PSS: “Is Nandor still in parliament?”

If Israel can legalise personal possession of cocaine, heroin, lsd, mdma, and hashish (as they have done) then it is clear, we haven’t had the required conversation. On that there is no dispute. It’s not about what rule is the one that cracks the nut, or who came up with it. It is about creating a community of consensus that change is necessary, now.

When this occurs, the tensions are resolved and change becomes inevitable.

* We spend much of our lives debating with each other—and living in the consequences of those debates. But how often do we do it well? And can the process be improved?

* Public debates tend to be complex; with multiple data sources and perspectives and conflicting demands and values. Even relatively straightforward arguments can challenge our capacity to hold all the pertinent factors clearly in our minds. And, in complex debates, the volume of information and arguments can seem like an overwhelming obstacle to someone trying to develop a comprehensive understanding of the essential arguments advanced by all sides.

* Public debate is all too often characterized by repetitive contributions, digressions, argumentative fallacies, rhetorical flourishes, manipulative framing, obfuscation and personal attacks that result in a high noise-to-signal ratio and confusion rather than clarity.

* Conventional media reporting of public policy debates often struggles with the challenge of conveying nuanced, reasoned positions in a compressed linear form, when simple heated oppositions deliver a more dramatic and rewarding effect.

* This, in turn, makes it harder for established public figures to think tentatively and creatively in public about new policy approaches and to acknowledge strengths and common ground in opponents’ positions.

* The human tendencies toward homophily (mixing with like-minded people) and group polarization (the self-reinforcing movement towards extreme positions in groups of like-minded people) can, if left unchecked, limit the diversity of arguments heard and stifle the creative discovery of new options in the clash of diverse arguments.

* Moreover, the significance people attach to arguments is often shaped by broader frameworks of value and belief, which are in themselves debatable; making the pursuit of a comprehensive appreciation of major debates harder still.

Our approach

* Our goal is to create a new kind of public service that enables local and global communities of people to think together by collaboratively building and editing comprehensive and succinct maps of complex debates that accurately present all sides of the debate from a neutral standpoint, free of repetitive clutter and ‘noise’.

* All aspects of the debate maps—both their content and structure—are continuously open to revision, refinement, comment, and evaluation by anyone who wants to join the community of thought. Each map is a cumulative work in progress that can be edited and expanded just like a wiki.

* The maps are multi-dimensional to reflect the nuances of real debate rather than being limited to one dimensional for and against arguments—and can be clustered into overlapping debates.

* Readers and editors of the maps can explore the top-level structure of debates and delve onto specific strands or sub-structures of a debate, without losing sight of the overall semantic whole.

* RSS feeds are available to keep everyone up to date with changes as a debate evolves, each element on a map has it’s own comments section to allow for open discussion and story-telling in addition to structured reasoning, excerpts of maps can be shared with other websites/blogs, and debates can be printed for offline reference or to create the framework for a written report.

* The objective with Debatemapper is not so much an absolutism of rationality as a transparency of rationality; creating a means for people to collaboratively capture and display all of the arguments pertinent to a debate clearly and fairly so that all of the participants in the debate have the chance to see the debate as a whole and to understand how the positions they hold exist within that debate.

* Although consensus can emerge from such a process, not least because it promotes the discovery of previously unidentified options, our hope is as much that the people who continue to disagree will do so on the basis of an enriched understanding of the reasons for their disagreement and having had the chance to test each other’s reasoning to the fullest.

https://debatemapper.com/sf/home.aspx

It takes the fortune in illegal, non-taxed money out of criminal pockets.

It frees the Police to concentrate on crime that has Victims (pot is rated less dangerous than coffee and tea as a psychotropic agent)

South Australia & Adelaide made six plants per home legal - they had to drop it down to two because of all the interest from interstate buyers. General crime rates have fallen.

Same situation in the Australian Capital Territories (home of the Federal Government!!!). No resulting crime wave.

In England,Medical THC is available in pill form as a pain treatment. As a replacement for dangerous, physically addictive medicines (morphine etc etc) it is generally agreed to be a big success.

I think the problem lies in the Kiwi psyche - a refusal to stand up for, not only one’s rights, but also what is right, inevitably leads to the most unhelpful views being promulgated.

No Guts, No Gain.

The greens are wrong to write off the drug-law and order (crime reduction, genuine community safety, harm reduction etc etc) issue as electorally dangerous. There is far more POTential in this and the remedial aspects of hemp than given credit for (remember where the green landslide vote in1999 came from? Russel you missed that Cannabis got you’s elected).

How about some advocacy on the real social justice issue Greens - consider your own policy (decriminalisation) as integral to fixing whats broken in NZ - there are bucketloads of votes there but youve got to cultivate them- regards

“# Owen McShane Says: [developer, cornucopian, climate change opponent…… also candid and well qualified]
October 14th, 2007 at 12:19 pm

It is difficult to “read the tea-leaves� when having to peer into so many cups.
However, I am familiar with the workings of several councils round the country and it seems to me that the “upsets� have occurred where the voters have recognised that the bureaucrats are out of control and running riot with interventions and grand spending and are hoping that a new Mayor and a few new councillors will be able to change things by reining them in.
This is not easy but can be done. But the newly elected have to realise that the bureaucrats have been preparing for such changes and will immediately try to stop their efforts in their tracks.
Certainly, the most interventionist councils have seen the biggest turnovers. (speaking about those I know about.)”