July 26, 2005

Truthmapping. If you've been active in any of the political (or other) threads that attempt debate around here with varying degrees of success - perhaps this format is for you. via
posted by petebest 19 years ago
  • No, you're wrong!
  • The only success in arguments on the Internet comes when the other guy wears out. But I'll check back on the site in a few months and see if that damn Ontological argument for the existence of god is still there. Fucking St. Anselm lives on.
  • Neat idea! Certainly bears watching to see how it turns out...
  • There's an awful lot of "proof by assertion" going on, there. Aside from the critiques and rebuttals, I'd like to see something akin to the wikipedia "votes for deletion" thing here which would oust plainly "bad" arguments. Especially the ones where "it follows from 1 that..." and a new assertion or premise is simply substituted in as though it really DID follow from 1. I'm quite keen on the idea, and I think that it's got some good potential to refine and define the debate space for some topics, but I'd sure like to see plainly bad logic simply removed (on vote or consensus) rather than debated as though it were even worthy of discussion.
  • I'd sure like to see plainly bad logic simply removed (on vote or consensus) rather than debated as though it were even worthy of discussion. Of course the first thing I did was find a topic on the war in Iraq. Someone attempted to prove that the war is just and a good idea and is saving us from terrorists, who would otherwise be bombing the living daylights out of us right fucking now, etc etc, but the entire arguement seemed to be based on the halucinations induced by the gasoline that he's been huffing regularly for the past 2 years. Another user included the premise "To get something done, one cannot give up" in a proof as to why the Iraq war is just. They also need an option for "I'm laughing too hard to write a critique."
  • The Iraq . . umm . issue was exactly what I was thinking, smallish bear. As it relates to the back-and-forth format we use here. I thought the truthmapping concept might be better for (a) stating a premise (b)supporting that premise and (c) moving on to the next part of it. It seems that with our comments we tend to derail in a "no thats not what I meant" thing, when we really just need to look at sections of any given argument. So is it ironic that I found this at the blue?
  • Maybe someone saw Metamath and felt that the same idea could be applied to discourse?