ImminentDownfall Should've Won his debate against Benjamin

My basic argument is simple: Fauxlaw's source point was completely unjustified. If Fauxlaw had not awarded the source point, the points would be 5:4, allowing Imminent Downfall to win the debate. 

The voting guide states:

(https://info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy)

However, while Imminent downfall had numerous sources supporting his ideas, Benjamin only used common sense. It's difficult to say 100% that Imminent deserved to lose the source points. 

Even if voters don't buy this, I still believe Fauxlaw's argument award is also possibly controversial. I will admit that Pro's argument was a bit weak on the morality side, but Tejretic's vote makes it obvious that the vote towards Con was not justified: 

Pro successfully makes a strong case through health and Con lacked the support for it. Unless my opponent can show why Con had a better argument, Pro should have won the debate. His main environment contention is argued against by Con, but the refutation lacks any hefty weight. As pro explains: " Crops would work far better, as they don't contribute to plastic pollution, and we already have enough to feed everyone on Earth, and then some. Besides, if we start focusing on fish a lot more, more fish will die which leads to food chains being destroyed, species becoming extinct, and plastic pollution getting worse." 

Con essentially drops this crucial argument and hence Pro convincingly outweighs Con in this idea. In my opinion, Pro had a slight edge over con in this entire debate.

Con makes three arguments. 

While Imminent Downfall's sacrifice looks honorable in the long term, I do not think it was necessary to keep his mistake in order to catch this problem. Fauxlaw has always had questionable voting in a lot of debates, whether with his specific world view or his lack of tabula rosa. 

Firstly, I reject argument 1. Even though there is a small chance that we would induct me into the hall of fame, I do not think that this debate would deserve such a high title. Countless debates have exerted far more effort, while this debate merely draws upon Imminent's effort as well as my own interpretation combined with Tejeretics' vote. The selfish gain that I would receive merely from analyzing another debate also feels it could encourage bad mistakes and interpreting loopholes. This seems rather counter productive of a standard to set.

Secondly, argument 2 seems to be a good idea, however, "tabula rosa" has already been set as a standard since the beginning of the site's construction. Despite its existence, questionable votes have popped up from time to time. So this argument doesn't seem to offer a unique benefit. Fauxlaw already had many votes removed that hinder the tabula rosa method, but we did not consider it a big problem. Con's showing of the issue is impressive but it's hard to say for sure the moderators will take this into consideration. We have recently tried to exert stronger standards and better voting guidelines, but nevertheless, Fauxlaw's vote was still considered borderline acceptable, and hence Con cannot find a solution other than my reversal of Imminent's defeat.

Argument 3 is interesting as well. Con presents three potential solutions, including adding weight to good voters, or voting elo, or based on incentive. However, the third one is very hard to implement as the site has nearly zero ads and hence cannot have the revenue to continue giving currency to voters. Hence, incentive is out of question. Next, voting elo seems very difficult to determine. While the quality of vote can help bring credibility, keep in mind that other bad voters can also unset the voting. In addition, it feels like it would also encourage disagreements to reduce the quality of votes. For example, if Fauxlaw still reads the other votes with lack of tabula rosa, he would have the advantage if he waited to vote second. So if Tejretics voted first with 5 points and Fauxlaw voted 6 points, downvoting Tejretics, if nobody care enough about the debate, then Fauxlaw would've still won (due to the implementation). The first solution seems the best, but it also puts a big amount of pressure since you basically only want to hire the best of the best, and the average person would be less inclined to vote. If a debate was particularly hard to decide, the swing would be unfair since a decent voter worth 2 points would be outweighed by an amazing voter worth 5 points. It's entirely plausible that one side only won by a single sentence or phrase. The big gap of difference would be bad especially due to the small community in DART.

