Difference between revisions of "Structured debate"

Latest revision as of 18:13, 11 July 2013

About

A structured debate is a dispute resolution technique which maps the debate, i.e. breaks down the elements of a disagreement into the smallest arguable chunks ("points") so as to clearly indicate the dependencies between supporting points and the larger points they support or attack as well as the current status of each assertion (i.e. whether it has been refuted or not).

This helps to prevent a number of common problems with discussions of complex issues:

accidentally (or deliberately) taking opposing points out of context, and answering them as if the context didn't exist
the feeling of getting "lost" in the argument due to not knowing what has been settled and what remains to be discussed
significant points falling by the wayside and remaining unanswered
conflating multiple points into a single point, which leads easily to making logical fallacies

See project:Structured Debate for extensive design discussion.

FAQ

Q: Isn't it authoritarian to make people follow rules, rather than just allowing open discussion?
- A: The structure doesn't restrict what anyone can say; it just helps show whether they're making sense or not. If everyone using this system agrees that one and one equal three, or that the sun rises in the west, the system won't stop them from saying so. If nobody challenges those assertions, then they will stand as true.
Q: Isn't this turning discussion into a contest, where participants will want their position to prevail at any cost?
- A: The only sense in which this is a contest is that it is arguably a contest of ideas – not people. It does eliminate ideas by keeping track of which ones have been shown to have logical or factual flaws, but it does not attach any stigma or virtue to those who propose those ideas, whether those ideas prevail or are culled. Further, an idea which is culled may later be resurrected by new information; no idea is discarded or lost outright.

Implementations

Argumentrix is attempting to stage what appears to be loosely-structured debates using MediaWiki as a platform
Issuepedia is working on a set of rules for structured debate, eventually to be turned into an internet application with a web interface
- category:debates has a list of structured debates using Issuepedia's proposed rules and debaticons
Calculemus looks to be a similar idea.
- video

Links

Reference

Wikipedia (argument map)
LessWrong Wiki (debate tools)

