Total votes: 1,434
f to the f
This is a pretty sweeping victory for con. It could be voted on solely due to the forfeitures (which are understandable given the state of the site at the time, but a draw was offered).
So going a little deeper, it honestly opens up seeming like pro wants a discussion, with a very unclear resolution. Ironically, pro lets con do the heavy lifting, which is a common mistake in debates since it allows con to frame the debate, which gives up the main advantage of being pro.
Pro complaining that con referred to denominations as brands, felt like a road to nowhere; and that round is where pro leaves off... He asked questions, and then complained of the answers, but did not attempt to do the heavy lifting required to attain his BoP.
Forfeiture.
Also you should join DebateCraft.com
Forfeiture.
Also you should join DebateCraft.com
Forfeiture.
Also you should join DebateCraft.com
Forfeiture.
Also you should join DebateCraft.com
Forfeiture.
Also you should join DebateCraft.com
Forfeiture.
Also you should join DebateCraft.com
Forfeiture.
Honestly tempted to give this to pro, but the he other side repeated basically the same assertions in reverse, and neither had the gumption for follow through.
Single round debate, this makes pro unable to defend his case against the challenge of more famous bands having songs.
That said, pro dis give a good description of why he feels the song is great, and for this type of battle that can outweigh the analytical.
Pornography desensitizes and forms addiction:
Pro explains that we feel less sexual excitement if we partake in porn.
Widespread pornography exposes children to sex:
Pro makes an appeal to consequence.
Common Counterargument
Pro refutes random seeming things con has not said. It's a classic poisoning the well maneuver, which I've seen too many times to be bothered with.
A1 (these really should be labeled)
Con argued that various possibly equivalent things are not morally wrong, therefore neither is porn (oh and con wisely shifted to a standin name for it, to take the emotional weight out of the word Porn). And further that if moral wrongness is proven, without harm (got to add that pro did a fine job showing some harm) it is unworthy of a ban.
Pro's response plagiarized from our good buddy chatGPT. Since he hopefully told it the gist of what to write, I am still counting the arguments, but penalizing conduct.
Category Error Disguised as Analogy:
Pro argued con has made a faulty analogy. He argues essentially that a cheeseburger isn't rape (this seriously falls flat to me, as it assumes all porn is snuff videos), and kritiks to ignore the harm of junk food (on this one, a much shorter response would have been better... the pathos appeals reach too far, and borders on incel outrage).
Ethical Evasion via “Negative Outcomes”
...
I can't keep writing it out... Pro's argument based on too many baseless assumptions, which he is not doing a sufficient job arguing when up against Novice. Pro's case assumes if not banned, then everyone must watch; and further that women must film it. Clearly neither group has any choice in his world. The better tactic than just repeating harms of porn, is to just say those too ought to be banned.
Con argues that pro keeps repeating himself, and hasn't proven the harms of porn are worse than the harms of junk food nor video games. To which, pro basically concedes this debate with the line "Junk food and video games are predominantly self-regarding activities. They impact primarily the consumer." Which, honestly con might have not read...
Con wraps it up largely by repeating the earlier, and singling out obesity (implicitly, Porn is a lesser concern).
There's more, but this isn't even close. Without a reason the believe porn is forced on everyone, pro is unable to get near his BoP.
Forfeiture.
Concession
This is a narrow victory, especially since I agree with much of cons K’s.
Pro argues the obvious, which is to say big organized religion today vs what the Bible says Jesus did (with citations, which bolsters it well), do not align.
Con counters that Jesus just commanded people to follow him, and that it’s a personal journey (also with good citations). The implication is that Jesus would recognize individual Christians for in general doing their best.
Pro countered that says individuals are not aligning to the morals Jesus showed, in essence not following him.
Con does not defend that they really are in some way, but complains that the religion was targeted as an institution… ignoring that pro was able to show a problem with individual members in general not following his example, which means by cons own standard for how the debate should be interpreted pro comes out ahead.
Foregone conclusion.
I’ll add that The Marvels was a missed opportunity to make this a fun read, since it plagiarized its big bad from Space Balls (a giant robotic maid with a vacuum cleaner).
And Nick Fury was another missed opportunity, because his show was hands down the worst written piece of the MCU. But of him in general, we can deduce that his presence in anything worsens it due to the writing trying to pass off someone who dresses in bondage gear at the office as the greatest spy who ever lived.
