Ask HN: Does a forum for rational political discussion exist?

[WhitneyLand]

Has anyone ever tried to create a forum for rational political discussion and achieved:

- At least some level of popularity or usage

- A diverse set of opinions. For example not dominated by either liberal or conservative views.

Is it theoretically possible?

[Mz]

Your two goals are somewhat in opposition. This is hard enough to achieve with a) non political discussion in b) a small-ish group.

It is theoretically possible, but you would need to take an incredibly hard line about certain kinds of behaviors. Politics tends to actively encourage taking sides (pick your party, pick your candidate, etc), so this would likely remain an uphill battle for all eternity. But there is a lot to be gained by fostering genuinely civil discourse between people with very different views and backgrounds.

I have a long history of promoting the ability for people to share diverse views in online discussion. So, I know how that happens and how to make it happen. I don't do as much of that as I used to, because it makes me a target, benefits other people and seems to mostly bite me in the ass. So, based on personal experience, I will say it can be done, but it is incredibly hard.

[slake → Mz]

What if the forum had both sides of each argument in parallel? You could contribute to your side and the opposition to their side and the most popular of each side is pushed to the top in a massive split screen?

[Mz → slake]

I have no idea how that would go. It sounds like an interesting experiment, but I don't believe it would promote the sharing of diverse views. As a guess, it would likely promote extreme polarisation in a way that would likely root out nuance more thoroughly than usua!.

[ilaksh]

Here's the thing that people don't realize about discussing politics and quite a few other types of topics: worldviews and social identity are always going to overrule any rationality.

Everyone has to adopt a set of beliefs. This includes non-religious people. Beliefs or worldview are the foundational system of default nodes in your cognitive framework that shape your perception. They are, by necessity, unshakable -- because if your beliefs were easily upset, then your entire understanding of the universe would collapse.

One thing that makes this confusing is that many people adopt a belief system based (supposedly, at least) on empiricism and the scientific method. Basically the idea is, all of our beliefs arrived through careful testing and calculations. Therefore they are valid. However, the reality is that, since no one actually does the majority of these experiments themselves, the _supposed_ empirical nature of all of these 'facts' just plays the same role as faith in religious worldviews -- it is a way to hand-wave away any rebuttal ('its a scientifically proven fact').

The other confusing thing is that even though core ideas are basically immune to rationality, people have absolutely no problem whatsoever constructing elaborate rationalizations for their beliefs on top of them. And most people are quite motivated to try to spread their beliefs. Its a way of recruiting a new member to your world. Perception of reality is actually so different between different groups that this is basically a literally different world you are trying to bring them into. Look at the divergence between left- versus right- leaning media streams.

Its not that worldviews cannot change, but you are much more likely to be able to change them early on in someone's life, and after a certain inflection point, core aspects of beliefs are extremely unlikely to change.

I also mentioned social identity. The belief systems are mixed up with the social groups, because it is necessary for acceptance in any group to adopt that group's belief system. And be careful not to contradict it in front of the group, even if they hear some 'rational' argument that a momentarily lapse lets them see as reasonable.

[japaget]

See the Neutral Politics (https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics) thread on Reddit. They have a very strict moderation policy. All assertion must be backed up by appropriate citations.

[notadoc]

Nearly every vaguely political anything online is quickly overrun by trolls, astroturfers, bots, and spammers.

It'd be a challenge, but perhaps you can build one. Good luck!

[MK999 → notadoc]

And forum spies

[WhitneyLand → MK999]

what are forum spies?

[smacktoward]

The problem is that, in practice, "rational political discussion" tends to turn out to really mean "political opinions I agree with." Which means you end up just building yet another echo chamber.

[WhitneyLand → smacktoward]

that's why one of my requirements was diversity of opinion.

no echo chamber would be important.

[aklemm]

I haven't seen one, but I think about it a lot. Locally I'm co-coordinating an in-person group where we start meetings learning about civil discourse and rhetoric and mediation concepts, then we move on to a specific policy issue such as Obamacare, and try to make progress after being primed and equipped for civility.

We're working on making a curriculum out of it. Reach out to me if you want to discuss via chat or email. I have some ideas for an online forum as well.

[gukov]

What I found to be working quite well for me, and not just with politics, is studying both sides of an argument and making a conclusion for myself.

When it comes to politics, /r/politics was a good place until it was overrun by the Correct The Record folks. It's been one sided ever since.

[bjourne]

> - At least some level of popularity or usage

> - A diverse set of opinions. For example not dominated by either liberal or conservative views.

Sure, that used to be the norm before up and down voting because the trend. It's the voting system that has made sites like Reddit complete cesspools, coining the term "down-vote brigade." Perhaps then most communities were more left-wing because conservative people didn't have internet-connected computers. But they were less exclusionary than today.

[slake]

The issue I think is people want an answer. Obamacare - good or bad? Hardly anyone is willing to accept the answer that it may mean different stuff for different people and approach such discussions with this nuance.

One probably needs to ask the question. What is the intent of such a platform? Popularity or creating a balanced, mature repository of arguments on a particular topic. The first shouldn't be too difficult, the second would be the holy grail.

[sova]

It's theoretically possible but would require a lot of oversight and community-driven moderation.

Hmm... meta-moderation is an excellent advent of the slashdots.