News

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-==Overview==
+<hide>
-[[category:tools]][[category:terms of convenience]]A [[structured debate]] is an argumentative discussion in which the pieces of the argument are broken down into the smallest arguable chunks ("points"), and the dependencies between supporting points and the larger points which depend on them are clearly indicated.
+[[page type::article]]
+[[thing type::tool]]
+[[purpose::dispute resolution]]
+[[category:tools]]
+[[category:terms of convenience]]
+</hide>
+==About==
+A [[structured debate]] is a [[Issuepedia:Dispute Resolution Technology|dispute resolution technique]] which [[debate mapping|maps the debate]], i.e. breaks down the elements of a disagreement into the smallest arguable chunks ("points") so as to clearly indicate the dependencies between supporting points and the larger points they support or attack as well as the current status of each assertion (i.e. whether it has been refuted or not).
 This helps to prevent a number of common problems with discussions of complex issues:
@@ Line 7: / Line 14: @@
 * significant points falling by the wayside and remaining unanswered
 * [[conflating]] multiple points into a single point, which leads easily to making logical fallacies
-===Goals===
-====Structure====
-Any set of rules for truth-driven debate must satisfy a number of criteria, including:
-* It must be possible to determine, at any given moment, which items are agreed upon and which are still in dispute
-* It should be easy to spot when a debater is changing the subject rather than answering a point
-* It should be possible to "unbundle" any point which involves a chain of suppositions (i.e. depends upon multiple sub-points) so that the individual suppositions can be discussed separately
-As much as possible, the system should be set up so that no individual has any more power than any other. There will always need to be sysops, of course, but they should not have to intervene except under extraordinary circumstances of obvious spamming or other overtly bad behavior. Creating mechanisms to deal with bad behavior will be one of the main challenges; see [[#Potential Problems]] below.
+See [[project:Structured Debate]] for extensive design discussion.
-====Interface====
+===FAQ===
-Ideally, a structured debate is represented in a manner which provides visual cues for:
+* {{hilite|'''Q''': Isn't it [[authoritarian]] to make people follow rules, rather than just allowing open discussion?}}
-* which side of the argument is being advocated by a particular piece of text
+** '''A''': The structure doesn't restrict what anyone can say; it just helps show whether they're making sense or not. If everyone using this system agrees that one and one equal three, or that the sun rises in the west, the system won't stop them from saying so. If nobody challenges those assertions, then they will stand as true.
-* whether a given point has been defeated or called into question
+* {{hilite|'''Q''': Isn't this turning discussion into a contest, where participants will want their position to [[arguments as soldiers|prevail at any cost]]?}}
-* the dependency structure (which parent-point is being attacked or defended by any given sub-point)
+** '''A''': The only sense in which this is a contest is that it is arguably a contest of ''ideas'' &ndash; not people. It does eliminate ideas by keeping track of which ones have been shown to have logical or factual flaws, but it does not attach any stigma or virtue to those who propose those ideas, whether those ideas prevail or are culled. Further, an idea which is culled may later be resurrected by new information; no idea is discarded or lost outright.
+==Implementations==
+* [http://argumentrix.com/wiki/Main_Page Argumentrix] is attempting to stage what appears to be loosely-structured debates using MediaWiki as a platform
+* [[Issuepedia:Structured Debate|Issuepedia]] is working on a set of rules for structured debate, eventually to be turned into an internet application with a web interface
+** [[:category:debates]] has a list of structured debates using Issuepedia's proposed rules and [[Issuepedia:debaticons|debaticons]]
+* [http://internetargument.org/ Calculemus] looks to be a similar idea.
+** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd1LWZAD6fI video]
-The interface should make it easy and intuitive for untrained users to add additional points (supporting or countering).
+==Links==
+===Reference===
+* {{wikipedia|Argument map}} (argument map)
+* {{lwwiki|Debate tools}} (debate tools)
-The software should automatically track the status (supported, unanswered/open, or defeated) of each point, in order to minimize the administrative overhead of enforcing the basic debate rules. (There is a potential problem in this, however; see [[#Potential Problems]] below.)
+===News===
-===Proposed Rules===
+{{links/news}}
-There may be many sets of rules which would meet these goals, but here is a proposed set:
-* Every argument starts with a claim (the '''root claim''') which states one side of the debate as fact.
-* Any (parent) '''claim''' may have zero or more '''supporting claims''' (or '''supports'''), each of which individually supports the parent claim independently of the others
-* Any (parent) '''claim''' may have zero or more '''requirement claims''' (or '''requirements'''), all of which must be true in order for the claim to be valid
-* Any '''claim''' may be answered by zero or more response arguments
-* All response arguments must relate to the parent claim in one of the following ways:
-** '''Support''': an argument that the parent claim is true
-** '''Counter''': an argument that the parent claim is false
-* Any '''claim''' is '''defeated''' if it has no active (non-defeated) sub-claims and at least one active counter-claim
-* Participants in a debate may indicate their approval or disagreement with an item
-** This agreement is strictly binary (agree/disagree); if a participant wishes to draw a finer distinction, s/he should create a claim with which s/he can agree or disagree unilaterally (this rule is somewhat fuzzy at the moment and needs to have some examples to look at)
-** Whenever a participant's agreement/disagreement does not match the logical outcome of the debate (e.g. disagreeing with an item with no active counterpoints, or agreeing with an item which has been refuted), resolving the discrepancy should be somehow included in a to-do list for that participant. Participants may be disqualified or downgraded for allowing discrepancies to remain unanswered for too long (exact details to be worked out later).
-* The outcome of another debate may be used as the argument for a claim, in which case the children of that debate's root claim become children of the current claim, and the same rules apply
-Some further refinements will be necessary when adapting this system for making time-dependent decisions (see [[InstaGov]]).
-====Potential Problems====
-=====[[Chewbacca defense|Chewbacca]] participants=====
-The one major problem which seems likely to raise its head is that of an unfriendly participant (UP) posting nonsensical arguments which the system will automatically count as valid, thereby requiring a counter. Although countering them may be just as quick as creating them (e.g. "This is nonsensical"), the argument's visual presentation could be rapidly overwhelmed by the nonsense-and-counters and become practically unreadable.
-There are several possibilities for dealing with this. An obvious one, which may be the best solution, is to offer the option to vote on comment relevance; comments below a certain threshhold (which each user may set for her/himself) are automatically hidden/suppressed.
-=====Quote mapping=====
-Another, somewhat less thorny problem is involved in the process of "mapping" an existing freeform debate into a structured debate. Claims in freeform format are often tightly bundled together and need to be "unrolled" and disambiguated. What we need is some way to take the original quote, mark it up with the claims it seems to represent, and then insert those claims into the structure of the argument while referencing the original quote.
-A semi-obvious way of dealing with this is simply to treat quotes as sources. This does open up the question, however, of how to handle authoritativeness and misrepresentation; perhaps "source" needs to be a data entity understood by the system, and sources whose claims are repeatedly contradicted need to have a lower "authority" score than sources whose claims are not, or whose claims are repeatedly confirmed by other sources. Although this makes the programming substantially more complicated, tentatively it would seem a worthwhile thing to spend significant time on (perhaps not in the first version, however).
-====Example====
-(using text terms rather than icons)
-* '''claim''': Socrates is mortal
-** '''support''': Socrates is mortal because he is a man.
-*** '''requirement''': All men are mortal.
-*** '''requirement''': Socrates is a man.
-** '''support''': Socrates is dead, therefore he was mortal.
-*** '''requirement''': Socrates is dead.
-*** '''requirement''': Death is sufficient to demonstrate mortality.
-** '''counter''': Socrates's works have endured for millennia, therefore he is immortal.
-*** '''counter''': This is an argument that Socrates's ''works'' are immortal, not that he himself is immortal.
-===Exploratory Option===
-It looks like it would be useful to have an option for a less rigorous but still structured debate, where territory is still being mapped out and participants are not so much ''disagreeing'' with each other as engaging in a sort of question-and-answer volley. A good example is [[User:Woozle/debate/progressive conservatism#Differences|here]]. "Exploratory" seems like a good name for this mode. It would omit the tracking of pro-and-con and focus more on identifying the individual participants, which establishes individual beliefs and positions at various locations in the issue's "terrain" without necessarily invoking conflict.
-Later on, we might add categorization-tagging of each point so we could (for example) quickly look up all of a given participant's statements on a given issue, or all participants' statements on that issue. (This would also require the ability for participants to go back and clarify or comment on their positions, especially if they change in the light of later evidence.)
-===Issuepedia===
-Issuepedia provides [[issuepedia:argumenticons|argumenticons]] and associated templates for the purpose of documenting structured debates. We are working on tools for managing and conducting structured debates between two or more participants in realtime.
-See also [[:category:debates]] &ndash; as of this writing, all of the pages in this category contain structured debates.