I will also add that the best part of cons case was She-Hulk twerking and being a Mary Sue. With pros lack of a case that alone would win, but it was also wise to offer a couple more examples to beat the dead horse and avoid any accusations of Iron Heart being the second worst written piece.
Pro lost so hard he circled back around to winning!
…
Forfeiture.
https://youtu.be/TmoeZHnOJKA?si=mJATo09yCdFT4NHT
And forfeiture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQHUAJTZqF0
But yes, forfeiture.
I feel just a little dirty doing this, since I am no homophobe...
Without a clear definition for ethical provided, we're stuck with the implicit ones, and to that pro's made sense. Ethics are defined by ones culture, and obeying them lets one sleep peacefully at night. It's intuitive, it makes sense, and parents are just trying to do right even if everyone agrees they're misguided.
Con's case on the other hand relied on outrage, and sound bites. He or she actively tried to twist pro's stance into one of religion commandments, to dismiss the nuance of it. I don't think they wholly miss the mark with focus on harms, but that's not mutually exclusive with pro's framework of trying to do good (and pro being the one with BoP, it's important to stop said framework).
A huge issue throughout the debate was legibility. Whole paragraphs being bolded for example, made it needlessly hard to read; a few key words or headings is how to use that. I would have liked to see section headings of course, to follow points easily between rounds and opponents.
Concession and forfeiture
Pro is grasping at straws by arguing that some pizza could be considered salad, but then concedes that most pizza itself differentiates via being served hot... This concession feels like further discussion is wished, but that the debate itself was conceded.
Forfeiture and concession.
Pro argues for preventing the deaths, con argues we should selfishly preserve ourselves at the expense of those deaths... Not a lot to go over, as an altruist more lives living and not suffering is best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxG3vv2-sOE
I wish we had a style category to immediately award to pro (sliding a Monty Python reference into his opening). And con's request "along stepping away from executing use of Warhammer references ... To make this a debate worth engaging in, for the audience..." as an audience member, having bits of levity greatly help me stay focused on a debate.
That said, the setup resolution is vague, like what about gun rights?
Ok, not going to quote every line or anything, but just some highlights which really stood out to me.
History:
Pro points out that gun ownership prevents the movement from having a "monopoly upon violence" and builds out from there with some good rhetoric.
Note: some if this line of reasoning could be easily countered with gun ownership failing to prevent various government sponsored atrocities in the USA (not to con caught that... in fact, he argued against it having occurred "There is no official record of tyrannical rule" ... Oh, in the last round (after pro could no longer respond) this was at least alluded to with "Black Codes and slave patrols to the disarmament of Indigenous nations").
Con wisely concedes that guns were once necessary, to build a case that such is no longer the case.
Con makes a great and quotable point with: "But culture does not equate to correctness. My own place of origin, Pakistan, has a heavy culture of political corruption and sectarianism."
NEED, COMPARISON, AND REGULATION:
This section suffers a bit from lack of pro's conclusions about the information.
It detours into other countries, and if they can be compared to the USA when they lack such strong constitutional laws (gun rights in the USA are a constitutional issue, which makes the counters odd).
Pro makes a good point with "There are more dangerous means than guns they 'could use."
Con misquotes pro as saying “school shooters would be more dangerous to a population than guns” ... Always be careful if using double quotation marks, as those are specifically for quotation. This was of course not an isolated incident. I found the closing criticism of this reasoning that arsonists are incapable of making a manifesto as shoots are (to quote: "Fire doesn’t make a manifesto") to be a rather obvious scarecrow argument. Needless to say, the better path would have been reminding the audience that taking away tools of murder, decreases the ease of murder.
Along these same lines, pro leveraged school shooting clubs to strengthen his proposal of more gun education as an alternative solution to gun violence; implicitly asking if it can be so safe then, why can't it be now?
Fallacies:
Pro was able to defend that he was not engaged in pure fallacious uses of the appeals. It's a good tactic to accuse people of fallacies, but one which risks losing the audience there's even a decent defense (in this case by explaining the use of "evoking" sentiments and such, rather than trying to blind people with them).
Closing:
I outright agree with pro "If you want real freedom, start by protecting the people who live in it. Guns don’t defend liberty when they’re being used to destroy lives inside that liberty. And quoting dead philosophers, poets, and colonial history doesn’t make modern inaction noble. It just makes it tragic."
...
Arguments: Pro
I am having to assume the debate was about broadly maintaining gun access in the USA or repelling it from civilian use.
