Total votes: 1,434
Forfeiture.
Weird one. But full forfeiture... Leaving conduct tied due to wholly unnecessary insults serving as the entirety of con's closing round.
Pro put himself into a bad place by abandoning the final two rounds. That said, con did not capitalize on this with sufficient rebuttals against pro's arguments. Merely asking what the point of a numbered logical chain, merely states that con does not understand it is a fallacious argument from integrality (if it should be called an argument at all).
Con's best bit of the whole debate was "The question is, why should I have faith or what's the best argument on having faith in miracles, workings of a supreme deity, things beyond our understanding, reasoning , logic and such?" Which ignored what had already been presented.
Pro for his part offered the watchmaker hypothesis, and the suggestion of making sense of the resolution that they suggest competing best argument claims; which con did not reject until R4, which is a very late time to attempt to move the goalposts; and if the move is accepted, it does not inform any voters where the goalposts actually end up and why that is preferable.
Con wins with his wholly non-contested framework, and lack of any counter case.
Less forfeiture.
Forfeiture.
Repeated forfeitures.
Forfeiture.
Forfeiture.
Something something... dark side of the force!
(strongly implies concession)
Forfeiture.
Concession.
A true shame about the censorship.
Forfiture.
Con forfeited half the debate. That alone is grounds for a pro victory.
That said, I don't believe this debate went deep enough for minimal BoP for the resolution to be held against the challenges con raised.
Less forfeiture, and has uncontested arguments.
Forfeiture.
Concession
Pro's opening is pretty damning to Airmax. No witnessed attempt at the key campaign promise, no activity.
Con infers we made our bed, so should stick with it, before moving onto a kritik that there shouldn't be a presidency.
While I want to say it was sidetracking to talk about the election getting ugly, it does connect to the presidency itself. Plus the history of the moderators, how they are appointed, and their greater power than the presidency.
In R2 their cases distill: presidency in near it's current form > not presidency near it's current form (and that we should bare the results of how we voted).
While both really seem to care about the site, and think some good can come from the president; they left me I'm left buying that airmax should be removed, but I am not given enough reason to think we are better off immediately appoint anyone else (further, con pointed out the risk of Wylted). Intrinsically, referendums and presidencies are democratic systems, and to disregard the consequences of either seems like a strike against both.
So pro upholds the first half of the resolution (not that it'd be functionally different with him MIA), but misses the second half of the need to appoint someone else.
Pro actively dropped out half way through, with statements strongly implying a concession to this precise resolution.
Pro missed half the debate.
Forfeiture.
Forfeiture
With pro's proposal seeming to wish abortion to equal first degree murder, and no problem with miscarriages equaling manslaughter, and no benefit listed for anyone from this, it's a wide margin win for con.
...
R1
Pro lengthily attempted to frame con's stance in his opening, which as I can't see whatever discussion they had outside this debate, became highly awkward to read.
This became worse under the rule of shared BoP, and pro opening with trying to move the goalposts onto con based on declarations con presumably made in a PM? I can only grade based on the debate that's been presented, to include con's lack of having made various statements about if fetuses are or are not people.
Pro moves on to declaring that abortion is in fact already illegal via being first degree murder... I've never understood why anyone thinks such an impassioned declaration is effective at changing peoples minds. Worse, it's a piece of hyperbole which is notoriously easy to flip.
Con opens with a completely different stance than the one pro promised he would have.
I dislike the term "structural violence" but with it supported by an EDU site, I'll not dismiss it out of hand as hyperbole...
Ok, con brings up harms from forced non-viable pregnancies being carried to term. Con follows up with abortion bans likewise banning birth control in general; which seems to fit well with pro's definitions of personhood.
Con uses a source from Duke University for likely increased mortality rates which might be caused by such a ban.
Con brings up suffering of babies (I dislike pathos appeals, but it was supported with evidence). And follows up with how the legal system would punish woman for miscarriages (apparently 26% of pregnancies end in miscarriage anyways).
Con gets into statistics of abortions not being prevented by bans, further questioning the benefit of the proposed policy.
R2:
Pro argues that extenuating circumstances could be argued as a defense during the criminal trails, which therefore makes it best to still make it illegal.
