
Kialo – a platform for rational debate - lukeplato
https://www.kialo.com/
======
gravypod
I did everyone a benifit by opening the holy war: [https://www.kialo.com/tabs-
vs-spaces-16646/16646.0=16646.1](https://www.kialo.com/tabs-vs-
spaces-16646/16646.0=16646.1)

I'm surprised this was not yet posted on the platform.

As for the platform it was very easy to use. The UI is simple and it makes you
flesh out both sides of the argument to the best of your ability before it is
publicly visible. This dynamic is very interesting as even before the topic is
visible it will appear as if there is considerable participation in the
topic's discussion. I bet that will definitely drive participation.

I'm very interested in seeing how this shapes up. Love the idea and the
implementation!

~~~
joelthelion
This is a very nice demonstration that the sites lacks a neutral option. I
think a lot of people don't care about tabs vs. spaces, as long as there is a
convention and editors can be configured to respect it. Since their voice
can't be heard, this results in needless polarization of the debate.

I suspect other more serious debates will suffer from the same problem.

~~~
Kialo
Many issues do not have a neutral position (Is climate change real / man-made?
Is there a God? Is torture ever ok? Should there be trigger warnings in
education?.

If you are undecided, that's fine, don't vote or vote it a two. Voting is how
you show your position in Kialo.

But we do have debates with middle ground positions or for debating multiple
theses, they are called multi thesis debates. Here are examples for drug
legislation ([https://www.kialo.com/2027](https://www.kialo.com/2027)) and
Game of Thrones ([https://www.kialo.com/1203](https://www.kialo.com/1203))

~~~
sshine
Tabs vs. Spaces could be similarly be viewed as a multi-thesis debate; "Tabs"
and "Spaces", and arguments for and against each.

This is more neutral than the current "Tabs are better than Spaces", since the
negation of that statement is "Tabs are not better than Spaces", rather than
"Spaces are better than Tabs."

When the initial question is skewed, the rest of the discussion becomes
skewed.

~~~
Kialo
You could, but then you would just end up linking the pros of Tabs as cons to
Spaces, which is kind of redundant.

In the end, this is a simple, doing X is better than doing Y.

Using multiple theses generally only makes sense if they are "unrelated" (and
not competing) or if you have more than two options.

~~~
sshine
Having multiple theses risks but does not necessitate more redundancy.

Yes, there are multiple points where an argument might occur. This risk occurs
for all multi-thesis debates. Perhaps a DAG is more suited than a tree.

An example of the bias of having "X is better than Y" as the claim:

Claim: Tabs are better than Spaces.

Con: IDEs will handle spaces transparently and as effortlessly as if they were
tabs.

Sub-con: This is not a "con" of tabs.

[https://www.kialo.com/tabs-vs-
spaces-16646/16646.0=16646.1-1...](https://www.kialo.com/tabs-vs-
spaces-16646/16646.0=16646.1-16646.6)

This demonstrates that arguments _for_ spaces are confused with arguments
against tabs.

So good arguments to spaces will always occur as counter-arguments to tabs,
not as positively phrased arguments to use spaces.

More obviously, arguments for spaces will appear red and disproving.

If you don't call that a bias, try starting a thread called "Kialo is a biased
and simplistic platform." and see the effect.

My grasp on the subject of logical formalisms is a bit rusty, but I believe
this bias can be expressed as a consequence of using propositional logic to
simplify a world in which "tab" is not the logical opposite to "space" as true
is to false. The objects you neglect to address unambiguously is:

\- How do I differentiate between "Tabs are not better than spaces", "Spaces
are better than tabs", and "Spaces are good"?

\- How do I express that "Tabs are not better than spaces, and spaces are not
better than tabs"?

\- How do I express that the combination of tabs and spaces are better?

\- How do I express that tabs are only good if accompanied by spaces?

\- How do I express that tabs are just as good as spaces as long as they're
accompanied by spaces?

Putting them in a tree that is biased at the top makes this very difficult.

The debate of the use of tabs and spaces is not able to be summarized in the
one thesis "Tabs are better than spaces".

The thesis does not do a very good job of giving a collected overview of the
debate. But it surely incites anger!

('This is not a "con" of tabs." is not itself a con of the argument, but a
comment that the argument doesn't belong here. Ironically, the point it tries
to make applies to itself.)

Also, why does the Kialo website hijack my right-click ability and my ability
to copy-paste text?

------
aidos
I like the idea but found it a little hard to follow the arguments. Especially
difficult if you follow down the cons thread, because a con of a con is a pro
of the original point.

I worry that it won’t really result in more rational outcome but I do wish it
luck. Is there anyway to downvote the points for being, for example, strawman
arguments?

Edit: maybe I’d parse it better if they were labelled “agree” and “disagree”?

