When observing political discussions on existing platforms, certain patterns emerged. People talk past each other- rather than addressing the point the other person made, they dismiss the other person based on presumed partisan loyalty, even though half the population of the United States doesn’t vote at all. People hear what they want to hear- whatever makes it easiest to dismiss the other person and avoid admitting that they might be wrong. This is not unique to political discussions- a famous tweet summarized the phenomenon by saying if one person says they love pancakes, someone will reply “So you hate waffles?”

Another issue that comes up a lot, especially in political groups, is the need to explain the same issues/topics over and over, as new people join the group. We seek to solve both problems with our Discourse tool, which creates a collaboratively edited archive of common debate topics, where every argument is paired with a direct rebuttal. The current media landscape is littered with propaganda that often goes unchallenged, but under this system, every claim must answer to its critics.

The goal is to create an educational resource so that people can make up their own minds about issues and learn both sides of a topic without participating in a debate with a specific person, where the threat of losing an argument makes them feel the need to defend their pride and ego. By forcing every point to allow a rebuttal, we believe this will make misinformation and propaganda much harder to sustain. In theory, the left and the right can use these tools to work through their differences, without any violence whatsoever.