Conclusion: Con and I both agree that Imminent was the true winner of the debate, however, Con argues that Pro's sacrifice is worth it. I don't see why the moderators would act merely because of one debate brought to attention -- as far as they're concerned, maybe only fauxlaw is the problem, or different interpretations that make debates hard to judge properly. Regardless, all three solutions seem very hard to implement and difficult to justify logically. And Con's argument 1 is selfish and unlikely. There are far superior contenders and thus my hall of fame induction holds little weight.

Framework

We can practically ignore all of pro’s round one arguments. I challenged what “should” means. My opponent started with the hidden premise that who should win a debate is the debater that performed better. In my round one arguments I pointed out that, whoever wins the debate should be the individual who made the greatest impact by winning. Pro does not dispute that who should win is whose victory would make the biggest impact.

Pro has had plenty of opportunity to respond to that argument and it is clear that he chose to concede the framework of the debate to me. In particular he has agreed that my opinion of what “should” happen is correct, by dropping the argument. It is too late for him to challenge the framework now if he refused to do so in his rebuttal round.

Pro has the bulk of the burden of proof this debate. I ask the judges to remember that if pro disproves everything I say wrong, than that is still not good enough to win. He has to prove some reason why the greater positive impact on the universe came from imminentdownfall winning the debate (theoretically). Pro has accepted my framework, so failure to prove a win from imminent downfall would make a greater impact on the universe, means he lost. It doesn’t matter who he believes debated better or how many points he made in that direction.

It appears at the end of pro’s round that he forgets this. Here is what he says;

“Con and I both agree that Imminent was the true winner of the debate”

The true winner of that debate is the person who actually won, Benjamin. The scoreboard confirms it. I think in this use of the word “true”, pro means the “deserving” winner. Deserving being determined by who performed better in the debate. The current debate is not about who deserved to win or who argued better. Despite the fact it offends meritocratic thinkers. We are arguing who should win, and pro concedes my point that the person who should win is the person whose victory would make the biggest impact. It is an anti-meritocratic type of system of determining who should win, but it is the one we are using for this debate.

As confusing as this might be to some, this is differentiated between how people should vote on a debate. Just like the comparison that though the justice system should never let an innocent person be convicted of a crime, nor a guilty person go free, what should happen is not what jurors should think about. Jurors should be considering whether there is evidence of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, which means in practice that a lot of guilty people go free and a few innocent people go to jail. This confusing but true logic that differentiates how people should vote and who should win a debate goes unchallenged by pro. So keep all of this in mind when judging, even if you think the logic I am applying is silly.

Hall Of Fame

I am conceding the points on the hall of fame arguments, While true that pro deserves to be in the HOF, this debate is unlikely to cause it. I asked pro to crowd source his arguments so that way he could have hall of fame tier arguments here. He refused to do so. Don’t get me wrong. Pro is capable of making those types of arguments. However he is in a season of life where he doesn’t want to give that much effort. Maybe he is too busy to go all out, but still finds debating fun so engages in it. Maybe there is some other reason, but I am aware he is in that season of life. I concede the arguments about the potential for this to be a HOF debate.

The Problem with voting

Me and pro agree that there is a problem with voting on the site. The whole debated was created by pro to highlight a problem with voting and to confront it directly. The creation of the debate itself is an admittance to the fact that fighting the weight of bad votes outweighing the votes of people like Terjetics is a worthwhile thing to pursue.

I have a confession. I had also kept in mind when formulating the solutions that voting is so rare that it needs to be encouraged or at the very least, not discouraged when formulating ways to make sure good voters have more impact on the results of the debate. I am glad that me and pro, both agree this is a real problem, which is why I take issue with pro’s next statement;

“"tabula rosa" has already been set as a standard since the beginning of the site's construction. Despite its existence, questionable votes have popped up from time to time. So this argument doesn't seem to offer a unique benefit. Fauxlaw already had many votes removed that hinder the tabula rosa method, but we did not consider it a big problem.”

