I have spent a fair amount of time pondering my structural approach for 
contradiction, iff, translation, etc.  My current plan is to add a 
table that stores the two args and an int for the type of relationship 
between them.  But perhaps a good look some of this structured debate 
research would be a smart plan.  Did you notice any algorithms or data 
structures that stood out as insightful?  I think simplicity is 
probably quite important in a system designed to scale very large and 
'judge' things with a subtle touch.

-Mike

On Nov 17, 2005, at 8.42p, Jay Levitt wrote:
>
> Interesting!  Have you thought about ways to structure 
> counterarguments,
> subarguments, debatable points, conclusions, etc.?  Maybe a way for
> readers to "rate" arguments as fallaci.. fall... as containing a
> fallacy?
>
> I remember doing some net-research on this a few months ago, and
> discovered that there was a whole field of structured debate research,
> but that the software involved was heavy, crufty, and too complex for
> people to actually use to debate topics.