[Sorry about weird formatting, DART died on me]
1) Freedom of Speech
We see all of those freedoms expressed on the internet with stunning regularity. Religious websites of all kinds abound; people can and do say almost anything, sometimes with reckless abandon; newspapers are now surviving almost exclusively because of their internet presence; social media websites and online forums allow anyone to “assemble”; websites, such as petitions.whitehouse.gov, exist to streamline our legally-required right to petition the government.
Yet much of what happens on the internet falls more specifically under the broad concept of “free speech”. However, the definition of “speech” has expanded in the past 200 years to now include far more than just written or spoken words. Actions themselves can constitute free speech. This broad definition makes interpreting the freedoms, and subsequent limitations, all the more vague as some actions are certainly harmful to others in ways that infringe on their rights.
According to USCourts.gov, the First Amendment does not cover:
Words or actions meant to incite violence or that influence others to commit acts of violence (including “fighting words”) (Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919))
Libel and slander (New York Times Co v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964))
Child pornography (New York v. Ferber 458 U.S. 747 (1982))
The creation or distribution of obscene materials (Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957))
The burning of draft cards as an anti-war protest (United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968))
Students printing articles in a school newspaper over the objections of the school administration (Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988))
Students who make obscene speeches at school-sponsored events (Bethel School District #43 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986))
Students who advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event (Morse v. Frederick, 200 U.S. 321 (2007))
So definitely, if one were to swear an unusual amount, or post an obscene image, or threaten to expose information/damage someone online, that can be detrimental to the ideas presented on the website. However, other than that, there is no limitation to the debate topics, so long as the Rules of Conduct are followed. In fact, I will exercise my freedom of speech to demonstrate I can say something, while still adhering to Rules of Conduct.
Here I will paste the Rules of Conduct to show that I can indeed, paste the Rules of Conduct as long as I didn't say it was written by me. (It was not written by me. DART staff wrote it)
Basics
By using DebateArt.com, you are bound and agree to be bound by this Code of Conduct and the Privacy Policy, as well as any other rules that may be published from time to time. If participating in debates, you are also bound by the Voting Policy.
In essence, treat others as you wish to be treated. If someone makes a wholly reasonable request of you, please try to comply.
User Accounts
All users must be a minimum of 13 years of age when creating an account, or older to help comply with any local laws pertaining to Internet usage.
You may not use hateful, harassing, or obscene language or imagery in your username or avatar.
Multi-accounting and any action indistinguishable from it is prohibited. Dispensation may be granted on a case-by-case basis, such as for multiple users within a single residence; but they will have certain restrictions applied (e.g., never voting on each other’s debates).
Users are free to transition a new account or back to a former, so long as they demonstrate no exploitative intent, and inform moderators to ensure only one is active.
Authenticity
You may not impersonate individuals, groups, or organizations in a manner that is either intended to or likely to deceive others. Parody accounts are acceptable, so long it is clear that they are parodies and do not parody other site users.
Extravagant lies, not to be confused with mere context issues, may rise to the level of constituting impersonation.
You may not violate others intellectual property rights.
Harassment
Targeted harassment of any member prohibited, as is inciting others to do so at your behest. This includes wishing or hoping that someone and/or their loved ones experiences physical harm.
Creating threads to call-out specific users qualifies as targeted harassment, as does obsessive attempts to derail unrelated topics with impertinent grudges. However, criticising statements within an ongoing discussion, is fair game.
Threats of lawsuits are not allowed, and by using this site you agree to waive any rights to file civil suits against fellow site users for any non-criminal actions.
If a member politely requests that you leave them alone, do so. Repeated failure to comply, is a clear aggravating factor regarding the content of said posts.
Violence and Criminal Behavior
You may not threaten or promote violence against any person or persons, barring hyperbole against public figures (e.g., “all politicians should be shot”). Advocacy in favor of terrorism and/or violent extremism, especially as related to hate groups as generally defined by the SPLC, is likewise prohibited.
You may not promote or encourage suicide or self harm.
You may not engage in or promote criminal activity.
You may not engage in or promote the sexual exploitation of minors.
Safety and Privacy
Doxing is strictly forbidden. Without their express permission, you may not post, threaten to post, nor encourage others to post, anyone’s private or identifying information no matter how it was obtained.
You may not share any content from private messages, without the consent of the respective authors; or with moderator approval (such as for dispute resolution).
Objectionable Content
You may not post or link to media that is excessively gory or violent.
You may not post or link to pornography or other explicit adult sexual material.
You may not engage in commercial advertising anywhere on the site.
Spam is prohibited, and any overtly repetitive nonsensical posts are considered spam.
