I agree that something like an evidence clearinghouse seems like a good and important project. However I am not sure you have gotten the most important part of the problem.
Your proposal seems to focus on having the clearinghouse:
Organize information that others have created
Organize arguments that others have created
However I think this doesn’t really get to the part of the problem that can be effectively addressed.
I think a disagreement often consists of two root causes:
It is often because they don’t trust each other. For instance lots of scientists are incompetent or politically biased, and especially the scientists who make public statements have typically been selected by politically biased organizations, so you generally should be skeptical of scientists.
There is some area that the two sides both want to control. For instance pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine people both want to influence the bodies of anti-vaccine people (pro-vaxxers want anti-vaxxers to get vaccinated and anti-vaxxers don’t want to get vaccinated).
I think the primary tasks of an evidence clearinghouse would be something like:
Go out of its way to figure out what the underlying conflicts are.
Collect new evidence relevant for the conflicts (e.g. is some specific scientific field an exception that is especially trustworthy?)
Interpret evidence in the light of people’s positions in the conflicts (e.g. what are the potential pros or cons to getting vaccinated in the light of the conflict?)
I agree that something like an evidence clearinghouse seems like a good and important project. However I am not sure you have gotten the most important part of the problem.
Your proposal seems to focus on having the clearinghouse:
Organize information that others have created
Organize arguments that others have created
However I think this doesn’t really get to the part of the problem that can be effectively addressed.
I think a disagreement often consists of two root causes:
It is often because they don’t trust each other. For instance lots of scientists are incompetent or politically biased, and especially the scientists who make public statements have typically been selected by politically biased organizations, so you generally should be skeptical of scientists.
There is some area that the two sides both want to control. For instance pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine people both want to influence the bodies of anti-vaccine people (pro-vaxxers want anti-vaxxers to get vaccinated and anti-vaxxers don’t want to get vaccinated).
I think the primary tasks of an evidence clearinghouse would be something like:
Go out of its way to figure out what the underlying conflicts are.
Collect new evidence relevant for the conflicts (e.g. is some specific scientific field an exception that is especially trustworthy?)
Interpret evidence in the light of people’s positions in the conflicts (e.g. what are the potential pros or cons to getting vaccinated in the light of the conflict?)