~~~
antpls
I would like to add that the "agree"/"disagree" or "pro"/"cons" should have a
random placement (left or right) and also random colors every time the page is
loaded. "Cons" shouldn't be red.

The brain has several cognitive biases, such as giving more value to the last
paragraphes it reads (which are usually at the right, or at the end of a text
block). Cultural biases, such as colors (red for "alert","bad" for example)
also influence judgements.

By the way, the website doesn't look easily usable or accessible to impaired
people

~~~
Kialo
We thought that green = pro and red = con, is kind of universally agreed upon,
no?

The most common misunderstanding is the one mentioned before, a con to a con,
indirectly supports the thesis, but is red.

But changing that around is even more confusing. Especially when the parent to
that con is then used as a pro somewhere else (and the con now having to be
labeled red again).

We consider pros and cons always to be relating to the parent directly above
them. This allows them to be linked or copied between debates, irrespective of
what debate they originally were a part of.

~~~
aidos
I'm sure your team have given it a lot more thought than my drive-by
assessment but a mobile constraint seems the wrong reasoning to use less clear
wording. I'm sure it's something you get used to, but for me personally it
jars quite heavily.

So to clarify, the below is in the wrong section, right? Even if it was under
cons, as I believe it should be, the X cons Y wording doesn't feel natural to
me.

[https://www.kialo.com/macos-and-windows-should-sandbox-
all-a...](https://www.kialo.com/macos-and-windows-should-sandbox-all-
apps-16655/16655.0=16655.1-16655.9)

For posterity:

>>> Getting asked for permissions by various apps (can I access the camera,
can I read you photos, can I send you notifications, can I get your location,
etc...) is annoying.

>>> Pros: Mobile users seem to be okay with getting asked for permissions on
demand, why would desktop users be any different?

As an aside, how do I copy anything without having to trawl through the DOM or
click the tweet button!?

~~~
Kialo
"Mobile users seem to be okay with getting asked for permissions on demand,
why would desktop users be any different?" Should be a con, not a pro, as it
weakens the claim above. Just drag it to the other side.

------
Kialo
Hi HN!

9 months after launch we make it to the frontpage :)

Happy to answer any questions! More info about us and our mission can be found
in this interview with our founder:

[https://twitter.com/FT/status/956126468635004928](https://twitter.com/FT/status/956126468635004928)

~~~
Kialo
One of the best showcases of what can be done with Kialo in the public sphere
is probably the gun legislation debate, with >2.4k unique claims and thousands
of participants, mapping out the reasoning for all perspectives. Was created
by user paulmoore about 9 months ago.

[https://www.kialo.com/should-the-us-adopt-stricter-gun-
contr...](https://www.kialo.com/should-the-us-adopt-stricter-gun-
controls-3346)

~~~
username3
It’s hard to follow cons side when support for red cons are green pros. The
pro side always has green pros. [https://banter.wiki/](https://banter.wiki/)
keeps the same color for a position.

~~~
Kialo
Do you allow multi linking, intermap linking, branch copying to other Kialos
of claims or do people always have to rewrite them from scratch (and all their
children?)? Because if you did, you would know that claims have to change
their color based on what is exactly above them.

Also, when you are on level 10 of a debate, the claims might very well be a
subdiscussion that attack the veracity or relevance of their parents, not of
the thesis. Our debates often have >1k claims, that's the only way to handle
it. A pro or a con relates directly to the parent above.

(Linking your site once, instead of thrice, would have been polite, like the
others did. :) )

~~~
username3
Did you flag my comments? It’s even not my site. I compared Kialo and other
debate sites in the past. Linking is how we refer to things on the Internet.
Don’t be so defensive. When people like your ideas, they’ll link you.

~~~
Kialo
It was our first time on HN and I don't think the person using the account did
(or had enough karma even if they wanted to). As you can see here and beneath
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486633))
we prefer to engage. Arguman is also still in there. Also, I am unsure how
flagging works on HN, but I think it requires multiple people clicking "flag"
to mark a post as flagged.

------
Fellshard
One observation I made about this tool: the questions are often framed with
bias themselves, usually by introducing some hidden assumption. That can start
a whole discussion on a tilt, and would take some serious work to curate and
sculpt.

~~~
Kialo
Could you give some examples of the hidden biases introduced by the theses? I
presume you don't mean the way the theses are written, as in for or against
the motion, instead of as a question?

