Kialo - appreciation/excoriation thread

[mickthinks]

I have just stumbled upon this thing : https://www.kialo.com/about

It turned up in a search for commentary on Critical Race Theory and conservative pushback—I haven't had time to explore it yet. Parking here in case anyone here wants to comment including me later, maybe.

[mickthinks]

Here's a link to the introductory video: https://www.kialo.com/tour

[Crumb]

I guess if you want to debate that looks pretty cool.

[Ari]

I skimmed, It looks interesting for organizing of formal debate, and really bad for existential ideas like whether not free will exists. In that case it’s a great way for people to justify all sorts of things through logical steps.

Like debate “Abortion should be illegal!” (not to mention their pro/con system immediately biasing how to form the debate statement). Will certainly get things like, ‘because the heart starts beating at, x seconds’ and other facts, and not ‘because my inability to protect innocent people in the past, and/or my abuse of innocent people in the past has led me to an extreme reaction to make up for my previous failings by protecting that which I see as the most innocent’ or ‘Women need to be controlled to keep the gender hierarchy, which I have invested significant energy into, intact.’ or in counter ‘Yes my current living personal autonomy is in fact more important to me than the fictional autonomy of another, deal with it.’

Bullet point debate actively shy away from analysis of positions that people are taking for instead lists of reasonings that one could take that position.

Debate is often a lot of taking a side and then providing information to support it, and such will always fall towards the more charismatic or convincing, than the one who is correct.

[lisarea]

I'm not liking it from what I've seen.

They've adopted a formalistic framework, but there is virtually no in-depth discussion or explanation, which is absolutely necessary for something that focuses on social issues. And there are some really obvious, glaring fallacies in some of the higher voted comments, so it's not a formal debate or anything.

I guess I'm not really getting the point of it. Maybe I'm missing something.

[mickthinks]

Yes, I'm wondering what it's really for. I wouldn't judge it on the quality of the big debates it's hosting, though. That's like judging wikipedia on the quality of its entries. The point is that wiki is a platform on which third parties can make good things happen. And so might Kialo be. However, it doesn't seem to be crystalising the best information the way that wiki (mostly) does.


They seem to be offering it as a venue for private discussions as much as public ones, and if the format really does help to organise the ragged contributions of the average attendees at a company brainstorming session while giving everyone the feeling that their view has been given and been noted, that is not nothing.

And consider also, the debates may not seem to be high quality, but neither are they throttled by trolls and shitposts the way that most public discussion platforms are.

I think they may be on to something but no, it isn't the building of a library of fine ideas.