Instigator / Pro
12
1581
rating
38
debates
64.47%
won
Topic
#722

Conspiracy Theories Are Generally Unlikely

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
2
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
2
1

After 2 votes and with 5 points ahead, the winner is...

K_Michael
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
7
1377
rating
62
debates
25.81%
won
Description

No information

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:

Pro points out in his opening round the detail about how conspiracy theories can be generally thought of to be unlikely and provides key support as to why they are unlikely - in his opening round he explained issues like the government silencing everyone by the guy on YouTube who has evidence.

At no point did com address any of these: cons approach was primarily to list the “evidence” for conspiracy theories, and use marginal explanations and limited arguments to try and show that there is something to them.

Imo this misses the point: as pros opening round somewhat explains the issue with this sort of list of evidence in his opening round. Con didn’t make an attempt to show why conspiracy theories are generally likely by offering a generalized argument - but to effectively attempt to list all the individual prices of evidence for them - which falls far short of being convincing unless he also offers a slam dunk argument to show these conspiracies are definitely true even in the face of the issues pro raised in R1.

As such, with pros opening round unrefuted, and con offering no contextual or generalized defense of conspiracy theories: arguments go to pro.

Conduct: con made well over 50 individual assertions, that he provided with little logical reasoning to defend his claims - mostly in the form of (this is true - therefore my conclusion is true). This is a flagrant attempt at a Gish Gallup. Cons expectation for pro to refute all this “evidence” and to overwhelm his opponent without providing detailed arguments or reasoning is clearly grossly unfair and detrimental to reasoned debate. For this reason pro gets Conduct points too.

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:

Con gets credit for legit putting blood sweat and tears into sourcing and stringing together a case for conspiracy theories being plausible. Every single one, from vaccines to 9/11, were backed up with sources and they were used to bring points and angles of thinking and add weight to them.

Pro wins arguments because Con kept trying to prove it's fathomable, despite being unlikely. All Pro does is say 'well how is this likely? You're just saying it's possible against all odds' and Con basically just adds more sources and conspiracy theories to show that they can work. Con seemed to think this debate was that they are generally unfathomable when it is in fact that they are generally unlikely. Pro plays total defence all debate but Con was attacking the wrong thing, not even bringing up probability once other than saying 99% are plausible other than flat earth... Well Con is wrong as flat earth is severely plausible but that's for another debate and not why I'm voting Pro here.

Pro's strongest defensive manoeuvre was to ask: how can normal civilians be more knowledgeable or clever to solve conspiracies while the powers that be are too stupid or powerless to expose each other. Con replies:

"Rebuttal: you cut out the last part
your taking it out of context
you do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure some of this stuff out.
you do not need to be smart. to think hay Obama saying this is bad. you just need to not be brainwashed."

Yeah um... This not how probability works or 'unlikely' gets negated, sorry.