Unwarranted systemic vulgarity and invectives, which may include off topic personal attacks and/or hate speech, are subject to disciplinary actions.
Consequences
The moderators retain the authority to interpret and apply all policies in the best interests of the site and users therein. In most cases, a “reasonable person” standard will be utilized.
The specific consequence will depend on the severity and frequency of the violations, along with user history, context, and other relevant factors. Any violation of the Violence and Criminal Behavior policy will result in an immediate indefinite ban.
Consequences for violations include:
Nothing, as most perceived violations are too minor to constitute a true offense.
Written warnings, which are most common for first-time violations.
Restraining orders, which will always be mutual to ensure neither may antagonize the other.
Revocation of abused privileges, such as loss of the ability to create threads due to creating too many spam threads.
Temporary bans, with increasing duration for subsequent violations, up to 90-days.
Indefinite bans, which have no set expiration, but may be appealed every 90-days.
In addition to the above measures, moderators reserve the right to:
Delete any content in violation of the above rules.
Lock threads with frequent noteworthy violations of the above rules, or as a preventative measure when such are assuredly imminent.
Now, unless I was banned (which would be evident on the top of this debate) while still following the said rules, it's clear that Whiteflame should be able to post above 30,000 characters if he follows all the Rules of Conduct. Why? Because he should be able to. Nothing in the rules say that you cannot post above 30,000 for whatever reason. This alone should carry the debate and win my argument.
2) Ability to Engage
Now obviously, reading and voting should be held to two different levels of standard. When I read Harry Potter I do not expect to afterwards be asked, if Harry's actions were moral, immoral, better than Hermione's, and so it does not matter how quickly or slowly I read it, enjoyment is key. Similarly, DART having more users would help its traffic receive attention and potentially boost donations to the site. It has been suggested that longer form content is shown more often in search engine results. Many business websites use similar strategies to attract users and gain more money. Now I know DART isn't primarily profit based, but if it really, really needs that little extra bit, I'm sure most people wouldn't mind a small sidebar ad.
As SEO-Hacker notes, "Satisfied customers become returning visitors and customers, and they might even become the promoters of your brand if they are really satisfied. Whether they are people that are simply satisfied with your products or content and recommend you to their friends, or full-on fans, they are worth their weight in gold." Even if we aren't talking about products, the content is key to DART, and seeing the expertise and information available could help people learn about countless different topics, as well as how to debate.
3) More information presented
Con thinks merely because we are not scholarly articles that this does not apply. Logic makes me feel like the more content you have, the more information you provide, and the more other people can draw from it. Is not the learning experience an invaluable gain? Consider if, I had to summarize Larz's argument in only 100 characters. It would be improbable. And my quality of debating would be far lower with only 20 words (approximately) available to try to concisely state Larz's entire case. Whiteflame's rebuttal would be all the more impossible to present.
4) Encourages establishing Foundation
Con refuses to look at the evidence stated right in front of him. Remember that Con has not even negated my summarizing of Larz's case. It is up to con to refute, and show they are irrelevant, despite even Whiteflame unable to find a context that was unnecessary (and responding with a longer argument!) Here I will post just part, just part of his argument to make the point to voters to glance or read over to accept that my paraphrasing was not off:
Mass medication
The idea of forcing everybody to take medicine to prevent disease is nothing new. Iodine is often added to salt, because people in inland areas where fish is not generally a big part of the diet often lack iodine (most of us used to get it naturally from the soil, but then we started over-fertilizing everything so we can't rely on getting iodine from there any more). The impact of that is that these populations find their average IQ drops about 10 points, and many become cretins. The idea behind using salt is that everybody generally eats it - it is not designed to target only those people who have insufficient iodine in their diet, but everybody. By no means am I trying to dismiss issues related to iodine being low in people's bodies - this is an issue that affects 40% of people worldwide.
Then people decided that human oral health isn't that great either. Water supplies are often fluoridated to ensure that we get enough fluoride even when some of us are too lazy to brush our teeth. And again - I don't want to dismiss the terrible harms to public health when even young children routinely require root canal work to be done. Ironically, fluoride makes it harder to use iodine.
One can go even further. Vitamin C is also required for living. Some people don't eat enough oranges and thus become sickly. This allows illnesses to spread more easily among the general population. Thank goodness there are convenient vitamin C tablets available that one could simply require the entire population to regularly take. Having sufficient Vitamin A in the diet is almost as good a defense against measles as the vaccination itself, and particularly in the third world has shown itself to be more effective.
