size and taken to a lane it would be just as spherical as any of the other balls.
That's not rational debate, "marketplace of ideas", or whatever you want to call it. It's screeching until everyone else realises there's nothing to gain from being there, and leaves.
One of my former best friends went down the deep end. It started with 9/11 conspiracies and just spiralled down from there.
I engaged with him, because I care deeply about him, but it just got worse and worse. Initially it was 9/11 and questions about wealth and power distribution and there are some valid questions that can be asked (although all the 9/11 stuff is bonkers). It soon became crazier and crazier, it was about "energy from the vacuum" (essentially a code-word for perpetual motion), how Gates is trying to sterilize the population through vaccination.
The irony was that he was seeing himself as a freedom fighter who is speaking the truth to prevent the next fascist regime, completely ignoring that many of the people he followed or supported were literal Nazis.
Engaging with him was not possible. He would bombard me with links that somehow were supposed to proof his point. If I brought up counterarguments, he would say that he has strong evidence that one can not believe mainstream media, science, logic ... And that I'm just a sheep blindly following "propaganda" and he knows better.
There was absolutely no way of getting through to him or engaging in any kind of discussion. This was just his monologues and flooding me links (many I suspect he did not even read/watch).
In the end I had to cut contact, because it was affecting me mentally, the interactions would just leave me exhausted angry and incredibly sad.
I don't have a solution, we need to somehow find a way of how people can be drawn into these crazy web of conspiracies and I don't think that creating forums were these crazy things are debated like they are valid opinions is an answer.
Just because a human can put together a thought, doesn't make it good.
Which arguments are "allowed" to have a side? Given the recent disregard for the concept of freedom of speech, this site seems quaint.
These websites always seem to be like an episode of Big Talk.[1] "Alright, let's get this sorted! Does God exist, yes or no?"
People like to hide behind "science says this" because there is usually objective science available, but science provides facts about cause and effect, not priorities, which is what leads to debate, and often blatant distortion of facts. I think a bigger challenge than presenting both sides of an argument is actually getting to the core of what is being debated.
I get frustrated by the “both sides” presented by mainstream media like the NYT, CNN, etc. it’s always democrats on one side, republicans on the other, as if there’s not an entire political spectrum that expands beyond those two.
The effect is it limits the “allowed” perspectives to within those two bounds. This is often exploited by those in power to control the bounds of possibility (that’s the manufacturing consent part).
Been thinking it would be nice to have comments / replies showing the top 3 conservative takes, the top 3 liberal takes, the top 3 science, 3 libertarian? top 3 fiscally conservative/socially liberal etc.
Ability to vote up and notate inaccuracies and removing personal attacks / insults.. finding a way to stop trolls from another side upvote frivolous things.. what the icons would look like.. all sorts of things I've been thinking about this.
Seeing the two sides thing really makes me feel the 'powers that be' really want people fighting on two sides.
I'm actually making tool for this exact same thing and the issue is most noticeable in kialo (which I argue is the same thing, with more mature UI). If you made all the research, conversations and planning to know, that answering this 'A or B' problem solves it, then Kialo (or that app) are perfectly fine tools. But most of the time people don't.
https://www.loomio.org is another attempt at solving the same problem. It does provide some improvements, but also fails in interesting ways (mostly, I think, through not considering temporality very seriously).
Ok I see, and yes I agree.
Although to me, I don't think this is necessarily as big of a problem as people seem unable to stop making it out to be, which I tried to point out in my comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25904058
As I see it, the fundamental problem is the infinitely dimensional (recursively self-referencing, paradoxical, etc) nature of reality. A "right way" to model it is impossible - the best we can do is try to find a "good enough" (across all variables) approach, acknowledge (and gather opinions on) where we have fallen short and could improve, and iterate as you go. Kind of like life itself, "coincidentally".
In the super short run, even adding a "middle" column would be a huge improvement.
> I'm actually making tool for this exact same thing and the issue is most noticeable in kialo (which I argue is the same thing, with more mature UI). If you made all the research, conversations and planning to know, that answering this 'A or B' problem solves it, then Kialo (or that app) are perfectly fine tools. But most of the time people don't.
> https://www.loomio.org is another attempt at solving the same problem. It does provide some improvements, but also fails in interesting ways (mostly, I think, through not considering temporality very seriously).
I think this is the most interesting (and largely unrecognized) niche out there - in no small part due to the obvious inherent complexity and no obvious business model, but I feel like those may not even be the main reason - I truly that this space is "hard to see" for most people.
As for design of your product, what do you think of these pie-in-the-sky ideas (from the link above):
> I think that approaches like this website are a not yet a perfect solution, but it feels like a step in the right direction. An improved implementation would have some clever means of allowing a crowd-sourced decomposition of the issue into it's constituent entities and behaviors, graphically displayed in some magical way to maximize the likelihood of everyone seeing the big picture free from misunderstanding, which "all" parties could agree upon (no agreement means more refinement is needed) and refer to in their arguments (so we're all talking about the same thing), and arguments/thinking could take place with precision (attached to the the specific entities and behaviors where the true disagreement resides).
