[ihinsdale]

Sequiturs: https://sequiturs.com

Sequiturs is a platform for rigorous and civil discussion. Discussion revolves around arguments, which consist of a series of premises and conclusions. This argument format requires coherence, which improves the quality of the views asserted, and makes it easier to identify where one might disagree.

[schoen]

I think I've seen a few attempts at this before -- do you have some awareness of the previous ones and a comparison of how yours is similar or different?

The name is clever; as a Latin-speaker I keep wanting it to be "sequuntur".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sequuntur

But I bet that would be a lot harder for non-Latin speakers to remember!

[ihinsdale]

Thanks for your comment! And for the suggestion of sequuntur. My experience thus far does suggest remembering spelling is an issue. Relatedly, I've registered misspellings (sequiters, sequitors, sequitirs) and am redirecting those to sequiturs.com.

As for other attempts in this space, I've encountered argüman [0], TruthMapping [1], debategraph [2], and Rationale [3]. I like a lot about those projects, and Sequiturs certainly shares with them the idea that there's enormous room for improvement in the way we discuss ideas online, and that structure is key to that. They all have an important difference with Sequiturs, though, which is their emphasis on mapping. I see the format they use as attempting to generate a sense of what the 'argument space', so to speak, looks like: the format is basically saying, "Here are all these different claims someone could make around this topic and here's how they could feed into each other or conflict with each other".

By contrast, Sequiturs' format emphasizes logical coherence in the series of steps that comprise an argument. It highlights the reasoning that leads from starting point to conclusion. By putting the reasoning in focus, the platform facilitates iterative refinement of an argument into its strongest form. Here's how that works.

Suppose I make an argument like: https://sequiturs.com/arguments/tech-companies-should-not-be.... Someone could come along as they did today and comment on step 3: https://sequiturs.com/arguments/tech-companies-should-not-be.... That comment on step 3 makes me realize I could word that step better, so I revise the argument: https://sequiturs.com/arguments/tech-companies-should-not-be....

What emerges from discussion on Sequiturs is an argument for some position boiled down to its essence--to its most digestible, shareable form. If I want to convince you that backdoors are a bad idea, I can send you a link to my argument on Sequiturs, and it's immediately clear what I think you should believe and why. That's not the case with the other, mapping-based tools, because they are more about charting the space of possible points and counterpoints, and less about yielding rigorous sequences of reasoning (you could call them proofs or syllogisms, but those terms connote a bit too much formality and strictness for my taste).

I'd love to know if you know of other attempts in this space. And I'd love to know what you think about Sequiturs!

[0] http://en.arguman.org/ [1] https://www.truthmapping.com [2] http://debategraph.org/ [3] https://www.rationaleonline.com/