Tacitus.me ◳
Tacitus.me ◳ is a conflict-intelligence engine that maps polarization, reveals hidden asymmetries, and turns unstructured disputes into clarity and common ground. Inspired by Tacitus’s forensic honesty, it helps users see conflict as a system—so it can be understood, not inflamed.
At Concordia Discors, we believe that polarization is rarely just a matter of ideology—it is a matter of structure: how information moves, how narratives harden, how incentives misalign, and how entire communities begin to talk past one another. The work of depolarization is therefore not sentimental. It is analytical.
Tacitus.me ◳ is built for this analytical work.
Tacitus is our sister project: a conflict-intelligence engine designed to map asymmetries, extract the underlying architecture of disputes, and identify where common ground still lives beneath hardened positions. It combines structured analysis, multimodal AI agents, and an emerging conflict ontology to help users see conflict not as noise, but as a system.
Why Tacitus?
Across politics, diplomacy, workplaces, and online communities, conflicts rarely escalate because the facts are contested; they escalate because interpretations diverge, incentives shift, and narratives evolve faster than institutions can respond. Tacitus tackles these structural roots through three commitments:
1. Conflict Is Information Asymmetry
At its core, Tacitus treats conflict not as a moral failure but as an informational problem. Who knows what? Who interprets what? Where do misunderstandings become leverage? This approach draws on work in political science, negotiation theory, and institutional design—from Thomas Schelling to James Fearon—showing that incomplete or asymmetric information is one of the most persistent drivers of escalation. The name pays homage to Tacitus the Roman historian, whose method was to cut through imperial narratives with a stark, almost forensic clarity—revealing the motives, silences, and power asymmetries beneath official accounts.
2. Polarization Has a Grammar
The Prism Lab, one of Tacitus’s core modules, breaks polarized narratives into their psychological, moral, and strategic components. It identifies the arguments people rely on, the hidden levers beneath those arguments, and the openings for reframing. Rather than simply summarizing, it shows:
- where narratives diverge,
- why they resonate,
- and how they might be bridged without erasing principled disagreement.
3. Conflict Has Structure
Tacitus uses a growing ontology of actors, interests, constraints, and asymmetries—a conflict graph—to map the ecosystem of stakeholders. It clarifies relational power: who can unlock a stalemate, who holds a veto, who sits at the bridge points where trust or mistrust determines outcomes. This structural lens is informed by insights from graph theory, institutional analysis, and mediation practice.
A Tool for Analysts, Diplomats, Strategists, and Citizens
Tacitus is not a replacement for judgment; it is an instrument for sharpening it.
It is built for:
- analysts seeking the latest developments across conflict zones,
- negotiators looking for leverage points,
- journalists navigating contested narratives,
- boards and teams attempting to de-escalate internal disputes,
- citizens trying to understand how polarization works and where it might be healed.
Its orientation is deliberately pluralistic: Tacitus does not decide what the “right” outcome is. Instead, it clears the fog around what is actually happening—and what is possible.
A Shared Mission
Concordia Discors and Tacitus were born from the same conviction: that public life requires clarity, structured disagreement, and the courage to resist the sentimental allure of tribal certainties. One works at the level of ideas; the other at the level of systems. Together, they form a single project:
to illuminate the hidden architectures of polarization and build the habits of mind needed for concord through discord.
Explore the platform at Tacitus.me ◳