~~~
Fellshard
Usually the question embeds an initial assumption that one answer or the other
is the 'default' state, so anchor bias is introduced in the very consideration
of the question.

Visiting the page, I'm seeing fewer anchor issues than I'd seen previously,
but still seeing some like the following:

'Students Keep "No Platforming" Contentious Speakers. Should They Stop?'

'Should Businesses Deny Service to Trump Administration Officials?'

'Is Science Political?'

Some of these can't be phrased any other way, but a little tuning might help:
the latter, for example, has a subtle bias towards science being apolitical,
and introduces a new claim: that science may be political. Rephrasing the
question 'Is science political or apolitical?' would leave you with only an
ordering anchor bias - a slight weighting towards the first item in the list.

This also seems to be a factor in the foundational claim made in each
question: it usually picks one side or the other, and all arguments and
counterarguments are then firmly grounded in that claim. Perhaps expressing
each claim as both a positive and negative claim would make a difference.

For example, in the 'no-platforming' question, the foundational claim is
'Social justice movements should abandon the use of no-platforming at
universities'. If there were a way to present both claims as foundational -
'should abandon' vs. 'should embrace', e.g. - you would get a more fleshed-out
debate, as the arguments for and against the one are not necessarily arguments
against and for the other, respectively.

EDIT: I do see you've added what you call 'multi-thesis debates', this seems
to tackle the latter half of this post fairly directly.

~~~
Kialo
Thanks for the detailed reply.

It's something we have been thinking about a lot. As you write, there is no
real good way of dealing with this. Stating both options will make theses read
convoluted.

Writing the thesis as a question doesn't help much either and confuses some
people. (We have tried.)

We think that the best place to correct for anchoring and setting up the stage
for a discussion is the discussion info, the popup that appears the first time
you load a discussion.

Regarding the "should abandon" and "should embrace", what kind of new claims
do you think would arise, compared to a single thesis "should abandon"? We
normally were able to fit all claims of two theses multis in comparative
single thesis debates, sometimes though not at the first level as they require
an implicit assumption to be stated as a parent pro or con.

We leave it to users, but consider comparative single thesis debates much
easier to write than multis with a lot of linking. If there are more than two
options though, multis are required.

We see most multis in team situations, not public discussions, e.g. us
discussing which framework, library or design to choose.

~~~
Fellshard
It's a very good point that presenting two polar positions does not
necessarily mean bias is removed, and may indeed remove more nuanced positions
from view.

Perhaps my reticence comes more from the fairly dual nature of Kialo's
discussions: an initial premise, and then points strictly for or against that
premise, which makes it difficult to discuss, say, middle or nuanced
positions. But that may not be the role of the platform to fit all those
nuances into one discussion, either; that could easily be a use case for
spinning up a new discussion, instead.

Glad to see you trying to set this kind of ground for discussion, regardless.
I do hope it becomes a useful tool for people to dissect these discussions and
gain an accurate understanding of arguments instead of a distorted one; I
think that may be one of the most valuable aspects of this tool, by a long
shot.

------
jasonhansel
I'm not quite sure what the authors of this site mean by "reason" and
"rational." Its design promotes the arguments that are most popular, not the
ones with the most intrinsic validity or soundness. Furthermore, it's by no
means obvious that rationality alone is sufficient to resolve moral and
ethical questions; other virtues may also be required.

~~~
Kialo
Well, at least we tell people to vote the claims "impacts" not likability. We
haven't yet researched how well this works, but anecdotal evidence suggests
that it does have some impact.

The heart, is just a thanks to the original author and doesn't impact the
sorting.

We are going to do something drastic to the default impact shown, because we
agree that the average is not really an interesting measure. 1-2 months.

I hope we are not overselling ourselves. We are no panacea, what we do, is
facilitate and capture the reasoning of all viewpoints. This won't
automatically lead to consensus. But at the very least you can now truly
understand where others are coming from and write your opposing claims to
whatever they consider being their strongest points.

~~~
jasonhansel
I agree that further research on this topic would be excellent! But we should
keep in mind that what's really important is not to reach consensus, but to
ascertain the truth.