I wholly agree with con. That said, pro was the more convincing speaker, showing ample reason why gun access remains necessary in the USA such as to protect us from a tyrannical government, and also that cons aims could be better achieved through simple education.
Sources: Tied
They lean pro, but not by enough to further enhance his victory (they'd be enough to mitigate cons had arguments gone that way). Lots and lots of sources from pro; and which there was some wise criticism from con which decreased their impact but they were not proven counter to pro's case or any such thing. Con introducing his own sources as "Verified and credible source" counter intuitively harmed them, as it was like putting a question mark on those very traits (website name would be better, or what is so good about them by comparison).
That said, pro was risking accusations of source spam with the number of them, and insufficient analysis of each one (there was at least thematic analysis, which is why I am identifying a risk rather than penalizing a fault)
Conduct: Tied
Leans a little to pro due to con making up quotations.
Pro, pro did energy assertions one minute, and what looks to be an AI generated argument the next… Con gave the debate a centerpiece already of the outward transition, to which pro declared it’s not a choice by comparison to similar things like eye color… this is is non-Sequitur, so the initiative of that cornerstone point remained with con.
Forfeiture
Forfeiture
As one of the main authors of the current rules, I will admit to some degree of bias. That said, I am going into this with an open mind... As this is a policy proposal, BoP primarily rests with pro, to which he should be able to show a benefit to the change. Oh, interestingly I had a debate on an overlapping topic: https://www.debateart.com/debates/5334-conduct-shouldnt-effect-your-points-in-a-debate
Loophole:
Pro says he could cheat and make a bunch of fake debates for free wins. He asserts that users currently do this (I'd believe it, but for such a claim you really want a citation or two).
Con does not response to that loophole, but points out flaws due to cheating and laziness , and suggests the need for conduct to handle them.
Pro oddly cites a direct example of the Final Round Blitzkrieg con described, complaining that the person who intentionally delays posting anything until after the one other cannot respond should win for what is well known to be cheating...
Pro also cites a debate in one one side fully forfeited every round, and the other side had lesser forfeits, to complain that this too was unfair because the person who gave the respect of showing up was rewarded (we really need a clear reason rewarding good behavior is a bad thing) Pro also describes his opinion of the votes, complaining that just he and a vote Muslim vote fluffer were overruled by a greater number of voters (odd since in R1 he was mistaking debate judgements to have something to do with democracy).
Pro then goes on to contradict his own sentiments by claiming "Voting on basis of arguments does not affect the punishment of forfeiture" when he just complained at length how unfair it is that people were penalized for forfeitures...
And then some more flip flopping, which con highlights in his own round...
Forfeiture:
Con forfeits, pro implies this shouldn't be factored in, con says it should, and then pro concedes that it should while denying he ever said otherwise... That gravely hurts his case, and was the moment I clicked the con box for argument (I read the rest after that, and it could have shifted back to tied, or even into pro's favor, but did it not).
Sources:
See above for my review of pro's sources. Cons sources was a the dictionary, which is nice, but not impactful enough to assign the points over.
Arguments:
In addition to the above, pro set himself too far behind, and too unsure of what he really wants; which con leveraged. I had thought pro make take this debate when con ignored his arguments, but pro did not capitalize on that, and also gave too many implicit concessions to the resolution as worded (maybe not to the moved goalposts pro tried later, but certainly to the original ones).
Due to the forfeitures, this boils down to a single round debate in which pro cannot defend anything con counters. So foregone conclusion.
The answer is yes, obviously. It's a war against terrorist shitheads who will enhance their human shield tactics when those are rewarded. That said, let's see how the debate turned out.
...
Pro's case is yes, but restricted by 6 rules, to include not attacking if civilians are present. Con implicitly picks up on this weakness, saying the dense population makes it impossible to do it pro's way.
Something con catches is pro assumes they should be attacked, and states how to do it more humanely, but doesn't focus on the ought. Con then leverages the usual anti-Israel lines about them committing various war crimes, to suggest they ought to cease military operations (there's obvious flaws to this, but pro makes no direct reply...).
The final round put the nails in the coffin for me. While there was some likely use of plagiarizing an AI earlier by pro (I'm not overly concerned about an introduction paragraph or two, before the debate really gets going), his final round was detected at 100% certainty to be wholly AI written (zerogpt.com).
Close due to both giving a poor showing, and made worse with con's forfeiture.
The status quo favors con on this, so primary BoP rests with pro.
