Norma

Norma surfaces the hidden moral and philosophical commitments in political speech. Rather than judging whether a statement is true or false, Norma clarifies the values underlying a claim and connects them to traditions of philosophical debate, helping readers reflect more deeply on where they stand.

The Problem

Today's tools for governing online political discourse—such as community notes, fact-checking tools, and dis/misinformation moderation—focus heavily on ensuring the factual accuracy of public claims. But facts alone do not settle questions of value.

The normative decision of what we ought to do on the basis of shared facts—what policies to enact, which candidates to support, what principles to uphold—is treated as the domain of individual preference and persuasion. Citizens often find themselves reacting along partisan lines without the resources to articulate why they agree or disagree at the level of moral reasoning. This contributes to polarization and shallow discourse.

Philosophy has long developed methods for clarifying and reasoning about normative commitments; however, these resources remain largely locked in academic references, inaccessible in the fast-moving context of contemporary public debate.

How Norma Works

Norma is an LLM-powered value-checking tool. It ingests normative political statements—tweets, op-eds, speeches—and produces short annotations that:

• Identify the underlying moral values at stake (e.g. appeals to fairness, liberty, patriotism).
• Connect those assumptions to relevant philosophical frameworks and traditions of debate.
• Expose tensions or counter-arguments to encourage reflection rather than partisanship.

Our Vision

Norma does not aim to persuade users of a particular position; instead, it aims to expand the space for inquiry, equipping citizens with intellectual tools to better understand where they stand and why.

By making visible the underlying value structures across different debates, Norma may surface unexpected overlaps or coalitions. Actors who appear opposed on the surface may in fact share normative commitments, meaning that unlikely alliances could form around principles that contemporary political identities obscure. In this way, Norma may help illuminate new possibilities for political cooperation, or at least highlight the complexity of existing divides.

Team