More generally, though, I would be interested to hear how you would define
"reason" and "rationality." These are difficult questions, and I'm interested
to hear more about your approach.

~~~
Kialo
In a democracy, consensus on truths actually matters a lot.

Not speaking for the team, but, I would probably consider something to be
argued rationally, that is logical within a cultural setting and frame of
mind. Very often, this depends on the epistemological system a person is
using. Take believers vs non-believers. Both can be rational within their
framework, but many will consider other people's framework as not rational.

We think that claims should always be logical and pertaining to the parent
claim above them, in YOUR belief system, otherwise it becomes incoherent and
unreadable for others.

------
ajnin
I have 2 issues, first is that it looks more like a popularity contest.
Popupar points of view get propelled at the top where they get more exposure
and get all the discussion and votes, like on any other discussion site with
threads.

Second, there is not "yes, but ..." answer, you are forced to take sides, for
example to the hypothetical question "should drugs be legalized ?", I'd
probably want to aswer "yes, but regulated". Not sure how to express that.

~~~
ibeckermayer
>it looks more like a popularity contest.

Right, is what is rationally justified decided by what is democratically
popular? The best solution would allow for customizable curation, where
different systems of authority and checks/balances on that authority could be
tried, with different participants.

Equally-weighted voting is obviously not the solution for promoting rational
debate, since in almost all domains there are a select few with much more
knowledge than all others.

~~~
Kialo
>Right, is what is rationally justified decided by what is democratically
popular? The best solution would allow for customizable curation, where
different systems of authority and checks/balances on that authority could be
tried, with different participants.

We do have perspectives, where you can see the votes of individuals and will
introduce a measure to show you the votes that agree / disagree with the main
thesis. That is the best auto splitting of votes we could come up with.

Happy about better suggestions.

Weighing voting brings a whole new set of problems.

But agree, the ALL votes perspectives, isn't really that great. The reason
being that often then many votes there end up in the middle (2), but the
interesting bit being what the sides(0+4) are thinking. See here:
[https://www.kialo.com/should-the-us-adopt-stricter-gun-
contr...](https://www.kialo.com/should-the-us-adopt-stricter-gun-
controls-3346/3346.0=3346.1/=3346.1/voters)

------
greggman
I love the idea and added a topic here

[https://www.kialo.com/macos-and-windows-should-sandbox-
all-a...](https://www.kialo.com/macos-and-windows-should-sandbox-all-
apps-16655/16655.0=16655.1)

Some comments:

The site seems designed for desktop first. The fancy radial graph doesn't seem
to appear on mobile. That would seem like a pretty big barrier to popularity.
I have lots of friends who's only access to the net is their phone.

It's not at all clear to me which link to share with people. Was the one above
correct? It's not showing the radial graph in my topic so I assumed it was the
wrong link since links to other topics show a graph. Clicking the "share"
button is not helpful with providing a link

It's entirely unclear whether to respond pro or con on 2nd level topics. It
feels intuitively to me that it should be green vs orange for the entire
discussion. All green is pro the original topic, all orange is con the
original topic. But that is not how others are using it. The comment for "con"
of sub topic says "attack the parent ...." What's the parent here? The parent
to this comment? The parent to this sub-topic so if it's sub-sub-topic that's
what?

Whatever Kialo want's it to be it needs to made 1000x clearer. Even the help
is unhelpful. It shows topic->pro->con which is uncontroversial. It needs to
show topic->con->con or topic->con->pro. But of course most people won't click
to the help so the actual form needs to make this far clearer.

~~~
Kialo
Thanks for feed-back and giving us a try.

The fancy sunburst, currently, only appears on initial load of a discussion,
we are thinking of changing that. You can open it by clicking the (i) on the
thesis, or via discussion menu "Discussion Info".

The link one above is correct, if you want people to have viewer rights,
(which allows them to vote and suggest claims). If you want people to have
writers rights, where they can immediately write into a discussion, you have
to go to share, enable the writers sharing link and paste that. We do not
recommend using that for public posting though.

Generally speaking, claims are supposed to make sense and relate to their
parent claim, the one directly above it. This is the only way to allow for
linking, intermap linking and copying of branches into other debates.

In very large debates, with thousands of claims and levels, often, a
discussion on level 10, is really only pertaining ot the parent, e.g. this is
not relevant here or attacking the veracity of a statement. How this claim
relates to the thesis on top, isn't anymore that relevant.

Due to linking, it would also be quite confusing, one time the claim is a pro,
then a con. And most people read claims as relevant for the parent directly
above. That's why we spell out the "Support /Attack parent". I think it's also
in the intro video.

~~~
greggman
still not clear what "parent" is. that might be in your mental model as an
engineer? but it's not in mine based on the site itself.

I see topic->con. click to dispute con. see con and under it "attack parent" .
to me with con showing on the screen the parent is the topic not the con. if
it was the con the prompt would read "attach this con" or "attack the
statement above" .

