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The power of moderation
A large part of our driving force should be the idea that moderation is often the path to better discussion, decision making, and governance. We could even argue that democratic systems can only survive if the polity is moderate, both in temperament and policy. A democratic majority that favors genocide, and then implements it, is not a democracy.
Moderation means that people’s views tend to cluster around the mean and that they are willing to compromise. It also means that there is widespread support for a fundamental ideology (ie people have basic rights, etc.) even if they diverge on specific issues of policy. By moderation we don’t necessarily mean that we can’t take unpopular or unconventional positions. It means that we don’t hew to them so strongly that it gets in the way of compromise.
A rating for moderation should be part of our system. Those who strive for it should be rewarded with a specific rating or grouping of ratings that all point toward moderate tendencies. Usually moderation manifests itself in policy-making but clues to how moderate someone is willing to be can often be found in their writing and debate style. Furthermore there are those who instinctively try to blend divergent opinions together and forge compromise. They would be given the highest ratings in this category. We believe in moderation as a principle, not only because of its power to generate compromise but because of its power to assuage.
We mentioned above that reminding users of issue complexity benefits our goal of moderation. We mentioned last time that AI can be used to vet user responses for extreme or inappropriate content. It can also judge the tone of the response in terms of appropriateness, open-mindedness, etc. And building in a time delay for responses can help defuse responses made in anger. So can educational content, a subject which we have also covered.