Most political debate fails for a simple reason: claims are never made falsifiable. When someone says "we need to strengthen our borders," there's no agreed-upon measure of success, no baseline, no conditions under which they'd admit they were wrong.
The Idea Stock Exchange (ISE) fixes this by requiring every belief to pass through a structured template before it earns a score. Here's what that looks like in practice.
The Three-Part Score
Every argument submitted to the ISE receives three scores:
- Truth Score (0-100): Is the underlying claim supported by peer-reviewed or otherwise credible evidence?
- Linkage Score (0-100): Does this argument actually connect logically to the belief it supports or opposes?
- Importance Score (0-100): How much weight should this argument carry in the overall debate?
What a Belief Page Looks Like
Take the belief "Colorado should adopt ranked choice voting." On the ISE, that page includes: a neutral definition of ranked choice voting, a table of the top pro arguments with scores, a table of the top con arguments with scores, the best supporting and opposing evidence (classified by type: T1=peer-reviewed, T2=expert, T3=journalism, T4=opinion), falsifiability conditions (what evidence would change my mind), a cost-benefit analysis with short and long-term projections, and a conflict resolution framework identifying shared interests between supporters and opponents.
No other political platform does all of that for every belief, systematically.
The Daily Review Protocol
The ISE uses a daily systematic review process documented on GitHub. Each day, up to three belief pages are evaluated against the full template. Improvements are logged in progress_log.txt. Scores are recalibrated when evidence changes. Each belief must satisfy six standards before it is marked complete: structural compliance, clarity, neutrality, scoring integrity, evidence quality, and logical rigor — including falsifiability conditions.
This is what it looks like when a political candidate actually shows their work.
Help Build the ISE — It's Open Source
The platform is built on Next.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Prisma, and TailwindCSS. Whether you're a developer, researcher, or writer — there's a role for you.
- Developers: pick a good first issue on GitHub and contribute to the scoring engine or frontend
- Researchers: score arguments using the Belief Template (Truth, Linkage, Importance)
- Writers: draft neutral pro/con arguments for contested beliefs
- Everyone: star the repo to increase visibility and help this reach more contributors