~~~
Kialo
We'll improve that wording, thanks for bringing it up.

------
empath75
People often think that if only everyone understood logic, we’d solve all the
world’s problems.

But let’s say I’m a billionaire that made my fortune in the fossil fuel
industry. You’re not going to reason me out of opposing any sort of carbon tax
or cap. I simply don’t give a fuck if the world burns because my wealth
depends on burning it. You’re not going to reason me out of that position.

And of course, I can’t get my candidates to win on a ‘fuck the planet’
platform so I do political science research and public policy polling so I can
figure out how to cobble together a political coalition that can win, while
having a ‘fuck the planet’ as a side effect. You have your pro-life people,
your anti-immigration people, etc, all of whom are voting for different
motivations and all of whom are using logic and reason to decide who to vote
for in pursuit of those motivations.

Politics is about power and wealth and any attempt to improve ‘public debate’
that doesn’t recognize that is doomed to failure.

------
backpropaganda
A subreddit with a similar idea:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/steelmanning/](https://www.reddit.com/r/steelmanning/)

Note that it is different from /r/CMV. Unlike CMV, Steelmanning wants to bring
out the best form of either sides of an argument. The goal is not to change
OP's views, but just to lay down the best arguments for lurkers to inform
themselves with. It's more like /r/neutralpolitics but without the restriction
to politics.

------
westoncb
I started something like this a couple years ago, but it allowed hierarchy in
the argument for either side, so that particular points could have
'justifications,' and the justifications could have their own, recursively—but
a particular reader just dives as deep as they need to satisfy their personal
curiosity. (There are shared justifications that you can link into your
argument so you people aren't always wasting time justifying the same things;
or you can share from just your own arguments you've written in the past). The
debate format required that one proposition be addressed at a time, and the
result of a debate is a reconciled hierarchy of claims/justifications. You
could ask for critique on personal beliefs, have private debates, or public
debates.

This looks like the closest thing I've come across since, and I like it,
though I'm still curious about the format I was tinkering with...

(Also: funny side story: I e-mailed Leslie Lamport about the idea when I was
still working on it [because of how I saw it relating to some ideas of his
about writing proofs]. Out of respect for his privacy I won't say much about
his reply other than that he was... not optimistic that folks would actually
use it. I was also surprised by his generosity in reading about my idea and
replying to me.)

~~~
Kialo
What was it called? We are building this since 2011.

~~~
westoncb
It was never launched—still sitting on my computer with along with a pile of
other ideas/projects I haven't had time for ;) I don't have a version hosted
at the moment, but here's a blog post I wrote on it:
[http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2015/06/improving-idea-
represen...](http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2015/06/improving-idea-
representation-and-debate.html)

Edit: it was tentatively named 'Hypothesis Crucible'. And I have no concrete
plans to do anything with it anymore—I wish you guys good luck.

~~~
Kialo
Thanks!

------
kamyarg
This is exactly like arguman's approach:
[http://en.arguman.org/](http://en.arguman.org/)

------
anilgulecha
This is an idea that I (like many many other technical folks, I'm sure!) have
given some thought it. I believe, this implementation, in it's current form,
will not take off for the following reasons:

1) Most issues don't fall on a binary - and are not conducive to the pro/con,
positive/negative, yes/no binary.

2) Most individual positions are not reached at one end of the spectrum. They
start of near center gradually oscillate and deviate the more someone studies
a subject. As such, a UX that places pros/cons front and center robs the
reader of the actual learning/oscillating phase. I ask that you to find the
source of any opinion you hold and try to reach back to it's source. You'll
rarely find that it was a table that you studied and picked a side on.

4) Discussions should not center around individual issues. Rather it should be
communities around a certain topic, where the discussions evolve and debates
arise. The OP only does the latter -- which perhaps makes sense if say some
communities like sub-reddits use it.

3) Expertise is not up for debate. An expert's opinion should not be
moderated, or weighed, in the same way as a layman's opinion. you can argue
for pure meritocracy, but an expert will simply not indulge in an environment
when they have to prove their expertise day-in-and-day-out. The platform needs
to acknowledge the parallels with how debates and opinions are shaped AFK.

(note above is purely for matters-of-opinions, not for matters-of-fact.)

Overall, what you don't need (and what's been done many times) is a table with
all positions listed down. What you instead need is to solve for the larger
problem, or handling moderation, reputation and expertise, because consensus
and debates actually do care about the above. This does not mean
anonymous/pseudonymous discussion is not possible, just that the framework has
to allow for it in an integrated manner.

I have tried multiple implementations of above (not public-ally available),
but none satisfactorily handled the above -- it is a hard problem to solve, so
I commend and wish all the best to the Kialo team.

