Being a well-informed citizen has become extremely difficult in this day and age. Modern media usually functions as echo chambers within which preexisting beliefs are merely reinforced. What is needed is a better medium to spread and evaluate information. A medium which allows everyone, including the highly-educated, to more easily reflect on their currently held beliefs.

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.

Leo Tolstoy in The Kingdom of God Is Within You

We aim to create a non-discriminatory environment, conducive to large-scale cooperative discussions on any topic you feel passionate about. Our goal is not to prescribe what is true or false, but to provide transparency to the arguments of others. This facilitates finding common ground, while in addition opening up arguments to falsification.

[W]hither the argument may blow, thither we go.

Plato in The Republic

Complex interrelations between different statements which make up an argument are often hard to follow, or hard to contribute to, when forced into a linear format. This is an unfortunate characteristic of essentially all modern media used to present arguments and host discussions. Socratrees offers an alternative by outlining arguments into intuitive hierarchies of supporting and opposing statements. This design is loosely based on argumentation theory. However, we do not expect you to be familiar with theory in order to start using Socratrees.

To get over this, my Way is, to divide half a Sheet of Paper by a Line into two Columns, writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con.

Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Joseph Preistley