Geo

Social media platforms should never censor political opinions. Watch the debate on Geo! geobrowser.io/space/4582fbbe…

Should the United States leave NATO? Watch the debate on Geo! geobrowser.io/space/89bd89bf…

Claims are small statements we can check, question and connect. On @geoprotocol they help us trace ideas back to their sources and build on what we know. I wrote a little post on how it works and why it matters. Have a read 👇 geobrowser.io/space/4cd9cca5…

Geo debates: an open mind has room to grow Having an open mind starts with accepting that you might be wrong. You can have an opinion, believe in it strongly, and still be willing to listen to someone who sees things differently. You can learn something new and let it change how you think. I think that willingness is essential to growth. If every new idea has to agree with what you already believe before you consider it, you leave very little room to learn. A growth mindset means giving yourself permission to question your own understanding and build on it. One way to do that is to voice your opinions and let people challenge them. Explain what you believe and why. Listen to the questions people ask. Sometimes you discover that you understand a subject well. Sometimes you realize you have been repeating something without really thinking it through. Both are useful. That is what interests me about Geo debates. The app gives you a place to explore trending topics and claims, take a position, and meet someone with an opposing view. You get matched for a timed video debate, with each person given a turn to make their arguments and respond. There is time to speak and time to listen. The debate is saved, and the arguments you make are extracted into claims attributed to you. Someone watching can return to a particular claim, look into it, and challenge it too. The conversation becomes something other people can build on. Geo’s launch announcement explains how that works. A claim on Geo is a short, self-contained statement. It should make sense even when you encounter it outside the conversation where it came from. Claims can express facts or opinions. Factual claims can be checked against evidence; opinions can be examined through the reasons for and against them. For example, “Schools should allow students to use AI tools” is a claim you can debate. Someone might support it because they believe students need to learn how to use those tools. Someone else might oppose it because they are concerned about students depending on them before developing their own skills. Those arguments can become claims themselves, each open to further discussion and evidence. This is what makes claims composable. A useful statement can support another argument, be challenged by a different claim, or appear in another relevant discussion. You can keep connecting what people know and think. To understand why that matters, it helps to understand what Geo is underneath the debates app. Geo is a knowledge graph. People, topics, institutions, posts and claims are represented as entities, connected through the relationships between them. Imagine a teacher called Amina. She studied at a university, wrote a blog post about AI in education, and made a claim during a debate about its use in schools. The connections would look like this: Amina studied at the university. Amina wrote the blog post. The blog post discusses AI in education. Amina made a claim that relates to the same topic. Each connection gives you somewhere else to go. From the claim, you can explore the topic. From the topic, you can find other posts and arguments. From Amina, you can learn more about the person making the case. That is a knowledge graph in practice: things connected in ways that help you understand them. The same idea extends to a person's profile. As information is added and linked, it can bring together their education, the institutions they attended, topics they contributed, topics and claims they voted on, tweets, blog posts and the claims they have made. You get more context about their interests, contributions and views. You still have to examine the argument itself, but you have more to work with. This is where Geo becomes a rabbit hole I would like to spend time in. You might arrive because a debate catches your attention. One person makes an argument you have never considered, so you open the claim. You explore the sources and see what other people have said about it. That leads you to a related topic, another debate, or a person whose work you want to understand better. You started with one question and found several more worth asking. You might change your view. You might keep it, but understand much more clearly why you hold it and where someone else disagrees. You might find people who share your interests and people who challenge your assumptions. There is room for both. That is the kind of experience I want more of online. A place where curiosity leads somewhere, where disagreement gives you something to think about, and where what you learn can help the next person exploring the same question. We live in a world where everyone is trying to influence what we think, buy, support and believe. Having the tools to examine those ideas, trace their sources and hear different perspectives matters. For me, Geo offers a constructive way to do that, while contributing to knowledge that others can explore too. If you are open-minded, curious and interested in making things better, come and explore @geoprotocol. Have a debate. Bring an opinion you are willing to explain and a willingness to hear someone else's. Follow the questions that interest you. Add what you know to open knowledge. Build the world you want to live in, and leave room to grow along the way. geobrowser.io/explore