~~~
Kialo
Thanks for your feed-back.

Re 1-3) Most discussions can actually be distilled to a single pointed issue
or a very specific discussion ([https://www.kialo.com/should-there-be-a-
universal-basic-inco...](https://www.kialo.com/should-there-be-a-universal-
basic-income-ubi-1634)).

You can then ask in a follow up, using a multi thesis discussion, which
variant of e.g. legislation is the best ([https://www.kialo.com/what-is-the-
best-drug-regulation-syste...](https://www.kialo.com/what-is-the-best-drug-
regulation-system-2027)).

Or you can start with a multi and discuss various options, as e.g. done here:
([https://www.kialo.com/who-will-win-the-game-of-
thrones-1203](https://www.kialo.com/who-will-win-the-game-of-thrones-1203))

It's really up to the discussion creator. Multis allow you to change the
theses and add a "better" one, as happened in the drug legislation debate (I
think).

Re 4) Do you remember nupedia, it didn't work. Wikipedia is not perfect, but
the best resource we have to look up the "what". What we are building with the
public site is a repository of the "why".

It doesn't require experts to write the reasoning of experts, which is what is
happening, sometimes phds come in and post all the scientific papers
pertaining to a position.

We agree that the hardest issue is actually moderation. When you have
thousands of people chime in, as is the case with e.g. the UBI debate, you
need a good system to filter for duplicates and trolls. That's why we
implemented the suggestion system ([https://support.kialo.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115003791445-Sug...](https://support.kialo.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115003791445-Suggesting-Claims)) and 5 different permission
levels([https://support.kialo.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115003877705-Par...](https://support.kialo.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115003877705-Participant-Rights-and-Roles)).

This seems to work, as can be witnessed in the large debates. It's by no means
perfect though and we are constantly improving it. The last bit we added was
nested suggestions and suggestion commenting.

Again, thanks for your input. :)

~~~
anilgulecha
I implore you to continue on the path you are -- it certainly does have a lot
of potential! I'm after-all only an armchair expert providing a view :)

My overarching hypothesis is that perhaps a more holistic approach is what
will change and engage peoples mind, as opposed to a technical listing down of
all points of argument. For example the r/changemyview fosters a lot of such
discussion. Even HN ends up being a great place gaining consensus on
technology choices. What both have in place is that the audience is a targeted
community, and there is some basic moderation in place.

------
JoshMnem
That's interesting -- "kialo" is the Esperanto word for reason or motive.

~~~
colanderman
Specifically "motive". "Racio", not "kialo", is "reason" in the sense of
logical reasoning.

------
AlphaWeaver
I feel after a brief initial read of the landing page that Kialo might be
trying to do too much... It seeks to have debates over hot-topics in the
public, but also wants to be a tool for private debates, or just for "private
discussion?"

Then there's also a catering towards this being used in enterprises? I'm not
sure if this is supposed to be a product, but the entrepreneur in me screams
"too large of a scope!"

~~~
Kialo
Agreed. It's one of our main issues, we are effectively three startups:

1 public discussions / repository of the why / community 2 free edtech
solution 3 SAAS for decision-making, -preparation, ideation...

We have for now focussed on 1, as we consider it the hardest and most
pertinent problem.

2 We are deploying a dedicated edu cluster in 2 weeks. Already quite popular
for classroom debates (some Harvard profs being the first to use it),
introducing students to controversial issues, etc

3 We provide teams for free right now and are building another cluster for
them. (they too do not want to be inundated with gun / atheist debates)

In the end, our core, is something like a wiki technology. When we launched,
we didn't know what would stick and now we have all three kind of sticking. 3
being the one that has received the least amount of love till now, as
companies seem to be doing ok, regarding decision-making, even though
everybody hates emails, chat and meetings...

------
MikeGale
I wish the venture good luck and hope its users gain.

I decided not to use it for various reasons including: 1\. The situations I
deal with cannot be reasoned through the skein of a boolean network. 2\. The
core of a useful discussion, in my mind, is talking with a few people who, in
general, are each smarter / more knowledgeable in part of the discussion
space, than I.

I didn't see provision for such things in Kialo.

~~~
Kialo
Not sure, what would you want to see in Kialo for that?

We and others have tried that.

We gave experts a multi theses debate and let them discuss the various options
(that's also what we do internally when having to decide things) and then
looked at the outcome and switched through the perspectives to see what the
individual experts thought.

