Instigator / Pro
21
1504
rating
2
debates
50.0%
won
Topic
#644

Women Love Men Who are Generally Attractive more than Specifically Attractive

Status
Finished

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

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
6
6
Better sources
8
4
Better legibility
4
3
Better conduct
3
3

After 4 votes and with 5 points ahead, the winner is...

Human
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
8,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
16
1402
rating
44
debates
40.91%
won
Description

Resolution:
Women are more attracted to men who have adopted a holistic dating strategy than men who are excellent at one specific thing.

Rules:
(1) Debater must have typing experience and internet access.
(2) Place your arguments and sources inside the debate
(3) Structure the debate in a readable, Coherent fashion.
(4) No semantics, Trolling, or lawyering. Keep the focus on argumentation not tricks.

Rounds:
(1) Acceptance
(2) Main Argument
(3) Rebuttal to opponent's main argument. No new arguments.
(4) Evaluation of main arguments and rebuttals + voting issues (one paragraph). No new arguments.

Definitions:
Holistic - focused on the sum total of the person; including physical, Mental, Emotional and other characteristics of the individual and his life

Burden of Proof:
I have the burden of proof.

By accepting this debate you accept the Rules, Rounds, Definitions, And BOP.

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

Arguments:

I am operating from the stance that Pro has the burden of proof. That means that he has to lay his claims and then back them up. He says "Men provide food, find and create shelter, defend territory, and protect children. They tutor children in sports, hunting, fishing, hierarchy negotiation, friendship, and social influence. They transfer status, aiding offspring in forming social alliances later in life. Women look for behavioral, physical, and material cues from a man to determine if he can meet these criteria."

I won't quote his whole thing because that would take too long, but he sufficiently laid out his points. He showed how, from an evolutionary standpoint, women are attracted to certain people and how, from a scientific standpoint, that is also true, and he gave sources for all of these. However, when he gets to the autistic savants, I feel as if he digressed a bit. Thankfully, Con points this out.

Con, without a burden of proof, is only supposed to point out flaws in his opponent's arguments, and he did not have to argue specifically for "specifically attractive men." His first response was that one cannot know what is going on in the mind of a woman, but Pro showed with studies that we can reasonably assume to know what they want. That first critique was not sufficient. This is what the rest of his rounds boiled down to, so because of that I have to give argument to Pro. Con said that women like a guy within several minutes of meeting him, but doesn't provide studies for this. Pro stayed on task with his points, so he gets argument.

Sources (Pro):

As Pro made his arguments, he specifically used studies done by professionals to make his points. An example is when he said "[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2693767/]" as a source for his point on smells that women are attracted to. This shows me that a lot of women (the ones tested) agreed with the point made by Pro. The only problem I then find is that this is the only link that he cited. This might be because he was citing books, but I still would have liked to see them in a list, because otherwise it was very confusing to view. Nonetheless, the sources show evidence of his points. Con did not use sources at all. I am not trying to do the appeal to quantity here, but there's nothing else to say about Con's sources. Because of that, Pro gets sources.

Spelling & Grammar (Tie):

Con had bad grammar. For example, he said "I could go as far as the to say that proving a," which should instead read as "I could go as far as to say that proving a." He consistently made mistakes such as these. However, none of those mistakes made it hard to understand his points, so this is a tie.

Conduct (Con):

There are four examples where Pro had bad conduct. First, in the description he said "I have the burden of proof." However, in the rounds, he says "Shared burden of proof." This is a direct contradiction, but to a voter, what is in the description trumps what is in the rounds. Because of that, Pro dishonestly debated by trying to shift the burden of proof. He did this multiple times throughout the debate. He then corrected Con's grammar by saying "This should be: There are* problems." This is inappropriate in a debate, as one does not have any business correcting one's opponent's grammar. Finally, he cussed twice in his rounds. I cannot give examples of this for personal reasons, so you can discount that if you want to, but I feel that the other two reasons are sufficient to give conduct to Con.

Con did say one thing "Yeah I guess I would do that too if I had weak arguments." This is bad conduct, but it is the only one that I saw, and Pro's bad conduct far outweighs this. Trying to shift the burden of proof multitple times definitely impeded the debate and made it harder to follow.

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

Arguments: Pro (Pro’s Evolutionary Model and Scientific Data model are both successful [supported by evidence such as citations and studies and provided with sufficient examples such as bad hygiene negatively affecting sexual market value and autistic savants being considered generally unattractive] and logically coherent [The conclusions follow from the premises] while Con’s first and second argument are contradicted by the scientific data cited in Pro’s second argument [i.e. Pro showed that there are methods of reliably determining mate preferences such as using "Vaginal photoplethysmography"] and his third argument is a non-sequitur which is later pointed out by Pro “A man's knowledge and awareness of what strategies he is using to attract a woman is irrelevant to how the women experience them and also irrelevant to the debate, because we are debating what women are attracted to and we are not debating whether or not the men are aware of the concentration of androstenol in their sweat, their social status, or the pitch of their voice.”)
Sources: Pro (Human cited several peer-reviewed studies and academic literature which supported his arguments well [for example Human asserted that “Why women have sex is complex and multifaceted” and then supported this assertion with a study by Meston & Buss that did indeed identify over 200 different sexual motivations.] Ralph, on the other hand, made several assertions that did not seem self-evident to me such as “In fact, many woman simply fall for guys just on looks and then just tolerate their personality” whether there are truly “many women” that do this is questionable in my opinion, especially as Ralph conceded that it would be sufficient for Pro to show that 51% of women prefer a holistic approach, whether anywhere near 50% of women are prepared to “tolerate personality” seems questionable to me, so either Ralph’s argument does not support his position or it evidently requires a source. Even after Human pointed this out in the following round “There is no warrant for this assertion and no source provided.”, Ralph did not provide a citation or even attempt to support it with evidence. Therefore sources go to Pro as he supported all relevant assertions that were not self-evidently true with high quality sources, whereas Con did not support questionable assertions with sufficient evidence even after Pro requested a source for one of Con’s claims.
S&G: Pro (Human structured his text neatly, remained on topic and made no significant S&G errors, Ralph devoted a significant portion of the debate off-topic subjects [such as whether Pro is happily married, his own marriage and at least ten unnecessary rhetorical questions] , his second argument is hard to distinguish from his first [except for the added appeal to a shared BoP] and there were S&G errors that made reading difficult throughout the debate [e.g. “woman” was constantly used instead of “women”, sentence starters are regularly not capitalised which decreases the flow “furthermore”, “whenever”…]
Conduct: Pro (Con goes off-topic by passive-aggressively asking Con whether he is “happily married”, regularly asks rhetorical questions “right?”, “No evidence huh?”, “You mean Pseudoscience “ and is confrontational in general “Oh no. You're not dodging this one.”, “Oh, you're a dating coach. Well I guess you have a bias towards this topic then right?”, “Appealing to the voters. hmmm. Yeah I guess I would do that too if I had weak arguments.”. Finally he acknowledges his “harsh” debating style and Pro’s good conduct: “I know I was harsh, but that's my style. Good debate to my well conducted opponent.”)

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

https://www.debateart.com/debates/644/comment_links/6721

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

https://www.debateart.com/debates/644?open_tab=comments&comments_page=1&comment_number=2