[eneifert]

I would love to see something like this for broader issues and I see two big benefits.

1) I think it could be really helpful to bloggers. If I wrote a post on a divisive topic, I would love to have it reviewed by respected people who are on the other side (not sure exactly how you would work out the respected part). When we write it's too easy for us to build up a scarecrow argument then knock it down to the delight of those who already agree with us. For example imagine a metric that showed how much people who disagree with the article respect it anyways. If I saw something like that on my Facebook feed I would be more likely to read it.

2) A place for us to get experience on how to debate better. There are a number of principles that a site like this could promote. For example, when you disagree with someone ask a question you actually want the answer to, then talk about it. It sounds easy but it can only become a habit with deliberate practice. I have seen a number of other TED talks that go over these kinds of things.

[schoen]

> There are a number of principles that a site like this could promote.

One list is

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

I can also recommend

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

although I'm not positive of its educational value. :-)

Edit: This version of the sketch has what I find to be kind of pointless violence at the end.

[grzm]

Also

- Crocker's Rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12881288

- Principle of Charity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12774600

- Rapaport's Rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12774692

[schoen]

There's also this thing that Eliezer Yudkowsky observed

https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers

It includes the impulse to suggest that things we favor have no negative consequences (or reasons to doubt them), while things we oppose have no positive consequences (or reasons to believe them).

In some forms of high school and college debate, you can lose points if you don't rebut every single argument raised by your opponent (but your rebuttal doesn't necessarily have to be good in the ordinary sense of the word!). In policy debate this can lead to spreading, where people speak absurdly quickly because they want to be counted as having formally responded to everything the other side said, or having introduced points that the other side failed to rebut.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_debate#Style_and_delive...

This is kind of wacky because it gets into a stylized activity far removed from what most listeners would understand as substantively discussing an issue. And it doesn't seem to admit the possibility that both sides might have some points to which there is no convincing rebuttal (which Eliezer suggests is actually a normal state of affairs for talking about real-world issues).