A few notes about the site mechanics
A few notes about the community
If English is not your first language, don't let that make you afraid to post or comment. You can get English help on Discussion- or Main-level posts by sending a PM to one of the following users (use the "send message" link on the upper right of their user page). Either put the text of the post in the PM, or just say that you'd like English help and you'll get a response with an email address.
* Normal_Anomaly
* Randaly
* shokwave
* Barry Cotter
A note for theists: you will find the Less Wrong community to be predominantly atheist, though not completely so, and most of us are genuinely respectful of religious people who keep the usual community norms. It's worth saying that we might think religion is off-topic in some places where you think it's on-topic, so be thoughtful about where and how you start explicitly talking about it; some of us are happy to talk about religion, some of us aren't interested. Bear in mind that many of us really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false, so starting with the most common arguments is pretty likely just to annoy people. Anyhow, it's absolutely OK to mention that you're religious in your welcome post and to invite a discussion there.
A list of some posts that are pretty awesome
I recommend the major sequences to everybody, but I realize how daunting they look at first. So for purposes of immediate gratification, the following posts are particularly interesting/illuminating/provocative and don't require any previous reading:
- The Worst Argument in the World
- That Alien Message
- How to Convince Me that 2 + 2 = 3
- Lawful Uncertainty
- Your Intuitions are Not Magic
- The Planning Fallacy
- The Apologist and the Revolutionary
- Scope Insensitivity
- The Allais Paradox (with two followups)
- We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think
- The Least Convenient Possible World
- The Third Alternative
- The Domain of Your Utility Function
- Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality
- The True Prisoner's Dilemma
- The Tragedy of Group Selectionism
- Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided
More suggestions are welcome! Or just check out the top-rated posts from the history of Less Wrong. Most posts at +50 or more are well worth your time.
Welcome to Less Wrong, and we look forward to hearing from you throughout the site!
Once a post gets over 500 comments, the site stops showing them all by default. If this post has 500 comments and you have 20 karma, please do start the next welcome post; a new post is a good perennial way to encourage newcomers and lurkers to introduce themselves. (Step-by-step, foolproof instructions here; takes <180seconds.)
If there's anything I should add or update on this post (especially broken links), please send me a private message—I may not notice a comment on the post.
Finally, a big thank you to everyone that helped write this post via its predecessors!
Welcome!
I've seen these sorts of argument maps before.
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Debate_tools http://en.arguman.org/
It seems there is some overlap with your list here
Generally what I've noticed about them is that they focus very hard on things like fallacies. One problem here is that some people are simply better debaters even though their ideas may be unsound. Because they can better follow the strict argument structure they 'win' debates, but actually remain incorrect.
For example: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=1437 He uses mostly the same arguments debate after debate and so has a supreme advantage over his opponents. He picks apart the responses, knowing full well all of the problems with typical responses. There isn't really any discussion going on anymore. It is an exercise in saying things exactly the right way without invoking a list of problem patterns. See: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ik/one_argument_against_an_army/
Now, this should be slightly less of an issue since everyone can see what everyone's arguments are, and we should expect highly skilled people on both sides of just about every issue. That said the standard for actual solid evidence and arguments becomes rather ridiculous. It is significantly easier to find some niggling problem with your opponents argument than to actually address its core issues.
I suppose I'm trying to describe the effects of the 'fallacy fallacy.'
Thus a significant portion of manpower is spent on wording and putting the argument precisely exactly right instead of dealing with the underlying facts. You'll also have to deal with the fact that if a majority of people believe something then the shear amount of manpower they can spend on shoring up their own arguments and poking holes in their opponents will make it difficult for minority views to look like they hold water.
What are we to do with equally credible citations that say opposing things?
'Every argument ever made' is a huge goal. Especially with the necessary standards people hold arguments to. Are you sure you've got something close to the right kind of format to deal with that? How many such formats have you tried? Why are you thinking of using this one over those? Has this resulted in your beliefs actually changing at any point? Has this actually improved the quality of arguments? Have you tried testing them with totally random people off of the street versus nerds versus academics? Is it actually fun to do it this way?
From what I have seen so far I'll predict there will be a the lack of manpower, and that you'll end up with a bunch of arguments marked full of holes in perpetual states of half-completion. Because making solid arguments is hard there will be very few of them. I suspect arguments about which citations are legitimate will become very heavily recursive. Especially so on issues where academia's ideological slates come into play.
I've thought up perhaps four or five similar systems, but none of which I've actually gone out and tested for effectiveness at coming to correct conclusions about the world. It is easy to generate a way of organizing information, but it needs to be thoroughly tested for effectiveness before it is actually implemented.
In this case effectiveness would mean
A word tabooing feature would be helpful: http://lesswrong.com/lw/np/disputing_definitions/ (The entire Map and Territory, How to Actually Change Your Mind, and A Human's Guide To Words sequences would be things I'd consider vital information for making such a site)
It may be useful for users to see their positions on particular topics change over time. What do they agree with now and before? What changed their mind?
I hope that helped spark some thoughts. Good luck!
Thanks for an excellent, in-depth reply!
Brilliant resource! Thanks for pointing it out.
You bring up a few worries although i think you also realize how i plan to deal with them. (Whether i am successful or not is another matter!)
One part of this project is to make some positive aspects of debating skills easy to pick up by newbies using the site. Charisma and confidence are worthless in a written forma... (read more)