Some use it in that way for board meetings. Instead of receiving memos that
don't touch upon each other's points, you receive a Kialo in which all
departments added their reasoning for why their favorite solution is good and
the others' not.

------
ksaitor
@kialo requires 8 pros/cons for a discussion to be discoverable. That sounds
like a draconian requirement that likely to damage the platform more, than
it'll benefit it. I understand they are trying to keep the quality high, but
if users cant discover new content daily, they wont be able to engage with it
and will just churn…

Hope you guys will lower this limit, as the idea is truly great and Internet
need a well-structured discussion platform!

------
acover
Have you considered fading the text of low score claims?

Currently my attention is drawn to good and bad claims equally. Only after
reading do I check the score and realize the claim is incorrect.

It wastes my time reading bad claims and the thought will stay with me
regardless of quality.

~~~
Kialo
We had filters already, but removed them about 2y ago...

The hordes would have been an issue, just coming in and downvoting claims that
they disagree with.

When we switch from the all votes average, we might introduce them again. For
individual perspectives, it would already make sense, you would then only see
claims that a particular user voted of at least impact 2 or so.

I would not rely on the "impact votes" today, plus, the average is not really
interesting. What is more interesting is how people that agree or disagree
with the main thesis voted. (hint: what we'll be building)

------
brailsafe
Seems like a good platform. Layout looks quite nice. The sidebar opening
transition is kind of choppy. Haven't written CSS in a while, but there seems
to be quite a bit of layout re-calc happening when everything on the page
shifts over.

~~~
Kialo
Firefox?

~~~
brailsafe
That's right. Can't believe I forgot to include that. Firefox Developer
Edition, macOS High Sierra, 13" MBP 2017. Everything latest update.

~~~
Kialo
Being investigated. Thanks for feed-back!

------
ksaitor
This is great. I thought i'd use this platform to discuss the most important
topic of this week — whether Kylie Jenner's wealth is self-made or not:

[https://www.kialo.com/kylie-jenners-fortune-is-self-
made-168...](https://www.kialo.com/kylie-jenners-fortune-is-self-made-16807)

;)

------
codeprimate
This is VERY similar to a site I helped write back in 2009 called RiledUp.com.
Unfortunately it never took off.

I hope this platform has better luck.

~~~
Kialo
Thank you! We are trying hard, meanwhile >4k public debates, some of which
have ~3k unique (without multi-linking) arguments, 5x that in comments and
thousands of participants. [https://www.kialo.com/should-there-be-a-universal-
basic-inco...](https://www.kialo.com/should-there-be-a-universal-basic-income-
ubi-1634)

------
avodonosov
Cool. I was thinking about something like this for a long time. We need tools
for more effective collective thinking.

~~~
Kialo
Thanks. The best term we have found for it yet is collaborative reasoning
platform, but that's a bit of a mouthful.

~~~
DoctorOetker
"groupthink" is shorter, but a bit tongue in cheek

~~~
Kialo
Oh boy have we have had success with tongue in cheek, at least 100 twitter
messages regarding those flat earth examples on the tour page, incl. support
emails from astrophysicists...
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486633)

------
brailsafe
How can a platform enforce rationality?

~~~
Kialo
You can't and we aren't. What is considered rational, is often cultural and
builds on very different epistemological systems.

Thus all you can do in a collaborative reasoning platform like ours, is give
everybody the tools to portray their reasoning as well as they can.

E.g. an underlying reason for somebody's arguments might be the existence of
God. An atheist would consider this irrational, but the logic, given the
underlying thesis, might be sound. So in the end, we are going to debate
epistemology. Something, I feel, we don't do enough.

Nor are we taught in school enough how (utility vs happiness) to evaluate the
different epistemological systems.

~~~
sethrin
Perhaps I'm missing something, but are epistemological systems directly
comparable?

~~~
Kialo
On our site, or in general?

They broadly fall into, "science is knowledge" vs "whatever I want / feels
right" is knowledge. We have perspectives, with which you can look at a
believers vs a non-believers voting, other than that we are still waiting for
the world to build AIs that can distinguish those....enough are working on
this :)

~~~
sethrin
In general. Again, I may be missing a trick here, but I don't see how there
can be any objective way to evaluate different truth-finding systems against
each other.

