I think any argument that relies primarily on headcount rather than merit is morally fairly empty, regardless of providence.

The only point I would make is that trying to get 50%+1 of the whole territory (whether pro-union or pro-united ireland), at least in theory, considers every voter to be equal.

Aiming only for 50%+1 of your own tribe, and thus by definition a small minority of the territory, is more or less an admission of contempt for democratic equality. So yes, I think its worse, but it’s a matter of degree only.

I’m quite pleased with this so far. I really don’t take some of the Jeremiah comments about it doing any actual harm very seriously, so beyond that, you can look at it as a curiosity if nothing else.

A few points. Firstly, this is partly a bit of fun. I had no idea how it would pan out and I started it partly to see. I think it’s way too early to form any final verdict on whether it is a fantastic idea or a dangerous destructive waste of everyone’s time, though

I’m certain that it won’t ever be perfect either – I’m just keen to see if anyone else is interested in trying out a process here.

Politically, I like the idea of involving people in reaching conclusions – not by asking them what they think should be done in their opinion – but instead by asking them to provide a better description of the problem. Politicians usually say that they like this suggestion but they’re crap (and, I believe, deeply unwilling) when it comes to actually doing it.

Also, doing it is very interesting if you’ve recently read people like Clay Shirky, Cass Sunstein and James Surowiecki- there’s a lot of original and interesting thinking going around asking ‘now we can get easy feedback from more people, what does it change?’

I wanted to see where it would go partly because Slugger is very unusual in this respect. It sometimes has surprisingly civil and oddly productive conversation involving lots of people around a fairly narrow shared but strongly contested history. There isn’t another site that I can think of that could pull together an awkward task like this.

It’s also showing a lot of people a tool that they may conclude ‘it’s useless for this kind of discussion but it might be useful for a different kind of issue’ – perhaps something that falls outside the Unionist / Nationalist bunfight.

This is only getting started. It’s only been up here a few days, after all. I think that the debategraph needs a bit of tidying up and loads of other things adding to it. Some of the comments do need to be tested and checked. I’d like to keep pecking at it in the coming months whenever an argument that I’d forgotten / didn’t know about comes up. It may be an idea that students find more valuable than protagonists in the argument – who knows?

Your question of ‘weighting’ is a good one. I think that you need to get all of the arguments out on the table and maybe look at other ways of weighting them and I’ve got a few ideas on how that could be done.

People who have done other projects like this in the past have often been concerned about the way that participants ‘game’ it (which is what I think you are partly accusing some Nationalists of doing here) and that is something that can be addressed as the idea matures a bit.

I’m sure that the question of ‘nationalist bias’ will disappear as more data goes in because whatever you say, there is no shortage of commenters on this site who regularly raise new issues that can go onto that grid.

Also, there are lots of other software tools (Mixed Ink, Google Wave, Wikis, various mapping / photosharing / videosharing sites) that this info can be moved into to. It’s a start.

Because we’re all new to the tool and the software itself is a work in progress, I can see a few points where people have put things in the wrong place or classified them incorrectly.

I’m also not sure that you *can* find anything like this in a history book and as far as I know, no-one has ever tried to develop an agreed text providing an account of an argument in NI’s context.

People who disagree on things can often agree on a description of what they’re arguing about. I think that it is possible for a bunch of people with dramatically different perspectives to jointly describe an issue to a third party – if you like, a ‘Martian’s Guide’.

If, for instance, we were to convene lots of Slugger’s readers to do an anatomy of the arguments using the Wikipedia software (presenting a map of arguments rather than the more concrete data that Wikipedia is intended for) I defy you to claim that no-one would learn anything from the process.

Mick often characterises this site as being the repetitive account of a the same confusing story to a drunken man. Maybe this is just a manifestation of that?

Finally, JR’s comment (one of the very first in this thread) almost made the whole thing worthwhile on it’s own

Uh-huh… and Republican aspirations for a 50% +1 vote for re-unification someday — is that equally “morally bankrupt?”

a. It’s quare craic but not to be taken seriously unless you’re a conceited twat.

b. It’s a space where bored and otherwise ineffective civil service lower management, in the midst of mid-life crises, can earnestly negotiate the future of the universe from their office computers without fear of interruption from their boss or a leathering from spides

c. It’s a place where you get to finally hand out long overdue salutary lessons to the other team about what morally degenerate and hypocritical pseudo-nazis they are, while reaffirming your own personal (and that of the vast majority of your team mates)superiority and absolute inculpability.

You are conflating the number of people who appear to agree with you for the moral righteousnous of your position

Godwins law invocation here

1. Of course I am not Martin Luther

That goes without saying. But not only are you not Luther. You’re not in any particular way like Luther. In particular, with respect, your ‘stand’ bears no comparison with the courage of his. That was my point, and I suspect you know it.

2. However, I have a right to state my opinions.

Of course you do (though to do so on this site is a privilege, not a right). The problem for you is that so do all the people you despise, and so do all their ‘fellow travellers’. And all we end up with is this white noise. Echo chamber.

3. Well 66,000 people seem to be in that chamber at last count and a lot of UUP and DUP supporters have pretty similar views on terrorists: that chamber seems pretty full to me.

There were 126,000 people in the specific chamber you consider unworthy of discussion, who you openly want to silence. There were 372,000 who knowingly voted for parties who will, work with ‘those people’. Indeed, if you’d convinced every single UUP and DUP voter to your view (and clearly you didn’t), you’d still not even make half the voices who spoke at that election.

66,000 is still an echo chamber, Turgon; and frankly, not even a terribly impressive or large one in regional, never mind national, terms. Again, I ask, why?

Is the height of your hopes to reach 50%+1 unionist votes? Tactically sound, perhaps, but morally bankrupt.

