For complex issues initial vote of a participant seldom if ever corresponds to his rational, thought over and well documented opinion. He starts by expressing gut reactions and some bandwagon cliches. He may vote for a war, motivated by patriotic gut reactions and hawkish propaganda. One of the most important functions of structured Debate is to show the implications of such a vote; death and suffering of populations and ruin of involved countries including one's own. Gut reaction confronted with reason, cliches confronted with reliable information may and hopefully will result in changing the vote, thus building up consensus. CHILDREN bottom-up inferencing PARENTS consensus building postulates, definitions and principles DEMOCRACY WORKSHOPS ARCHIVE