> A lot of people may have a strong aversion to this approach as it would turn easy argumentation into a painstakingly laborious & pedantic process, which is a natural consequence of using slow but accurate cognitive processing, rather than fast but unreliable heuristic processing (the root problem in the first place). Arguments under such a methodology would also more closely resemble the scientific method, or systems analysis in software (where one does not simply throw together an analysis and insist that it is 100% free of material flaws).
So if you take Trophi as a working prototype, could we add a second phase onto an argument, where "someone smart and unbiased" goes through all the arguments, and decomposes them into some "proper" representation, essentially comprehensively aggregating all the distinct points made in the arguments into a master summary, ideally with some sort of a "properly representational structure" between all the points. Perhaps then, in a phase 3, there could be voting &/or further discussion on this summary, the results of which would be passed back through phase 2 to expand and refine the model, also noting where genuine disagreement remains (specifically where in the complex, multidimensional model), and this process is repeated indefinitely - and when some new event occurs in reality, then that could be run through this very same process, updating the multiple related models based on the results of the process.
Obviously this is an incredibly ambitious idea, and is fraught with difficulties (gosh, why is reality so darn complicated!!), but even a half-assed version of it might provide some value - and, perhaps along the way, the true nature of reality might slowly start to dawn on some people, which plausibly might improve the performance of the participants in the overall process, recursively over time.
After some time that's how I explain what I'm building:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25788274
if there's some way to contact you, I'd be super happy to send you an introductory video and some alpha version.
For the original problem, I think the flatter the ontology, the better. I find short videos to be great explanation tools for example - 3Blue1Brown is absolutely insane. But it can be just linked in text after someone asks specific question. I think what is being attempted here is kind of doing philosophy and philosophy is done by giving responses (often: 'you are having wrong argument' responses).
I've seen approach of making argument follow some traditional form (like enforcing using predefined logic to structure points), but I would like to have it as an emergent application. Extension from some subcommunity. It's just a very costly solution - it works perfectly fine when you need to explain management methodology in corporate setting, for example. Lots of resources, expensive mistakes. And I've seen some attempts at providing just that, for example (warning, in Polish) https://mysljaknaukowiec.pl/dyskusje
In a way, that is a methodology debate. Making a tool for checking 'what is' is one approach, making smaller tools that let people fail/iterate upon ideas faster is another.
Within this process, did you have a step that decomposed each comment to extract the constituent entities and behaviors, and then append them to an overall model (which subsequent comments would refer to)? This is not an easy task at all, and expecting average users to be able to do it is likely expecting too much. However, if this is what's needed to return sanity to the world &/or vastly improve our collective understanding of reality, then so be it.
> After some time that's how I explain what I'm building
That's a good idea. I was thinking about something similar to that, except rather than picking items from a personal list, users could pull an idea(s) from a common "tree of knowledge and ideas" or something like that, and then frame their comment around or in the context of those (often complex) ideas*.
> For the original problem, I think the flatter the ontology, the better. I find short videos to be great explanation tools for example - 3Blue1Brown is absolutely insane.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a new, rich multimedia-based language for communicating complex ideas in forums, rather than being stuck with this crap, "low signal/high noise and ambiguity".
I added contact info to my profile, I would love to see what you are working on - I think this space is well overdue for some innovation, and maybe I have some ideas that might fir into what you're working on.
I think that approaches like this website are a not yet a perfect solution [1], but it feels like a step in the right direction. An improved implementation would have some clever means of allowing a crowd-sourced decomposition of the issue into it's constituent entities and behaviors, graphically displayed in some magical way to maximize the likelihood of everyone seeing the big picture free from misunderstanding, which "all" parties could agree upon (no agreement means more refinement is needed) and refer to in their arguments (so we're all talking about the same thing), and arguments/thinking could take place with precision (attached to the the specific entities and behaviors where the true disagreement resides).
A lot of people may have a strong aversion to this approach as it would turn easy argumentation into a painstakingly laborious & pedantic process, which is a natural consequence of using slow but accurate cognitive processing, rather than fast but unreliable heuristic processing (the root problem in the first place). Arguments under such a methodology would also more closely resemble the scientific method, or systems analysis in software (where one does not simply throw together an analysis and insist that it is 100% free of material flaws).
See also:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903747 The First result for me (https://www.trophi.com/page/600eb2036c0b5800157eb041) is proof why this idea of "all opinions are equal and should be given equal opportunity to be heard" is bunk.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903962 I don't see the point of this platform being to coddle inferior points of view by elevating them to faux equal footing.
This logically flawed "both sides" heuristic has become extremely broadly distributed through the system. It very commonly makes an explicit appearance in culture war arguments, and it is surely invisibly participating in cognitive processing even where it does not make a visible appearance.
I wonder how many of these bug-ridden heuristics are out there in the wild (there are several others present in this thread already, with only 36 comments), messing up execution for reasons that are not apparent from the UI perspective? If you think of reality as a system (which it technically is) that you had been hired to debug and fix, how might one go about locating all/most instances of such bugs, and then how would you fix them, considering we do not have direct access to the source code, but rather can only "write" to it via the api's that have been made available to us?