More people are deficient in vitamin E than are deficient in iodine. This makes them more susceptible to disease. But on the other hand, too much vitamin E (or zinc, which is another mineral many are deficient in that this happens with) and your immune system becomes worse again (incidentally, if you take HEAPS of iodine then that's actually poisonous - Brazil recently had to lower the level of iodization in their salt because in Brazil they apparently eat heaps of salt). Unsafe sex often leads to the transmission of really serious, terrible diseases - but too much safe sex and you end up with a low birthrate.
One can also take the same principle even further. Our society's health problems are no longer all physical. Mental health issues are a big problem, and it's not just the lack of intelligence like iodine solves for. It would not be hard to imagine a society where everybody was sent a package from the government every week, containing antidepressants, supplements etc. One would get even better health results if the government just mandates a diet for everybody because some people are anorexic or obese. And even that is meaningless unless the government mandates a minimum and maximum level of exercise for everybody with strict enforcement.
It's true that one can make pretty much anything sound bad when you take it to extremes. But in principle at least, any kind of mass medication follows the same kind of model. It's the government deciding that they know best how everybody ought to treat their health. This is, of course, informed by genuine science identifying genuine problems. But that doesn't mean that it's good as a social policy. This is the same genuine science that tells us some genes are generally superior to other genes. There's no problem with that. But there might be a problem with replacing all humanity with genetically-modified super-humans made of the optimal gene combination (once we figure out exactly how all the genes work, of course). Or of course the original plan for how to do that - which, again, really came from genuine science - commonly known as "eugenics".
It is certainly possible to mass medicate every time somebody so much as sniffles a little. I'm even sure that if the plan was implemented perfectly, the average health of society would usually improve when you did so. In much the same way, eugenics would reduce certain genetic diseases, and I could even accept it would improve the capabilities of the human race slightly. It's certainly one way to run a country. But it's not the future that most of us really want to see. Hence why mass medication generally only comes around in response to certain alarmist outbreaks. For example - alarmingly high number of people are mentally retarded? Solution: give everybody medicine to cure the whole world. Lots of people with bad teeth? Make everybody drink one of the key ingredients of toothpaste.
This is the strategy that is unfortunately generally used by vaccine campaigners. They see an epidemic, develop a vaccine, and then make everybody take it. Hence why vaccines for Ebola are being trialed now, MMR came after the epidemics in the 60s and 70s, and so on. But let's consider the alternative. Is there no better way of running our society?
Human Rights
Ironically developed largely as a response to eugenics, human rights is all about the idea that because we're people, we get some basic entitlements. These are rights afforded to all humans equally (or at least, among those who come from nations signatory to the "Universal" Declaration of Human Rights). There's no real scientific justification for human rights. But in ethics they one of the most important ideas. You can read the UDHR here.
Now I'll start by acknowledging that the most basic of these human rights is the right to life. Depriving somebody of that right (at least directly) is called murder and is generally the most serious crime a person can commit. When people die, that certainly impacts upon the rest of society as well. I think my opponent and I will agree, therefore, that people have a right to live healthy lives, not get sick etc. An effective immune system is the best way to achieve that, and immunization's role is to get the immune system to a point where if it encounters a disease, it can deal with it. So we both agree that people should have every access to immunization that humanity can afford them. This is, in principle, enshrined in article 25 of the UDHR:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services...
The difference is that the right to life is different from an obligation to life. We are not required, in human rights analysis, to be maximally healthy. If we want to enjoy a delicious tub of ice-cream every so often, we can do that. The right belongs to us - we can choose to exercise it or to ignore it. When government bureaucrats make healthcare decisions on your behalf, they're really taking that right away from you. They're using it for their own purposes, and often to promote their own agenda (this becomes more so the case in less democratic countries, which might be further influenced to adopt such a model if it takes off in the USA). In a rights-based nation, the human rights belong to you. They are not the property of the government.
This could be a point of confusion for some people, so let me clear it up. I'm all for bringing medicine to the masses. What I oppose is forcing pills into their mouths and making them swallow. "Mass medication", though it probably literally means the former, generally means the latter, and it's in this sense that I'm using it in this debate.
Policy decisions made on the basis of rights as opposed to obligations are just as compatible with sound scientific research. It's simply a different approach. An example of a rights-based policy might be to provide free nurse visits for poor mothers, because they have the right to healthcare. Or you could oblige all poor mothers to visit a nurse whether they like it or not. In terms of practical outcome, the two are almost the same. One could argue that with rights you'd get a few uninformed people falling through the cracks, and with mass medication some people might be uncooperative or resentful. But in terms of the morality of it, respecting somebody's right to life is definitely the high ground. There's no real way to prove morality (at least until we invent the crystal ball), but we all tend usually to agree that life is a pretty great thing to have, and that in general we should make our own destiny.
