I’m hardly the first person to say life would be so much better, particularly debate and discourse, if people had to back their opinions with money (hi Kant!).
This is only a half baked idea so please trash away.
What if you built a forum that had a gambling aspect built in. To join you had to deposit a certain amount of money and then when you post you have to assign a dollar value to how secure you are in the facts and opinion in that post. Any other poster can take that bet and show your error, thereby winning the funds, or fail giving you the same funds.
You would obviously need some arbitration mechanism. I’m not sure how that would work.
Sometimes the way you grow is by putting your thoughts out there before they are well thought out. People explain why your thoughts are not well thought out. You either agree or think more about it and refine your thoughts. I think this idea would reduce that.
Also even in this forum which is pretty like minded we don’t always agree on what the “facts” are. I think the arbitration process would be a nightmare.
How much money would you put on this being a good idea? We can test it.
Edit: Also sometimes good ideas take years before everyone realizes its a good idea.
Smart people will be more aware of how little they truly know and will be more reluctant to post. Overconfident dumb people will increase their share of posting. I will rake in money fact-checking everyone.
Sounds a lot like Verrit. The whole problem with modern discourse is the inability to collectively establish what the facts actually are. Assigning authority to a company or website doesn’t resolve the conflict.
In practice, the libs would always win because reality has a well known liberal bias, and the cons would demand the site be shut down and the owners locked up.
That Is kind of the whole point and why Kant suggested the idea in the first place.
People are far less like to argue on the facts if they have to put up money. I suspect a lot of the Covid is fake people would shrink away pretty fast if they had to put up some cash to defend their position.
What if arbitration was a vote but voting cost money.
Edit. Even better what if you somehow combined a community respect system with money so say you have a high community respect number (e.g, hearts) allowed you to vote for cheaper. Maybe also add proof of expertise in a field reduced voting cost.
If it was a prohibitive amount of money nobody would do it. If it was a small amount of money, you’ve created a way for people to buy the results they want.
This would be a problem to figure out but I don’t think it’s fatal. People play 1c/2c poker.
Obviously the more it cost to post poorly the less common it would be. However, it seems like nearly any amount of money would dissuade bad faith posting no?