I made a point in the ‘debateograph’ that responsiblity and culpability overlap, but thatone can be culpable without being directly responsible. A view you seem to share.

Sometimes.

You say I am talking to an echo chamber: well 66,000 people seem to be in that chamber at last count and a lot of UUP and DUP supporters have pretty similar views on terrorists: that chamber seems pretty full to me.

Thank you for your response.

1. I mean this gently, but with sincerity. You aren’t Luther. There is no comparison in the importance of what he did and what you are doing.

2. I seek to contend for my views.

…but it seems to have some currency with people with whom I discuss it…

Turgon, there’s that echo chamber again. Leaving aside the possibility that people are not entirely frank with you when you open up on this kind of thing (I have no means to gauge that) – at best you are preaching to the converted. Which may be comforting, but the world goes on around you.

3. If in some tiny way that gives people a voice it has value

Does it? If no-one outside the laager is listening to the voice?

I know Jim Allister reasonably well on a personal level. I wonder about the cult building around him. I wonder about the nihilism of it.

All I can say is anecdotally that surprisingly large numbers of real people read slugger. When I get into conversation with people it is surprising just how many of them read regularly or irregularly.

When I say who I am (admittedly usually to unionists) few criticise what I have said; certainly not in my confronting and attacking republican and loyalist cheerleaders. I think many, many unionists are deeply unhappy about the revisionism about the troubles which is being visited upon them and many, even those who vote UUP and DUP, are still deeply unhappy with the people who bombed and murdered their kith and kin being in government. They may not agree with all my ideas for the future but in all honesty I have never had anything other than support (and at times thanks) for standing up for my views.

Now maybe I am creating my own platform but it seems to have some currency with people with whom I discuss it. If in some tiny way that gives people a voice it has value. In addition if I can show that a hard line unionist can also oppose loyalist paramilitaries then that also has value.

I do not seek to advance to some sort of liberal nirvana and indeed I agree that violence is likely to recur (the historical precedent both here and in other conflicts is very strong). I seek to non violently confront the supporters of violence and hopefully frequently show them up as the cheerleaders they are.

Here I stand I can do no other.

But Jesus didn’t use the shepherd metaphor for nothing: sheeple are sheeple.

I think I’d be horrified if I converted anyone to my idiosyncratic opinion(s) about NI. It would be a bit like adopting someone by accident. I’m completely baffled by the place. It defies a linear narrative. But I am grateful to the bloggers and posters on this forum a like for sharing their understanding of the place. Paradoxically, I wouldn’t be baffled if I didn’t ponder their understanding but if I wasn’t baffled by it I wouldn’t have a better understanding of it. I think if you’re looking for converts or to be converted then you’re in the wrong place.

Most of this political outworking is deterministic but is designed to look like it is emergent. Read the Downing Street Declarations and you’ll see what that means. That mapped it all out. The opinions most folks have are just the opinions that are given to them in order to support a process that the state has designed. They think they arrived at them by their own volition but that is way wrong. If the state wanted them to have a different set of political opinions to support a different political process then they would have then and likewise think they arrived at them by their own volition.

In which case, why waste bandwith on Slugger?

I happen to think there is actually a very strong argument that there is no realistic ‘solution’ in the North, that we will inevitably slip back into awfulness given time, and that the only realistic advice one can give anyone of talent or hope is “Get out fast!”

Presumably Mick disagrees. Otherwise, it seems an expensive way to facilitate the tribal venting of a few dozen keyboard warriors.

I would agree on this, Latcheeco. My time spent on Slugger has tended, I find, to harden my various, occasionally contradictory, attitudes, not challenge them. I tend to find that people commenting here are even more venal, spiteful and illogical than I in my instinctual cynicism, expected them to be. Indeed, I am probably one of those very people. It may be funny, but it’s a black sort of comedy.

I wonder if it hardens the attitudes of people who start out more radical and dangerous than I?

My only personal consolation is that as a general rule I don’t vote for any of the usual suspects. I may be a hopeless cynic. But maybe not an enabler.

Leave Turgon alone. He’s got conviction (as opposed to convictions).

I don’t doubt the strength and genuine nature of your feelings (though I’ve expressed previous doubts, as you know, to their relevance).

But what are you actually achieving, or even realistically likely to achieve? Is anyone persuaded to a view different to that before the read you?

The problem with actively seeking to shut down discussion, and even defending whataboutery is that the conversations don’t cease, and your enemies don’t go away; they just move one door down the street – but with an added verse of “Turgon’s a bitter nutter”.

Thus your writing risks becoming an echo chamber, increasing its own irrelevance. I find it hard to believe that’s the aim?

In the final analysis, I don’t really think any of your ‘opponents’ or ‘enemies’, on slugger or elsewhere, care an awful lot about your moral judgements, or mine or anyone elses for that matter. You will never stop them talking, and you’ll never win any debate by simply declaring that in your view they should be silent; because they don’t really care about your view. They hold it to be, in reality, worthless.

So, the question becomes, Why?

However, if that is not enough: I do not know Trevor Collins but I condemn what he has done in signing the petition on Torrens Knight unreservedly. His comments are deeply offensive in view of Knight’s murderous past. If Mr. Collins feels that in some way Knight has been hard done to he should reflect on what Knight has done and how in any other judicial system a mass murderer like Knight would be looking at spending most if not all of the rest of his life in gaol. That is exactly where he should have been for many years both before and from here on in; in my opinion.

Now maybe just maybe Knight was trying to stay out of criminality: if that had been the case he should not have gone assaulting two women. The reality is that Mr. Collins, even if he had some motives which to him seemed honourable; has done something morally reprehensible which was and is wrong.

Yes, Turgon, for your attack on Trevor Collins was stinging, incisive and deafening.