This is called "bodily autonomy". Your life = your body = your decision.
Now, there are of course reasonable limitations to that in the context of a fair and just society. For example, people who are unable to make a decision (such as young children). It's also not unreasonable to impose certain kinds of limitations on it for people who enter into certain kinds of contracts (such as an actor who needs to dye his hair for a role). There is also an argument to be had - although even this is really controversial - for restricting the bodily autonomy of those who have broken certain laws (principally these arguments concern the death penalty). The reason such restrictions are perhaps warranted in a rights-based analysis is because the decision still rests with the individual and not the state - they can choose to not enter into the contract or break the law. Or alternatively, because they cannot make the decision they cannot exercise their rights to which they are entitled.
There is no such case that can be made, in a rights-based analysis, for mass immunizing everybody regardless of the decisions that they have made. It's effectively exactly like the state is presuming everybody guilty of the "crime" of being a possible carrier for the disease (that is to say, the crime of being human) and thus forcing them to undergo medical treatment, a rather unusual punishment. In times past, peoples diagnosed with certain illnesses (particularly mental illnesses) were often operated on or shipped off to asylums without anyone's consent being obtained. Hence a big part of the reason as to why such institutions have such a bad reputation in this day and age. We've moved beyond that as a society. Kings used to force their subjects to do stuff indiscriminately, but now we can do better.
One final point. To a certain extent, the UDHR is protected by international law, unlike the principle of mass medication which is generally only protected by big pharma vaccine companies accountable more to their shareholders than any given government (thanks in no small part to them actually being bigger than many governments). This demonstrates that even government doesn't really want power over people's lives, and wants them to generally handle this kind of stuff themselves. This legitimizes human rights as a moral framework for the debate, especially in the USA where the government is a democracy (pretty much), and thus reflects the will of the people.
As an aside, I chose the UDHR because of its universality. It is of course not the only model for human rights that exists, but the right to life is pretty broad in its adoption by practically every human-rights focused document on earth. In fact, it's also foundational to the declaration of independence of the United States (along with liberty and the pursuit of happiness), and of course over there such documents are pretty much the word of God.
We're not the same
This is one of those arguments I shouldn't really have to prove, not least because my opponent actually tacitly builds the presumption into his model, by providing some very reasonable exceptions to the "mandatory" vaccinations (which, incidentally, largely just so happen to be the very same people most at risk of actually contracting those illnesses). But the idea that the government is working only off a checklist to decide who is or is not to be vaccinated basically devalues our individuality. Even if - hypothetically speaking - doctor's could just use their professional discretion (which would probably be slightly preferable in that the government can hardly account for every single other medication or lifestyle factor a person may be involved with) - ultimately the presumption is that everybody deemed eligible carries the same risk and rewards.
Nobody - and I mean nobody - knows my body better than me. Just as nobody knows your body better than you. Let me take an obvious example - say somebody secretly indulges in a prescription drug, but their doctor doesn't know (in case your wondering, the reason the doctor wouldn't know about a prescription - of all things - is that people routinely take legitimately prescribed medication from their friends to abuse it). It may well be that whatever risky behavior you're dealing in could react poorly with the vaccination. Assuming doctors are, in general, reasonably competent, they would of course be able to recognize that right away. But they're not you. And you're not exactly going to admit to your doctor what you've been up to, perhaps partly because you're ashamed of it, but mostly because this doctor is literally acting as an agent of the government at the time. Conversely, there may also be perverse incentives to lie and get the vaccine even though it is not safe for you to do so, as society plays up the harms of the diseases. Or to not vaccinate and pretend you are vaccinated based on the free rider principle, since proving a person is not vaccinated isn't easily done.
It goes without saying that these things do not occur when the system allows you to make these decisions yourself. But these implications only expose the underlying flaw of the entire system, and that's that it's based on a false premise. Mass medication relies on this idea that one treatment will work well on everybody, with a goal of achieving a universal standard of health. Not only does this not work, but it's not even a good standard. As distinct people, it's dehumanizing to be engaged in a ritual activity for the sole purpose of making us more similar.
