Brainstorming Solutions
One of the techniques taught in Getting to Yes is the use of brainstorming sessions. Getting to Yes says that we should “Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do.” The internet offers vast potential for brainstorming possible solutions to our problems before we decide what to do. However, before now, no one has designed a well-organized website for brainstorming solutions or analyzing the meat of the problems we face: reasons to agree and disagree with proposed solutions. I believe I have an elegant webpage design that would vastly improve our online debate and conflict resolution.
If I explain the site layout, I believe you will see its advantages. People will come to my site and find a problem that concerns them. If they click on a problem, a web page will open containing a list of possible solutions. Once you click on a possible solution, you will see that people have brainstormed and promoted the best reasons to agree and disagree with the solution, outlined the possible common, and opposing interests of those who agree and disagree with the solution.
You may assume that these lists would become too long, and the site would become challenging to manage. This is the problem that my idea solves.
The internet offers us mountains of information, but a lot of it is wrong, and little is organized. I believe as we sort reasons to agree and disagree with ideas into separate columns, we can develop an algorithm that promotes ideas that have lots of good reasons to agree with them. Of course, the algorithm would also demote ideas that had lots of good reasons to disagree with them. The problem is, once you have designed a website that allows people to brainstorm reasons to agree and disagree with different beliefs and counts the number of reasons to both agree and disagree, how do you sort out the good reasons from the bad. The answer is easy and can be summarized by a rather dull quote from Bertrand Russell, who said. “It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.” His obvious truthism points out a big problem with humanity. We all carry around beliefs in our head that have no grounds whatsoever for supposing they are true.
The problem is that we all carry around beliefs in our heads based on reasons that never get analyzed in a systematic way. But, you protest, I have arguments all the time. I live an examined life. No, you don’t, and you are an idiot if you think you do. When you have an argument, you state your conclusion. Someone gives a reason to disagree with your conclusion. You give a reason to disagree with their reason. After just the 1st exchange, you are no longer talking about the original topic, and the longer you talk, the worse it gets.
The only way we can make progress as a species is to brainstorm all the reasons to disagree and agree with different beliefs, and then brainstorm all the reasons to agree and disagree with those reasons until each logic tree has been evaluated, and the proposition with “no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true” identified that way.
Broadcasts Media, including Podcasts are bad.
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You can't respond, or correct misinformation, because they are one-way.
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They only present the viewpoint of the person who owns the broadcast. One-sided (biased) persuasion is propaganda.
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You can never address complex issues because people's attention spans are short, and they are constantly tuning into and out of the broadcast.
Long form discussions are better than short form, but we can't keep using bad methods of communication to address difficult topics.
A better alternative to "debates" would be a forum designed to take all sides of an issue through the Conflict Resolution process.
- We need a balanced budget amendment.
- Rainy day funds should not be spent during periods of robust revenue growth to support a level of spending that is not sustainable.
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