If Parlia is an adventure, this blog is the compass that guides us through it.
As you probably know, we are trying to build Parlia is the world’s first encyclopedia of opinion. Yet, at a time when the borders between the truth and the unreal are so often blurred, the routes between our ambition and its realisation are fraught with peril. Successful navigation really just depends on one thing: introspection.
Who are we? How does culture impact the way we argue? What is rationalism? How much of our opinion-forming is really post-rationalisation? Do our opinions come from our minds or from our guts? How does collaborative knowledge building work?
Largely, the blog will look at the philosophies, histories, anthropologies and psychologies of debating and opinion. It’s an existential experiment to help us figure out the questions at the core of our project. Namely, what are opinions, and why do we have them?
Commitment to open, impartial dialogue demands that we remain restless. With your help, we are building our exquisite collection of opinions that stretch the spectrum of bias, belief and the bits in-between.
This requires equal commitment to seeing where these elements exist in our own work and approach to debate. Are our personal beliefs reflected in our platform? How do we recognise when they are? And how do we eliminate them?.
The more we think about thinking, the faster we chip away at the echo chambers that restrict us. And the fake news that distorts the ways in which we relate to one another.
Where our maps ask ‘Are people born gay?’, our blog might ask whether this is a loaded question. Or whether the positions themselves might influence the ultimate view of the readership.
This resource will provide the tools - both for our users, and for ourselves - to understand our challenge more clearly. But we’d like it to be more than a grand intellectual exercise. We want our articles to be interesting. To you. So, if there’s an idea or a story you think we’ve overlooked please get in touch - we really do always want to hear what you have to say.
Nushy, and the team.