Consensus

Inspiration

What it does

Two or more participants have different opinions on the same topic, and want to argue about it in an organized manner to find a middle ground. In order to do so th, each person can defend their point of view on the topic by using arguments. Each argument is a combination of other arguments or facts, using logical operators. Each argument needs to be implied by a fact or another argument, using argument forms, and creating a chain that leads to the conclusion - ore point that the user wants to prove. The validation of the correctness of the implications, from the logic point of view, can be automated. However, a valid implication can be based on false facts. Therefore, there needs to be validation of facts if requested by a participant of the arguments. It doesn’t make sense that participants of the argument validate facts - as they could be biased by their own opinion. Therefore, there needs to be another agent in the argument - the mediator. Mediators are users that are not participating directly in an argument, but have the task of validating facts submitted by participants to ensure that their arguments have correct foundation. Many mediators can validate a fact, and a fact needs to be above a certain threshold of acceptance. Depending on the veracity of the sources, the threshold can vary. E.g. an unknown website has less veracity than the institute of statistics.