Pro moves back to his attempt to pre-define cons burdens, seeming to wish to talk about when personhood should begin rather than the policy benefits of his proposal...
Pro dismisses the effectiveness of abortion bans with "were the case that abortion bans did not work, the fundamental immorality of unjustifiably killing a human being still remains." This doesn't actually challenge what was presented, merely says he wishes to go ahead with the law regardless of the cost/benefits analysis. Using obvious propaganda sites to challenge edu sites only makes this worse.
Pro ends this round with a defense that women who suffer miscarriages wouldn't necessarily be investigated for murder under his proposal, instead planned parenthood would be... This is a critical fault found in the proposal, and I can't make sense the defensive logic here. It's a weak round from him, exemplified by seeming to complain that the opposing case was "complex" and "utilitarian" as if either thing is inherently bad.
Con leverages pro's slavery argument back around, as another form of structural violence, which ought to be prevented.
He moves on to mostly repeat himself; a highlight of this is women already being sent to prison for manslaughter if they have miscarriages in the USA.
R3
Pro ties to move this debate into if the unborn should have rights at all, without adequately defending against the harms and lack of shown benefits to his proposal.
Con closes with mostly more repeats (what looks like some copy/pasting of his previous rounds).
Forfeiture.
Multiple forfeitures; but I do not care to even review the arguments for this topic to assign more points.
This is a fairly close one. Due to time constraints, I will not be able to properly express that in this vote (preventing such a good debate from being wholly unvoted, takes priority; and yes, I'll gladly expand this later in the comments if anyone would like).
Napoleon:
I think con focused way too much here, when it was an obvious double standard which when applied topically said so many bad things about Lee. As for the source not factoring in the benefits of an airforce... Need I even say it? A navy is somewhat applicable, but I did not see the push on that front.
Casualties:
This should not be understated. 0.87 vs 0.81 is not that wide a margin, but first it favors Grant, and second Lee had less replacements available anyways magnifying the effects of any losses.
Grant's ineptitude:
Con seemed to present Grant as merely a yes man who did what he was told, but pro was able to show that Grant directly disobeyed orders to secure victories for the north; putting his career at risk in a way other Union generals did not. His men then repeating that insubordination, was a in retrospect an amusing bit of Irony. He may have been a Babe Ruth figure standing out due to other Union generals being so mediocre, but he did stand out, and further quickly bested Lee when other generals had failed to do so.
Lee's cost to the confederacy:
Had Lee's ambition to crush the north worked, we'd be recalling this so differently... But the fact is, much like Napoleon's blunder in Russia (which con faults the data for not costing him more), it didn't work, and it cost his side more than it could afford to pay on such a gamble.
Moneyball:
Even if it's an imperfect analysis, it seemed well done. As a numbers guy who constructs charts, it is appealing to me; even if I don't see the exact inputs used. I am not spotting a similar statistical analysis offered by con which puts Lee ahead of Grant; which would be a good way to challenge the conclusions it made.
Implicit concession.
Forfeiture.
Plagiarism can be avoided just be giving due credit. A single line such as 'list compiled by...' is enough. A link for the bible is not needed, but when literally copy/pasting someone else's analysis of it, it's antiethical to not give them credit.
Winning! FF
While I disagree (for starters, I spent too long in Iraq seeing how Islam treats them), pro offered the superior (and only) arguments.
Concession.
Forfeiture.
Insults instead of arguments, reduce this to a foregone conclusion.
Going into this debate, the claim is huge. It is not just that Islam contains some truth, but an outright absolute that it is "The Truth."
Miracles:
Pro lists some potential miracles, starting with Muslims making the big bang... Oh and there are eye witness accounts of this happening (I'm guessing there's a language barrier here).
Con explains this better than there are hypothesis of the nature of the universe within Islam (as opposed to miracles given out by Muslims).
The Quran itself:
Pro offers an appeal to tradition (whatever is oldest is best), without any connection to why this makes anything better.
Con does an interesting counter that the Sung version is older, thus by pro's standard more true.
Pro denies that the Quran was ever sung.
Words and Linguistics of the Quran:
Many words are in the Quran... Honestly not sure where pro was going with this.
