Instigator / Con
14
1764
rating
43
debates
94.19%
won
Topic
#597

The Earth is flat

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
6
0
Better sources
4
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
2
2

After 2 votes and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...

Ramshutu
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Pro
8
1501
rating
2
debates
50.0%
won
Description

The speculative pseudoscientific hypothesis - and it’s variations - that the earth is flat is false. Instead, the earth is approximately spherical.

Con arguing for a spherical earth. Pro arguing for flat earth.

BoP on Con.

Criterion
Con
Tie
Pro
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

If you take the debate description as significant enough to shift angles of debate's BoP, then you also must accept this:

"Con arguing for a spherical earth. Pro arguing for flat earth.
BoP on Con."

You must READ the part that says 'Pro arguing for flat earth' and realise that you are DEFEATING YOUR OWN BoP with your 'earth isn't real' Kritik. You are Proposition for 'The Earth is Flat' where Con merely accepted having to first prove its Round before you prove its Flat. This Kritik was the most suicidal troll-tactic that I have ever seen used ever in debating in a while. Pro didn't just accidentally backfire it, Pro takes it much further by exploring flat earthers imagining a flat-earth as making flat-Earth as real and what this means is that Con can (and does) turn it completely back on Pro by saying that if people imagine the Earth is real, not only is Pro's Kritik annihilated but that Pro concedes that since most imagine the Earth as Round, then the Earth is more so Round than Flat.

In fact what Pro didn't realise and what Con didn't prey upon, is that 'flat' could be just as semantically decimated and Con could even have pushed Pro further into a corner by saying that 'flat' is impossible as even the 'flat Earth' is not really flat and has all three dimensions of a non-flat reality pushing Pro into an OCD-semantics corner where Pro must completely and utterly drop all troll angles or concede that they lose. Con didn't do this, but Con instead wins by patching this angle via sticking very strongly to the notion that this is about empirical data and physical evidence, not imagined reality but keeps up the imaginary-angle urging Pro to completely and utterly concede the 'Earth is not real' point or lose and Pro plays right into Con's hands by doing both and neither all at once...

I know what Pro was trying to do here, I actually successfully sandwiched MagicAintReal in a similar fashion in a debate he thought was impossible to lose (and which he didn't lose because voters didn't realise that I sandwiched him into a situation where he conceded that either there was no East and West of Earth or that timezones make him wrong anyway as the social-construct of it renders his physical proof irrelevant and if that is true, then the physical lack of a East and West on Earth is cycled back to being impossible). This may be where Pro got this strategy from, as I have my own theories about who he was before making that account and motives behind the naming of himself as a 'Hydra' but even if Pro is honestly a new user, he did it wrong in this debate and I'll explain why:

The way to sandwich an opponent properly is to ensure that they must undeniably fight each of the 2 angles by supporting the other one directly in a strong and positive manner that disproves their case. This is a very, very rare opportunity to have in a debate and usually is actually only going to show up against a higher IQ opponent who isn't as high in debate-strategic-knowledge as you are but higher in both than most who tried to annihilate you from a strange, unseen angle that they hadn't thought through. Instead what happened here was that Pro enable Con to three-prong resandwich him and this was Pro's major fault; he enabled himself to be sandwiched by sandwiching in a debate where sandwiching was the wrong strategy.

Pro ends up three-prong sandwiched by the following:

Con’s outer prong: The Earth is real, physically, and it is Round/Spherical due to physical observations both based on reasonable occam’s razor and deduction.

Pro’s would-be-outer-sandwich-bread: The Earth isn’t real, everything is simulated and imaginary, thus it isn’t physically flat.

Con’s inner prong: If the Earth is imaginary, it is real in an imaginary way and is Round and also flat. Therefore Pro concedes that the Earth isn’t flat as just as plausible as it being flat.

Pro’s would-be-outer-sandwich-bread: Con has failed to meet their BoP because they conceded that the Earth is flat if imagined to be flat and flat-earthers imagine it to be so.

Con’s outer prong: Pro just defeated their original Kritik (the other slice of bread of Pro’s sandwich) by admitting that if the Earth is imagined to be real, it isn’t unreal. On the other hand, Pro has failed to attack my original outer-prong because physicality and scientific deduction would be ‘real’ in the simulation and is the only way we can reason or deduce things and based on this, I have shown many ways that the Earth is Round and so my original angle and case are enabled by Pro’s self-defeating sandwich that fails to take down my outer-prong with it and instead slaughters the other via my middle-prong.

Criterion
Con
Tie
Pro
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

Con takes the unusual step of assuming BoP for an anti-claim. What we want is a discussion about whether an extraordinary claim (flat earth) can be proven and what we get is an offer to prove the validity of the ordinary. Pro reads this step as an opening for kritik- Con can't prove that every potential alternative, however unlikely, is certainly false and therefore must fail to fulfill warrant. Pro calls this an absolute burden of proof and carries on the debate as if this is some kind of established standard. Such a BoP is not described in ordinary definitions of BoP and wouldn't be sustainable if it were- requiring essentially infinite resources and perfect prescience to carry off. This voter refutes Pro's personal definition of BoP as contradictory to norms and indefensible in practice. Pro says, "It is always a fundamental and philosophical mistake to assign the Burden of Proof to one side in completeness, without limitations or the allowance of basic axioms." But that's not so. Debaters assert BoP all the time without laying down a bunch of limits and axioms. In this case, Con has given five good proofs that the Earth is likely round. Pro did not try to refute any of these. Pro offered no evidence that the Earth is flat. Pro's sole argument is that the world might be an illusion, which does not even contradict the Earth's apparent roundness within that illusion.

DDO's explanation of BoP includes this potential outcome: "IMPORTANT: If a debater with the sole BoP gives weak evidence that unicorns exist, but their opponent fails to negate that evidence entirely AND fails to offer evidence that it is unlikely that Unicorns exist, then the debater with the sole BoP would win the debate by default. "

Following this example, Con wins arguments on default.