Let's see, con asserts medical safety, and that children who are raped shouldn't be forced to be mothers
Note: For the second, it's an emotionally powerful argument, but one that aught not to be used since women are people even before something terrible happens to them: https://debate.miraheze.org/wiki/Should_Abortion_Bans_Include_Exceptions%3F
Pro repeats that there is no difference between the stages of life, and claims that the trauma of not living will... I can't even follow that logic, it seems something like dead babies have PTSD from never experiencing pain.
Neither really engages with the other to properly challenge their points. This went nowhere. A bit of a toss up between pro having the main BoP, and con forfeiting... Going to leave it tied.
Forfeiture.
Pro barely showing up for R1, and missing R3, reduce this to a foregone conclusion.
Assuming fire is supposed to mean good, pro really should have countered con's arguments about it being banned by offering a link to the song in question. And I do mean song, not talk of other tracks on the same album which pro went for.
A shame about the forfeitures, but it was pretty clear by con quoting AIs that his heart was not in this debate anyways.
I don't think con had access to the easy victory from "more likely" being ambiguous, but he had a clear path from the word "heavily" which could have been leveraged throughout the debate, especially if showing other sources he was inspired by (actually, pro's push to include the Old Testament, could have been twisted with Jesus being more inspired by that than by Dionysus).
Anyways, con misses half the debate, and offers very little in R2, leaving pro's later assessment largely unchallenged.
Forfeiture
Forfeiture.
Concession... Not sure this should count as a debate, but whatever.
Concession
Forfeiture would be enough to lose in a song battle, but compounding that I believe offering just links without any hint at what way they should be interpreted undermined con's case as well.
In short:
Pro built a sandcastle next to the rising tide of historical fact. Con didn't even have to knock it over, just point to the tide.
At length:
I'm going to take the unconventional route and explain this with a Star Wars analogy (or parable if you will...)
Pro argues Kylo Ren (the guy from the 2015 movie) is the greatest Sith Lord of all time, way better than Darth anything, and bases his case around the idea that Episodes 1-6 were never filmed. So there were no previous Sith Lords at all. In fact, Vader was made up in 1999! Then Con shows up in the Millennium Falcon as if it's 1977, pointing out that Kylo is Vader's emo grandkid, and via the birds and the bees that grandkids came after their grandparents, clearing the field to help Luke Skywalker make the one-in-a-million shot (side note: https://wiki.lspace.org/Million-to-one_chance)
Pro, grasping at straws, goes the strange route of claiming that Con must prove Kylo Ren didn't appear in Episode 7, and further that Mickey Mouse is illiterate so couldn't have possibly copied anything from earlier films. Con wisely points out that you don't need to have watched Star Wars to have been exposed to the oral tradition of it, and names multiple characters carried over directly from the previous films.
Now swap "Star Wars" for Abrahamic religions, and that's basically this debate...
Pro's non-sequitur case rests on the implication that the other Abrahamic religions were poor copies of Islam, "fabricated in the fourth century." Which is a rare example of a Retro Hoc fallacy, to which Con reminds us of this poor reasoning with "Allah is a robbed God-concept from Judaism that then had Christianity interwoven and somehow denies both." And of course, numerous sources to support his Burden of Proof (comparatively, Pro offered zero). Pro's defense of this is that Muhammad "couldn’t read or write," so could not have possibly heard of anything at all, but Con is fast to point out "He knew by ear and spoken gospel." Which is a much higher opinion of Muhammad than Pro's arguments imply.
Pro of course makes some other weak assertions, such as an ad nauseum "Allah is real" as if expecting that chant to give him the victory, but he fails to find so much as the weak evidence of anyone in the Qur'an believing that (and yes, while that common tactic is ripe for criticism for being a highly fallacious appeal, it's still far superior to no appeal at all).
To me the entire debate hinges on the timeline. Pro's case is implicitly older equals better, and then picks the newest of the batch. Had he instead argued something like Islam preserved or restored earlier ideas, that might have led somewhere. But he bet the entire moisture farm on Islam coming first (or put plainly, that the 7th century occurred before the 4th, as well as before anything BCE), so once Con pointed out that wasn't the case the debate may as well have been over.
Clear win for Con.
Forfeiture.
Concession...
But yes, I agree with con on the implicit argument that this whole thing revolves around narrow definitions of a single word, which on a one round debate pro could not have defended against had con chosen to challenge it.