I have a website I'm currently working on. To explain it in a quick and simple way, it is sort of mix between reddit and wikipedia. Users create debates, answers, arguments, ... Debates introduce the context and the subject. Answers defend a point of view. Both can be edited by the community. Instead of posting a comment, users post a contribution, to improve the quality of a debate/answer. Users can upvote contributions like they would vote comments on reddit.

Now instead of simply ranking answers by popularity, which usually just leads to an echo chamber, I want to add more factors, such as weighting user votes by how much they contributed. And especially, how much they contributed to the answers they oppose.

Let's say we have the following debate: "What is the best solution to solve this problem?". To this question, there are 3 main answers: "Solution A", "Solution B", "Solution C". User Joe thinks Solution A is the best and upvotes it, but only contributes to this answer, because he does not even care about other potential solutions. User Bob however, contributes to all three answers by improving their arguments even though he thinks solution C is the best.

At the end of the day, the ranking is C > A > B, because A has one supporter, but C has a supporter who actually made an effort improving all answers so his opinion has more value.

I am posting this here because I would like to have your thoughts on this. Does that sound interesting? Do you see any potentiel issues? I'm sure there are things I didn't think about, so I'd love to read any question you might have. Anyway, thanks for reading this!

PEDOPHILIA IS NOT CHILD ABUSE THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CHILD ABUSE. IF ANYONE ABUSED A CHILD THEY RIGHTFULLY SHOULD BE PUNISHED BY THE LEGAL SYSTEM.

For many reasons the least important of which is that it is functionally an orientation and can't be changed. Having a support group would help pedophiles who need help from offending, we know through countless studies having a real support structure is on of the best ways to manage any issue.

Next would be that stigma, telling people they are wrong for reasons other than actions, is a great way to make people stop adhering to social structures and laws. As with the last example this will only affect a percentage but dont we want every advantage we can get to stop the horrific possible outcomes?

The most important practical reason though is it makes it possible to study, and wouldn't you rather know? Studying the actual majority of pedophiles not just the ones who are caught means we can better stop abuse. Through multiple means, better at catching signs of abuse, better at preventing abuse before it happens through more effective treatment, and it means you know who they are. They however won't come out unless they know they won't lose everything. So it makes sense from a practical standpoint to destigmatize pedophilia.

The Art of Thinking Clearly is an excellent book (I recommend the audiobook in particular) on 99 of the most common thinking errors/biases/fallacies etc. It contains lots of good historical stories to drive home each point. One of the best critical thinking books I know of.

I'm going through Steven Novella's audiobook: "Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills" and it's excellent. Buy it. I'll be writing up a detailed review in the coming weeks. So much good content. I think it's better than Demon Haunted World (Carl Sagan)

In addition to:

Having a good understanding of deductive/inductive/abductive reasoning

Having a good understanding of cognitive biases/logical fallacies/heuristics

Thinking for yourself/not being intellectually lazy or dishonest

Questioning everything

Reading books like Demon Haunted World, Mistakes were made but not by me, Skeptics Guide to the Universe etc.

Paying attention to language, especially ambiguous language, and understanding how people are defining terms

What are your best critical thinking tips?

I'd like to hear your favorite critical thinking questions, especially uncommon ones, I'm hoping we can all share some beauties in this thread

I'll start by sharing three questions I like:

"What do the harshest critics against this position say?"

"What are the best arguments and evidence against this position?"

"Why might someone else not be convinced by the same evidence and reasons I am?"

”The onus should be on forfeiture proponents to provide systematic, empirical evidence for their claims that forfeiture is a crucial law enforcement tool.”

It appears in Fighting Crime or Raising Revenue, Testing Opposing View of Forfeiture. Full paragraph (End p. 17):

As it stands, the weight of the scholarly evidence supports forfeiture critics. Given the serious civil liberties concerns raised by forfeiture, and especially civil forfeiture, the onus should be on forfeiture proponents to provide systematic, empirical evidence for their claims that forfeiture is a crucial law enforcement tool.

It seems probable that law enforcement officials (LEOs) supporting forfeiture have argued that forfeiture is a "crucial" tool only in the sense of appealing for funding or legal authority to proceed--not asserting a scientific certainty, similar to how a scientist would argue that properly engineered rocket boosters are crucial to flight.

As of late, the move to end mass incarceration in America has featured broad challenges to several crime suppression tools, including stop and frisk, broken windows practices--indeed even incarceration and deterrence at large have been challenged. Many challenges come from sociologists, who wield terms such as "proof...evidence...and efficacy" in a hard science sense.

Isn't the following the most accurate view of LEOs?: Crime suppression comes through a variety of tools, each of which provides some benefit to the overall endeavor. None is crucial in the sense that its absence would negate the effect of the rest, or the enterprise as a whole.

Bit of strawmanning going on?

For those interested in a related rhetorical topic, what do we make of statements like

Results are clear: Forfeiture has no meaningful effect on crime fighting (from the introduction)

"Meaningful effect" -- similar to the oft-seen "significant effectiveness." How do we define "significant effectiveness." 10% effectiveness? 20%? 25% And then how does one measure it in a social science field like criminal justice?

Have LEOs ever made specific assertions of efficacy? Not sure they have. Seems it is primarily law enforcement critics who make these assertions (of ineffectiveness), and then announce the onus is on LEOs to prove them wrong.