Pro doubles down, making a big deal out of "day being written 365 times and month 12 times" as if that is supposed to mean anything.
Contradictions:
Con charges that the Quran contains inherant contradictions, such as gambling, unequal treatment of animals, unequal treatment of the sexes.
Pro defends with special pleading, that it's not gambling if someone promises you'll win.
Pro defends that meat must be gathered without harming the animal... Also all pork causes the eaters of it massive harm...
Something something about Muslim men being too abusive, and women too emotional...
BoP:
Con reminds us that we have no definition for The Truth.
Pro defends that he doesn't need to... This is a huge blunder: It's not that every single claim needs full definitions, but certainly a meaning for The Truth must be offered (or at least clearly and plainly implied).
Pro further complains of lack of evidence (at this point there have been no sources offered, as a reader, I'm literally having to take the words of the debaters at face value).
Con doubles down that the Quran has not been proven to to be exclusively in accordance with reality.
Christianity:
Pro wastes his closing round with a rant against Christianity, which is off topic at best... It's like saying every color that isn't purple is yellow, then proving that magenta isn't true purple and concluding that it must therefore be yellow.
...
Were conduct an option, it would be firmly against con.
Con hasn't won arguments, so much as pro lost them. I'm left judging if I believe everything pro says, including that some beef isn't harmed (nor feels any pain at all) when being slaughtered), and further that I'm sick if I've ate pork; seriously, I had a delicious Al Pastor Tora yesterday for lunch, and no ill effects are noticed. Then the whole thing about how Muslim men are abusive, which even if I believe pro on, it would be quite the leap to say this applies to all men.
Had this debate a better resolution to what pro argued, he would have easily won. Such as "Islam is more true than X."
Most fun I've had reading any debate in awhile!
First impressions:
The initial skimming suggests a con victory (which paradoxically favors pro). Pro's opening being so short, combined with forfeiting a third of the debate, really hurts him. Whereas I see con whipping out some math, and highlighting it with some good use of formatting... On formatting, I really had trouble following some of pro's replies.
possibility and not probability:
As a math guy, I enjoyed con's introduction to the many possibilities, and his 44% chance blind data was very good. The problem is that pro was immediately able to counter the implicit notation with the reminder of how unlikely many vague possibilities are; with the internet outage one highly in his favor due to basic probability distributions.
Con leans in on the future being uncertain, which ignores that the resolution is about likelihood rather than absolute certainty.
Pro further leverages that mixed votes exist. Con misses this and leans in more on his "81 possible votes." He later amends that a mixed vote could be inverted... Which misses that issue that it's not about just majority votes with how the resolution is worded, but any vote which casts points in favor of con.
Laziness:
I do agree with con that quality of arguments still favor a vote for whichever side presented them.
I actually laughed out loud at the execution of this:
"So far, Pro is still more experienced as shown, especially since possibly most of my wins come from forfeits, concessions, or exploiting other users."
"Forfeited"
Con did do a good job describing why forfeiting in a key round is not a silver bullet argument, and even ties back to his earlier bit about power outages. It's almost enough to tip the debate, but not quite...
...
Conduct:
Forfeiture.
Arguments:
Ultimately in light of pro's replies (even without being extended), I did not find con's explanations of possibility and uncertainty to be convincing. It even hurt his case the way it was utilized given the mixed vote possibilities (as much as I would have preferred if pro leveraged the exact numbers a bit, instead of just giving the impression). If this debate resolution did not contain the "most likely" qualifier, this would be a strong con victory; as is, I find pro more convincing.
Legibility:
Tied, but leaning in cons favor.
Pro builds a five tiered case that BF is BS, which has no direct challenge.
Con offers two kritiks to the topic, neither of which actually challenges if BF is BS.
PHYSICAL EVIDENCE, PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE, ARCHEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE, and SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS all went unchallenged.
If ideas exist, does not prove that the ideas are not BS. Thus we default back to the balance of the evidence, which was unchallenged.
The multiverse hypothesis is neat, but does not challenge anything within the universe (particularly North America) to which this debate is happening.
