How Sed Contra Works

Sed Contra is a platform for structured argumentation modeled on the scholastic method of Thomas Aquinas. In the Summa Theologiae, each question follows a rigorous structure: objections are raised, a counter-position is stated (sed contra — "on the contrary"), the author responds (respondeo), and each objection is answered in turn.

We adapt this method for the web. Instead of a single author, the entire community contributes claims, evidence, votes, and formal responses — building a network of interconnected reasoning where ideas are evaluated on the quality of their evidence, not on who said them.

Claims

A claim is a testable assertion — any statement that can be supported or opposed with evidence. Claims are the fundamental building blocks of the platform.

  • Each claim has a clear title and a detailed description providing context
  • Claims are categorized by field tags (e.g., "economics," "climate-science," "philosophy") that identify the relevant domain
  • Anyone can submit a claim; the community determines its merit through evidence and voting

Evidence

Claims are evaluated through evidence — other claims linked as either supporting or opposing a parent claim. This creates a recursive network: a piece of evidence is itself a claim that can have its own evidence, and so on.

  • Supporting evidence strengthens the parent claim's validity
  • Opposing evidence weakens it
  • Evidence quality matters: a well-supported piece of evidence carries more weight than an unsupported one
  • The platform detects and prevents circular evidence chains

This recursive structure mirrors Aquinas's method of stacking objections and counter-objections. A claim with deep, well-supported evidence on both sides represents a thoroughly examined question.

Voting and Reputation

An arrow means a different thing in each place it appears, so each place says which:

  • On a claim the arrows are labelled agree and disagree: they record whether you think the claim is true, not whether it is well put. Whether it is well put is what the five virtues under rate this claim are for.
  • On an evidence link the arrows ask whether this is good evidence here — whether it really bears on the claim it is attached to — and not whether the evidence claim is itself true. That claim has its own page and its own arrows.
  • On a comment or a response the arrows are the ordinary ones: is this worth reading.

But not all votes are equal.

Your reputation determines your vote's weight. Reputation is earned through quality contributions: submitting claims that receive upvotes, providing evidence that the community finds relevant, and participating constructively. Vote weight scales logarithmically (log10) with reputation, so early contributions matter most and no single user can dominate.

Reputation is also tracked per field. If you've built expertise in "molecular-biology" through strong contributions in that domain, your votes on molecular biology claims carry more weight than your votes in, say, "art-history." This encourages genuine domain expertise rather than indiscriminate voting.

Scores

Every claim has several scores, each capturing a different dimension of its standing in the community. Four of them are what the status line under a claim’s title reports:

Validity

A claim's evidence-weighted quality. Validity is calculated recursively: a claim supported by high-validity evidence scores higher than one supported by unsubstantiated assertions. Opposing evidence pulls validity down. This is the primary measure of how well a claim holds up under scrutiny.

Consensus

The degree of community agreement. Ranges from −100 (strong rejection) to +100 (strong acceptance). A claim with a consensus near zero is actively contested; one near +100 has broad community support.

Controversy

Measures voting polarization. A claim with many upvotes and many downvotes is controversial, even if its net score is near zero. High controversy flags claims where the community is genuinely divided rather than merely indifferent.

Depth

How thoroughly a claim has been examined. Depth reflects the length and completeness of the evidence chains beneath a claim. A high-depth claim has been argued through multiple layers of supporting and opposing evidence.

A fifth score, centrality, measures how structurally important a claim is within the evidence network, PageRank-style: claims frequently cited as evidence by other well-cited claims rank higher. It orders claims against each other and is not shown on a claim of its own, because a centrality of 3.4 is not a fact anyone can act on.

Field Tags

Every claim is tagged with one or more field tags identifying its domain (e.g., "ethics," "economics," "computer-science"). Field tags serve several purposes:

  • They help users discover claims in their areas of interest
  • They scope reputation: your expertise is tracked per field
  • They weight votes: users with field-specific reputation have more influence on claims in that field
  • The community can vote on field tags themselves, affecting their legitimacy

Respondeo

The respondeo is the culmination of the scholastic method. After a claim has accumulated evidence on both sides, experienced users can write a formal response — a synthesized assessment that addresses the objections and counter-arguments, drawing conclusions from the available evidence.

  • Writing a respondeo requires a minimum level of field reputation, ensuring that responses come from users with demonstrated expertise
  • Responses must cite evidence from the claim, showing engagement with the existing arguments
  • The community votes on responses, and the highest-rated current response represents the community's best synthesis
  • Responses can be superseded as new evidence emerges or better syntheses are written

The respondeo distinguishes Sed Contra from ordinary debate forums. Rather than letting arguments accumulate indefinitely, it provides a mechanism for resolution — or at least for articulating the strongest version of each position.

Putting It Together

A fully developed question on Sed Contra looks like this:

  • A claim states a position
  • Supporting evidence marshals arguments and sub-claims in its favor
  • Opposing evidence raises objections (videtur quod)
  • The community votes, weighting each piece by the voters' expertise
  • Scores emerge: how valid is the claim? How central? How contested?
  • An experienced user writes a respondeo, synthesizing the evidence into a reasoned conclusion

The result is a structured, traceable record of argumentation — not a shouting match, but a genuine attempt to think through hard questions together.

The verdict word

Every claim in a list carries one word: supported, refuted or open. It is read off the consensus score alone — above +10 is supported, below −10 is refuted, and everything in between is open. The same word leads each user’s track record.

On the claim itself the word comes with the warrant for it — supported — on 4 supporting to 3 opposing, weighted +14 — so that the page states something you can check against the evidence graph directly below it, and names the strongest objection standing against the claim. A claim nobody has scored yet says not yet scored rather than borrowing a word it has not earned.

Under that the page says what the claim still lacks, as a state rather than a request: no opposing evidence — this claim has not been tested, the strongest objection has no answer (the current respondeo does not cite it, or there is no respondeo), no sources, falsifiability unrated. Four supports and no objections earn supported from consensus alone, so the line has to be able to say that such a claim has not been examined. Each of these is a job: the claim is waiting for someone to do it.

When the word has changed in the last month the line says what it was — was open until 6 days ago — on the claim and on its row in a list. The list can also be sorted by moved (the verdict that changed most recently, then the score most in motion) and contested (the most divided vote), and narrowed with needs evidence to the claims with no evidence yet or evidence on one side only.

Keyboard shortcuts

  • / — jump to the search box
  • n — make a new claim
  • a / z — vote up / down on the widget under the pointer

None of them fire while you are typing in a field.

Getting Started

  • Browse existing claims to see the platform in action
  • Submit your first claim with a clear, testable title
  • Add evidence to claims you find interesting — support or oppose
  • Vote thoughtfully; your reputation will grow with quality participation
  • Read the community guidelines for expectations on conduct