------
egberts1
The only problem with radial fan-out design is that it doesn’t allow issues to
reconnect as they evolve.

~~~
Kialo
We do allow linking of arguments so that they don't have to be spelled out a
gazillion times. Linking naturally also includes all their pro / cons
underneath.

------
egberts1
Symbolic logic is the flow of premise interacting with another premise to form
a conclusion. And radial fan-out does not allow premises that are at the edge
of the fan-out to correlate with each other for additional but new conclusion.

~~~
Kialo
Did you have a look at the tree view, which follows when you enter the
discussion? :)

And yes, we do allow multi-linking and intermap-linking of claims.

------
fghtr
I think votes should not be more important than real scientific references in
the evaluation of an argument.

~~~
bootlooped
But how do you have users rate the validity of the scientific references?
Probably with votes.

~~~
Kialo
Exactly, we often see discussions about linked papers underneath a claim,
where then often the paper is taken out as a pro for the original claim, to
make it clearer.

Also, many discussions have little scienitifi papers to use, e.g. most of the
ethics and religion debates. "The Existence of God", "Theodicy"...

------
myWindoonn
Unfortunately, Kialo does not have any features for _structural_ reasoning,
where the logical connections between arguments are completely formalized and
precise. It relies on a human element to check each argument.

Edit: How to do this formally? Look at _formal systems_ for hints of how to do
it in the 1900s, or _category theory_ for how to do it in the modern day.
[0][1]

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1889v2](https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1889v2)

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.00526](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.00526)

~~~
Kialo
We thought about doing something more formal.

The problem is, that argument mapping and other formal methods have quite a
learning curve and do make it even harder for the general public to read /
participate.

~~~
joe_the_user
Honestly, I used Kialo for a bit and found the discussions were so formal that
it's discussion lacked all substance and hence all interest (the debate I
followed most heavily was the "should an AI be constructed" question).

What's interesting about debate on HN, when it is interesting and
illuminating, is that each person debating makes their point while changing
the framework of discussion, which questions are most important and so-forth.

I tend to think that the site could do better just having good moderators
setting the terms of debate and letting people put forward their positions
from there.

~~~
Kialo
In a multi thesis discussion
([https://www.kialo.com/2027](https://www.kialo.com/2027)) you can propose
different theses.

The problem with evolving theses is that they invalidate a huge amount of
claims and require many claims to be edited.

Threads, where you are not fixed on a particular thesis are of course often
more fun, but bring their own set of problems. When a thread goes on for long
enough, the different strands are discussing entirely different bits and
pieces and newcomers are completely lost, plus the mixing of claims and
commentary...HN is truly exceptional with regards to the quality of
contributions and I agree, reading comments here is often a wonderful learning
experience, one of the very few sites, where I first open the comments, then
the linked article.

And yes, we are a bit dry. It's a bit like Wikipedia article editing, less
like an enthusiastic commenting thread
([https://twitter.com/KialoHQ/status/954461988960251904](https://twitter.com/KialoHQ/status/954461988960251904)).
But given the nature of our topics, we are happy about things being a bit
drier. :)

Imagine the outcry if we forbade users to create their own discussions. We
wouldn't have that tabs vs spaces debate
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17486949))
:)

------
mombul
Hmm... calling a dog a duck doesn't make a dog a duck.

------
ludwigvan
Reminds me of arguman.org : [http://en.arguman.org/capitalism-is-not-the-best-
system-for-...](http://en.arguman.org/capitalism-is-not-the-best-system-for-
economic-organisation)

------
malproksimajeto
Mi ne pensas, ke Kialo estas kiala afero.

~~~
Kialo
Ni afable konsentas :)

------
vesak
How does this tool keep stupid and evil people from participating?

~~~
Kialo
Stupid is a problematic term, because many people use it to categorize people
who are very smart and but adhere to questinable belief / epistemological
systems.

People that are incoherent, don't normally get their claims accepted. The
admins after all don't want gibberish in their debates.

People that have very different points of views, get their claims accepted and
get them rebuked underneath. We believe that sunlight is the best
disinfectant. You need to spell out bad thinking and then debunk it
underneath.

------
Semirhage
This looks interesting, but in my cynical heart I’m afraid the issue isn’t the
toolset, it’s the people.

~~~
antpls
I'm kind of the cynical type guy too, but that looks like an interesting
initiative to me. What makes you think it's the people? Do you have experience
with previous similar tools?

Also, you have to look at it with the expectation of a rise of automated
moderation tools, and maybe even AIs entering into the debates.

~~~
Kialo
We are waiting for IBM to unleash their Debate AI on us :)

~~~
Semirhage
Look out, it’ll just be a guy in a shiny box who makes tutting sounds whenever
someone uses the word “fuck” and they bill by the picosecond.