[1] Someone points out that a sub-component of a more elaborate platform already exists:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25904525
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map
I expect most of the necessary components already exist as features embedded in other platforms, if they could all be mashed up together into a new "Collective Cognition" platform of some sort, I think we'd have something really useful on our hands.
The biggest missing piece that I can see is a means (a user interface for) decomposing complex problem spaces, and then (more difficultly), a way to visually(?) represent this high dimensional space that is understandable to a very broad cross-section of people (in the shorter run, even something that only "smarter" people could understand would be a good start).
Does anyone know of any existing systems out there for the "visual" representation of highly dimensional spaces, in a manner that makes it easy/easier to understand for teams? UML, sequence diagrams, etc are the only approaches I have any awareness of.
The other side doesn't just go away. It's kept away by constant refutation.
For reasonable dialogue, various sides have to come to an agreement of shared evidence. In this case, there is no listing of evidence, hence those involved still talk past each other because it does not build a shared understanding.
There is also the burden of evidence. Those making unsubstantiated claims often do so quite freely without much effort; this often incorrectly places the burden on those to disprove sometimes extraordinary claims. Moreover, in these cases, reporting circumstantial evidence that shows the underlying claim is highly unlikely can have the opposite of the intended effect.
And as others have mentioned, things are rarely a two-sided topic. Would it be possible to allow for a topic to have more than two sides? n-number of positions to take that are somehow pre-picked by the OP?
Also, as others have mentioned, how will you moderate it? Will you allow highly controversial topics like those regarding WW2 and race? Where will you draw the line? The quality of a forum is firstly decided by the people who post on the forum, but moderators decide who are able to post on a forum, so in effect, moderators end up being the final arbiters of forum quality in the end.
I would find it very interesting if there was a forum that was formal in tone, allowing people to sometimes border on offensive but never hateful topics. A forum like that would in theory perhaps allow most if not all voices to be heard and talk to one another? While such a place probably would not be pleasing to most, it seems like something the internet lacks at the moment.
I think instead of giving people a chance to get heard we should give people a chance to participate in a respectful dialogue with others who think differently.
Personally I'd find it interesting on science articles.
I'd even pin it to DOIs, keep the media out of it. But media articles are shit, which gets people arguing which is what you want for clicks..... I'd work towards only DOIs but media science articles to start to get numbers.
Just my thoughts. I know I'd like to see dissenting and agreeing opinions on DOIs, just not sure how you would get there.
Politics is a serious topic with, serious, almost always life-changing/defining/ending consequences. Immature people and people preoccupied with their own emotional issues should be signaled by the community at large that, maybe, they should first take care of themselves before they try to change/influence the community.
I'm not saying censure them or "deplatform" them. Just that they should not be encouraged/coddled/enabled. We got here because the position on people saying stupid stuff about politics in public was met with "just leave him/her be, everyone is entitled to their opinion". Yes, they are, but if those opinions are stupid and spoken in public they should be laughed at so that everyone is clear that sharing stupid opinions leads to loss of social standing.
It shows two dumb posts placed side by side.
Not a fan of the way the usernames and the scores are arranged though. Having the username first before the score causes the scores to not align properly, and therefore it makes it really hard to scan the page for topics worth reading.
* Some arguments do not really have two sides because there is an objective truth. The Earth orbits the Sun, humans evolved from ape-like ancestors, etc. These were once debatable topics but now the issue has been settled and debate is pointless.
* Some arguments do not really have two sides because in reality there are multiple viewpoints. Global warming is not real because how can we know if it is, global warming is a deliberate hoax, global warming is real but not that bad, global warming is real and bad but not man made, global warming is real and bad and we can do something about it. How does your site help with this kind of topic?
* Trolls. The design of your site encourages trollish behavior. I am not sure how you plan to moderate harmful or offensive content but if you think that people will step up to shout down offensive topics you are very wrong. The sensible people will just leave and you will be left with only the trolls.
* Moderation. If you site gets any sort of traction you will need moderation. Moderation of topics, moderation of comments, outright banning users. Put simply, you are going to have to take sides defeating the whole "both sides" approach you are trying to foster. At the moment, one of the front page topics is how the Holocaust could be used for population control - a real nice way to introduce your site.
Good luck, but I will not be joining.
Thanks for taking a look and yeah I agree with a lot of your points.
I was just trying to start a different type of conversation online. I find myself searching for "what the other side thinks" alot these days. Maybe this could help bridge the gap a bit.
As any forum there will be a need for moderation and at the moment this is only a passion project. So I'll do my best I can for now.
I went ahead and took that post down. Not sure if I'll be able to control everything but like I said I'll do the best that I can.
It is not people are quiet about their beliefs - just read some of their books/blogs if you want to know how they think. Just avoid sites like youtube where people are paid by advertising - there you will only get deliberately provocative content just to get clicks.
You UI is interesting but I think you are setting yourself up for hosting arguments rather than discussion. Sites like ycombinator, reddit, twitter, and yes even parlor have the cultures they do due to careful (and often unseen) moderation. I don't envy the task you have set for yourself.