The Greeks called it aporia: a paralysis of mind and conscience, when every reason meets its equal. We call it being torn.
Many of Plato’s dialogues end in aporia. Socrates and the people he questions reach no answer; they only see, more clearly than before, why the question is hard.1 That isn’t a failure. It’s where honest thinking starts.
Torn gives you one moral dilemma a day, with a real case on both sides. You press and hold to choose, guess how most people chose, then see the world’s split on a pair of scales. There are no right answers; only yours.
IThe Choice of Heracles
In the fifth century BC, the teacher Prodicus told a story about the young Heracles. Alone at a place where the road divides, he is met by two figures. One offers him an easy and pleasant life; the other, a hard life that is worth living. Each makes her case, and Heracles has to choose.2 It is one of the oldest moral dilemmas in Western writing, and it is still the shape of the question Torn asks you every day.
First the difficulty. Then the decision.
IIThe order of things
At the start of one book of his Metaphysics, Aristotle says that anyone who wants to get clear about something must first work through its difficulties, its aporiai. Someone who has not felt the knot cannot untie it. And someone who has heard all the arguments, like a juror who has listened to both sides, is in a better position to judge.3
That is the order Torn keeps. You meet the impasse first, with a real case on both sides. Then you decide, knowing you might be wrong.
IIIWhat we promise
There are no right answers here, and the world’s split is not a verdict. A dilemma that divides people 51 to 49 isn’t broken; it’s working. We don’t show ads, we don’t track you across the web, and your history stays on your device.
IVHow a dilemma is made
Every dilemma is tested by three readers: a philosopher, a lawyer and a theoretical physicist. They are there to make sure it leaves a thoughtful person genuinely torn, and nothing runs without their yes.