Does aid create poverty and has the US kidnapped Haiti? Questions that make Yoomoot my obsession-of-obsessions

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A recent discussion on Twitter about the value of international aidreminds me of why I co-founded Yoomoot in the first place. I frequentlycome across well-argued points of view that throw my own worldview intodisarray. This article rubbishing the value of international aid is one example. This article claiming that the US has kidnapped Haiti is another. I don't know how to ignore these kinds of articles. Theyare bombs exploding how I perceive the world and I don't know enough torebutt them. So how can can I just forget about them and blithelycontinue believing my original, settled worldview?

I thinkthat's a good thing: I consciously try to be open-minded and to doubtmy own views. However I don't actually enjoy the consequentdisorientation of not knowing whether my worldview is in need ofdrastic readjustment. The tension of not-knowing grates on me and trying to resolve it can easily become an obsession.

The good thing is that many of these big questions areresolveable: some arguments are better than others. The difficult partis getting to a point where I can accurately assess all the competingarguments, and also put out my own views in a way that can becriticized by others. That takes time; too much time. Partly that'sbecause of the deficiencies of existing social media tools.

That'swhere Yoomoot comes in: it's designed as a place where you can rapidlyget a logically-structured overview of a big conversation. By requiringeverything to be worded in questions and answers Yoomoot forces peopleto think about the focus of what they're saying and allows theirthoughts to be visually organized by those focuses. This is a key partof what makes Yoomoot conversations much more useful than standardonline conversations: a logically-organized tree of questions is mucheasier to consume than pages of entirely unstructured text.

Unfortunately we've discovered that this mental paradigm shift ofrewording everything as a Q&A is a stumbling block for newcomers.It's not surprising because the advantages of rewording your thoughtsas Q&A are only visible after the conversation has gottenbig. When you're actually trying to express your thoughts, it justseems cumbersome and unnatural (at least until you've got used to it).I see it as Yoomoot's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Ifyoomoot fails it will be because people don't the see the point of, orcan't be bothered to deal with, having to reword their thoughts asQ&As.

I'll delete this if ever we try to raise funding but Ihonestly don't particularly care if Yoomoot fails to make lots ofmoney. If a community of only 100 diverse, thoughtful people regularlyuse Yoomoot I will still be committed to it when I'm 90. I am obsessedwith Yoomoot because I am obsessed with unanswered questions. Not theone-off, isolated questions which can be answered on Yahoo! Answers orStack Overflow and their clones. Certainly not questions that can beanswered in 140 characters. I'm obsessed with the questions that canonly be answered by asking other questions: questions leading toquestions leading to questions. The questions which have answers onwhich, consciously or unconsciously, we found our whole lives.