There are alternative options that people have if they want to live healthy lives. It's not - by any means - a foregone conclusion that everybody who is not immunized will get sick and will die as a result of that. In fact, it's extremely unlikely. Even back when these diseases were epidemics across the world, you were still significantly more likely to die of something that WASN'T measles, mumps or rubella. And that's not because these diseases were ineffective at killing people or being terribly contagious. It's because one's risk level does not depend solely on the vaccine. I had measles once and recovered in a couple of days with nothing more than playing video games on my bed (I like to joke that Gran Turismo cured me). In fact there's a surprisingly strong correlation between dying from the complications of the diseases that this particular vaccine addresses, and being heavily malnourished. But the principle is the same for any vaccine. Don't want tetanus? Avoiding puncture wounds and cleaning needles in hospitals is an even better defense than immunization.
I need to stress once again that none of these is in any way exclusive with sound science. This isn't some quackery I'm just making up to sell you some snake oil. I'm just making the point that remedies are also, to a significant extent, lifestyle choices. Some random person could stop smoking to avoid cancer, or they could eat more fruit. There is real, scientific evidence I could link that both actions would reduce the risk of them contracting certain types of cancer. But the impact on their lifestyle would be quite different. One could choose to get an injection to combat M/M/R (plus a recommended booster shot every 10 years), AND/OR one could live healthily. The impact of each may have repercussions to you, and your life, other than just a doctor's visit. And these things will impact us in different ways.
This is the flaw with that assumption I listed earlier. We are all different. For the government to treat us as if this is merely just a magic cure to solve the problem of MMR once and for all is ignorant of the role that medicine plays in our society. I see this as a moral issue as well as a pragmatic one. The moment that we decide a one-size-fits-all solution is a great idea for solving a problem is the moment that we forget society is made up of real people with real lives. The decision to mess with any of our lives in any way the government wants, and the decision to medicate us in the way the government wants is the same thing. People should have the right to decide what means of avoiding sickness is right for them. Of course there should be sound advice from trusted doctors and research made available, but governments should not choose one option over any other and force that on people based just on arbitrary criteria that they define.
Fun fact before I finish this point. There is in fact a weak correlation between taking more vaccines and dying, popularly known as "vaccine overload". This cannot possibly be anything the vaccines are doing. There have been a lot of very good studies showing that vaccines, administered properly, pose no health risk at all even if you take a lot of them, despite some claims by alarmist health groups (many of whom go on to talk about autism, which is kind of annoying since that isn't even a direct correlation, but I'll talk more about this in my rebuttal). The much more likely explanation is really very simple: less-vaccinated kids are more likely to seek healthcare in other ways. The necessity for them to be health-conscious actually seems to make a difference to their health. Now like I said it's a weak correlation, and you can't establish anything definitely out of it, but it goes to show that vaccinations policies sometimes can have unforeseen social impacts as well.
...
and I've run out of characters.
Also, Con keeps asserting that the storage would far too costly, however, this is not the case. Even Whiteflame's debate against Larz is only 200,000 characters. Google notes that this is merely 0.0002 GB. With cloud storage costs of text, 0.02$ per GB. This adds to an astonishing amount of.... 0.000004$ for Whiteflame's debate. Ok. No wonder even Larz accepted the unlimited character limit on his site. It costs nearly nothing. You would need 10,000 Whiteflames simultaneously debating in order for it to even cost 4 cents. NEGATED.
Conclusion: 30,000 characters seems like a lot.... but not for the likes of Larz and Whiteflame. Encouraging more people to join would make this a bigger community and more active with debaters, potentially increasing revenue for those who are willing to pay a bit for DART's suffering, in case we somehow reach 10,000 Whiteflames. There is no problem with freedom of speech, and this does not violate the rules of conduct in any way. I could not even paste Larz's argument to prove my point that every paragraph he had was necessary. Here, even while exercising my freedom of speech within the realm of DART's rules, I have demonstrated that in order to fully analyze Larz's argument [or Whiteflame's counterargument] I would need far more than 30,000 characters. Thanks, and vote for pro.
bump
Regarding cross examination: with a high amount of time for arguments, cross examination could be done within the comments and then copy/pasted into the arguments.
bump for votes
My argument being said though, I think 40,000 or even 50,000 would be a fine upper limit for Whiteflame.
SEO Hacker source: https://seo-hacker.com/traffic-numbers-matter/
cloud storage source: https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing
the fact that DART doesn't have Cross Examination further helps my case if you think about it.
My poor fingers ;-;
Wow, I imagine you did a lot of typing haha
Sorry mate :/
I mean, I almost hit the ceiling once (in my tournament debate with Speed) but it was a non-issue.
I suppose some people philosophers have written entire books, in responses to arguments made by some other philosophers, in history.
Shhh don't spoil my arguments
From the technical point of view, it's not a problem to bump the character limit but is it really necessary? If it often that somebody actually reaches this limit?
thoughts?