This leaves the debate a foregone conclusion. To quote the voting policy: "someone who never advances their case beyond obvious non-sequiturs, or commits the not even wrong fallacy regarding the resolution, has also not earned detailed analysis beyond pointing that out. I.e., sufficiency goes both ways, a debater must first offer a sufficient argument for sufficient consideration to occur."
Were this debate to have a title such as "Bigfoot has no existence" then con would have a good case for a type of existence. Similarly, were the debate that it would be impossible for Bigfoot to exist, then the multiversal angle would be topical.
Full forfeiture
FF. Plus pro had such amazing conduct he offered to have the debate deleted.
Forfeiture.
hakai:
Pro bets the farm on the questionable notion that Goku immediately attempts to murder every opponent with his most powerful attack.
Con counters that Superman is immune to this type of attack, and further the energy wave might supercharge him like a sun.
Pro doubles down.
Con counters that even were pro correct about hakai, Goju isn't that good at it like Beerus (which begs the question, why argue Goku instead of Beerus when the focus is intended on a Beerus centric attack).
Speed:
Pro attempts to argue that Goku has limitless speed, but as con identifies, the source for this is just some random guy's word on how strong he is.
Con later gives a well sourced estimate on Superman's ridiculous speed.
Darkseid:
Pro attempts to leverage that Superman can lose to his most powerful villains. Con uses this to point out Superman's ability to normally survive and dodge the crazy attacks from them.
The debate drags on, but the formatting near the end became a quite painful wall of text which seemed to be filled with repeated assertions of old content.
@Pro: I highly suggest this to help with future debates: tiny.cc/DebateArt
Ultimately for this debate con wins if Goku's victory is in doubt, and without knowing more about Goku's actual likely fighting styles it seems like Superman would most likely win with his speed and lasers since Goku is too much of a one trick pony (con's side arguments about Goku in R1 were actually better than that single attack argument which permeated throughout the debate)
I enjoyed the opening chair thought experiment, and I enjoyed even more the simplicity to which con leveraged it to undermine pro's BoP that all men could be equally wrong.
Con for his part, reached his BoP right out the gate with an impossible to disprove definition of religious pluralism from a reputable source. Trying to fight with that with an alternate definition, really needed to first challenge that one (it gets annoying complex, but necessary); further the eventual alternate source was a weak one (if doing this again, I'd suggest using: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Religious_pluralism). Or of course front loading the desired definition into the description.
Full forfeiture,.
Very tempted to give pro the win for con taking this so serious he defended Superman's whole underwear thing...
Ultimately, the gish golloped nature of the long list of Chuck Norris facts, made them more a pain than a boon after the first few (this got way worse in rebuttals which excluded what they were responding to). And then the defenses, I didn't find funny (the unicycle one for example just went on too long trying to sound like a Chuck Norris joke, while losing the elegance of those jokes).
In contrast, con immediately started demanding citations, only to pull a fictional character, and refused to make jokes about said fictional character (even the simple he unified the galaxy, and saved us from the Jedi could have carried it)...
Overall, I'm calling this one a dud.
Concession.
Con is able to quickly show scriptures as requested by pro. He then successfully defends them with a guitar analogy. Pro's weakness really shined in R3, when he pretended to have not read con's concise reply; betting the whole farm that the audience would believe him instead of the short paragraph above his words.
The imbalance of the resolution, makes this boils down to a foregone conclusion.
Solid R1 from pro. While it's a list type debate, it's not a gish gallop, as the list is for the purpose of comparison.
"the supposed cons of physical media:"
This section in R1 was a waste. Trying to pre-refute weaker versions of what you suspect someone's argument might be, sets voters to suspect you're going to have more strawman arguements later (even if that is not the intent).
Con highlighted this round with explaining the lower risk to producers and consumers, plus the minimal quality trade-off.
Pro really misunderstood this in his reply, insisting that producers don't have to worry about anyone buying their product and the entry cost; and later that those producers don't really matter (they make the product, so they are self evidentially essential).
Pro lists some bad conduct on netflix, and says people should use YouTube... YouTube... The streaming service... He later repeats this point
Pro ends R2 with an appeal to the video quality of blue-rays being higher than streaming services.
Con counters this with math on the costs... I'm honestly having a hard time moving past pro wanting us to use a streaming service in a debate against streaming services.