Comment by meowface
3 days ago
Some of the core ideas here seem good, but the node/edge distinction feels too fuzzy. The node "Climate Change Threat" is a claim. Is the node "Efficiency" a claim? Can one challenge the existence of Efficiency? If one instead challenges the benefit of Efficiency, isn't that an edge attack?
I could give a bunch of other examples where the nodes in the article don't feel like apples-to-apples things. I feel less motivated to try to internalize the article due to this.
I think the structure inherently enables each node to be a claim (like "this thing exists"), but that there's value in making a node even if that node's claim is not particularly disagreeable, because the edges to that node might be disagreeable, or to provide more detail about how one node relates to another (e.g. through some intermediate node). In this case, maybe the main value in modeling "Efficiency" is to convey how innovation might lead to profit.
To me, it feels less fuzzy when you assume that all nodes and edges imply their own claims, and that it's just a matter of whether or not those claims are worth arguing. The fuzziness imo is based on the fact that the curator picks which nodes and edges exist, which therefore determines which claims exist and can be agreed or disagreed with, not to mention the overall legibility of the graph itself. But I would argue that a causal graph like this is better at representing reality than something like an argument tree, and that, while it might be fuzzy to determine which nodes should exist, at least there's less opinion involved about where nodes should be placed in relation to each other. Which imo makes the structure easier to refine given time and feedback.
The edges are labeled by transitive verbs, where the arrow points from the subject of that verb to the direct object. (I'm counting particle verbs, like "leads to", as verbs.) The nodes are labeled by nouns. If you can change a noun to a verb, I guess you would be changing what is an edge and what is a node.
Example: In the article's first diagram, there is a node labeled "Innovation". This could be replaced by a node labeled "Capitalist" and a node labeled "Improvement", with an arrow from the first to the second labeled "innovates."
So yes, if you can replace a node by an edge (and vice versa, although I don't give an example), this node vs. edge thing is fuzzy.