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The Socratic Hearth

Socratic Hearth is an experimental diplomatic and civic participation form. It will become an adoption record of guidelines and a forum of forums. Practicing consensus through healthy debate and AI generated counterpositions to one’s formed worldview are other goals.Bentley Moon

What would change your mind?

Write where you stand, the strongest case against you, and what would move you. Then take it to people who disagree. Collective think instead of group think.

Write a position Read the 19 questions on the shelf

The sky over your part of the world right now, drawn in your browser from the date and time.

How should we govern? Six ways in, from a map drawn in 2023.

StartGovernanceTechnologyHealthLibertiesEducationDefence
Liberties · surveillance and personal dataShould the ban on social scoring cover every score, including the ones a person keeps?What everyone can expect, draft 0.3, line 8 · EU AI Act art. 5(1)(c)Use this question
On the shelf in Liberties:
No question yet on: open source, rights.

Write a position

Three steps, about ten minutes. The card stays on this device until you download it.

Say where you stand
Make the other side’s best case
Say what would change your mind

Start with where you stand.

Where it stands

The card
works

Its file opens at The Work Party.

Sessions with a facilitator
0

None held yet.

Adoptions
3

All by this family’s own sites.

By anyone else
0

External adoptions: none yet.

As of 2026-10-28. There is no public place yet to do this with strangers.

The registerWhat each group adopted, what would change it, when it will look again, and where the group files go.Lines of lawLine 8 of the family’s draft, argued in the margin, and the steps from a card to an adopted line.The Work PartyWhere a group records what it decided from the positions people brought, and who disagreed.

A hearth for two

The smallest session is two people at a table with two cards.

Should the street outside be closed to cars on Sundays?

Where you stand
Yes, ten till four. The kids would have somewhere to play.
The strongest case against you
The bakery loses its Sunday trade, and the 7 bus detours past the school.
Called fair by
the other card’s writer
What would change your mind
If the bakery’s Sunday takings fall by a third in a trial month.

Should the street outside be closed to cars on Sundays?

Where you stand
No. Open it one Sunday a month and see who comes.
The strongest case against you
A street that’s closed once a month never becomes a place anyone plans around.
Called fair by
the other card’s writer
What would change your mind
If more than twenty families use it on the first trial Sunday.
  1. Write. Each person fills a card alone, in ten minutes.
  2. Swap. Read the other card. Don’t argue yet.
  3. Write their case. Each writes the strongest case for the other side, and the other says whether it’s fair.
  4. Keep both. Each keeps both cards, with both “how sure” numbers. Type them in above, or keep them on paper.

These two cards are examples. The street question is small, so it’s quick to try; the same card works on line 8.

For a question that needs hundreds of people listening to each other, use Polis, then bring its result back here as positions. A position written here is a plain text file in the Open Values position format. It stays on the writer’s device until they download it or send it. The Socratic Hearth is a Futurism Institute property.