On a personal level I want to ask pro “What the hell did you create this debate for then?” . Pro acknowledges there is a problem, creates an entire debate to highlight the problem and then when I offer some potential solutions. Just 3 of literally millions of possible solutions to the problem he throws his hands in the air and acts like solutions aren’t worth pursuing.

On top of that pro makes the next assumption. The next solution I think is a huge problem with kids these days, society in generally but mostly with those of a liberal type of mindset. This is what pro says;

“Con's showing of the issue is impressive but it's hard to say for sure the moderators will take this into consideration. We have recently tried to exert stronger standards and better voting guidelines, but nevertheless, Fauxlaw's vote was still considered borderline acceptable”

I don’t personally think any of Fauxlaw’s votes ever should be removed. Everyone should be allowed to vote, and the more thorough the vote is and the more they gain a reputation as a competent voter, the more weight their vote should hold. However the statement above gives us a window into pro’s brain.

Pro thinks community change should be based on just the efforts of moderators. I think the last people involved in community change should be moderators or developers or site owners. If change occurs from the ground up, it ensures that any change made at the top levels has the blessing of the community. That is what the next section get’s into.

Solutions

The solutions I suggested just touch the tip of the iceberg of possible solutions that are community based. The solutions fall into 3 categories, none of which would discourage or punish bad voters, while at the same time would either incentivize good voting or make good voting more heavily taken into consideration when determining the winners of debates. Let’s see.

1. Community based weighting- This does not require mods to do anything. This solution would in fact make the jobs of voting mods easier, because it means they take non action. If whiteflame votes and we decide his votes should be worth triple, we just recruit 2 people to always ghost his votes. We just build a grassroots team to do this and ask the mods to back off.

2. elo based incentives- Okay this one would remove the mods also. It is just something the developer can build. My opponent can argue that the system might be imperfect, but their seems to be a community census that some people are better voters and thus when they have the option of thumbs upping or thumbs downing the vote to help determine the voter’s ELO, I doubt there will be much controversy on who have the highest voting ELOs.

3. Crypto voting- This is also a community solution and not a mod or developer thing. We just have a group that creates and hands out crypto dollars to people based on the quality of their vote. Incentives can be community based as well. Use it to purchase things like my friendship or other intangible items like maybe the mods allowing them to say maybe spam a thread for one hour. I don’t know, the sky is limitless,

Conclusion

I win. My framing of the debate went unopposed and pro has made zero arguments that are even relevant to the accepted framework and has only mitigated the good of my arguments by claiming that encouraging the right thing is pointless and we should give up.

Con thinks the debate will have big impact with Benjamin winning, but offers no such evidence. By contrary, there is a clear detriment with Benjamin winning because it upholds bad standards for voting and it encourages Fauxlaw to continue arbitrarily justifying points for any reason.

Since Fauxlaw's vote was accepted, and we weren't able to outweigh his points, I thought that perhaps more people agreed with his opinion and offered a debate to counter the idea that Benjamin deserved to win the debate. 

None of Con's suggestions are inherently necessarily based on merely Benjamin's win or losing. Remember that they can still be implemented even if Imminent Downfall had won. While this debate in particular allowed you to bring the issue to light with a clear example based off of Tejretic's vote, it's entirely plausible that another person's unjust lost could've proved the same thing.

The community based voting seems arbitrary and encourages bandwagon. If I could get two of my friends to vote for someone in a debate using the same reason I did, then they only need my justification rather than their own judgement. The whole entire point of debate is that different voters think differently and so you have to convince the crowd based on the set standard. 

Elo based incentive based on thumbs up or down also seems rather arbitrary. Remember that I said people who disagree with your decision can merely thumbs you down to oblivion and hence it cancels out.

Incentive voting looks ok but it also encourages spam voting since there's little to lose, and also more pressure on the people. Imagine Whiteflame gets tired and now starts demanding money, because who wouldn't want to get paid if they could get paid? The incentive now becomes more about money and encourages this to be a rich man's site. It's hard to say for sure that he would vote fairly if one of the debaters paid him money to vote on their debate.

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