Barney

Ultimately a concession.

Regarding the definitions, the disagreement should have been offered prior to accepting the debate. That said, con's is a preferable standard,as pro's risks absurdity (a doctor removing your ruptured appendix, or a federal agent shooting a terrorist to prevent them from killing people, etc.).

The resolution contains nothing to imply absolutes (all cases, all governments), and the description clarifies room for discussion of avoidability; so I'm going to have to treat this as an On Balance debate (as in most cases).

R1
Pro builds a case about the stupidity of denial when it will probably leak, plus people seeking closure, using a terminal cancer patient as an effective analogy.
Con counters denying that should is real, "one can only think it should." Which I'll agree with, but not in a way that favors con, since barring any reason not to, I indeed think that.

R2
Pro for some reason segways into national security, and argues the difficulty in keeping it a secret if any government with the knowledge tells their people.
Con reminds us that some governments are controlling enough (China with their golden shield as an example) to indeed keep it a secret, no matter what the rest of the world knows. He pushes the should angle more, and insists if pro is wrong about any hypothetical government con should win.

R3
Pro repeats his benefits in people seeking closure, and asks for con to meet a side of the BoP related to why keep it a secret.
Con denies having a BoP, since all he needs to do is disprove Should as a meaningful word (by default, con does not have a BoP, and him not having to argue how pro wants him to is wholly fair even on a case like this where there was some implied but not explicit role assignment... but again, the whole should doesn't exist, just isn't doing anything for me in light of any benefits shown to show that there is indeed a should).

Conclusion:
This would have been more enjoyable with focus on any of the ways the world could end. I do applaud con for massive improvement, even while relying so much on that one point set the risk that if a judge doesn't buy it, there is a massive shortage on fallback. In the end, I am giving this to pro, but only by a small margin. I would say arguments are very close to the tied margin, with the slight benefit (really should have been more...) unchallenged by any drawbacks favoring pro.

I should also mention that just because it's the right thing to do, would not fly without that slight benefit of letting people use the remaining time as they see fit.

Concession...

The only proper way to express Imabench losing a Frozen debate, is with song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ghSzgxnkWU&list=RDgQ2LXP1eeLI&index=3

When pro got into the flow of pointing back to his old points, this was basically already over. In short: the health benefits surrounding cell phones such as being able to call an ambulance from just about anywhere, by being so much more likely, vastly outweighs the potential for them to contribute to your death in the trenches of a war.

Wealth
Interesting meta topic. They contribute to income growth, decreased inequality, etc., therefore with them available we are more likely to survive cancer (a 60% gain). This leads to better technology being made, and more jobs, etc.
Con counters that such improvement requires people, not cellphones alone...
Pro defends that money changes hands thanks to them.

Violence
Con argued that they are comparable to assault rifles, and then compares them to radios blaming those for the holocaust.
Pro uses the assault rifle comparison to make a ban baguette comparison, and further defends the bread and cellphones for being designed to improve quality of life instead of to kill. And further on the communications angle, that crime has been decreased by them; and first responders use them to get to people in need.
Con defends that hidden organized crime might be thriving; and that in Jamaica since the invention of the cell phone murders have more than doubled.
Pro defends with more sources showing cell phones decreasing crime.

Social Media
Con argues social media harms the health of relationships, and cause such things as depression. And of course social media is often accessed via cell phones.
Pro defends that conflicting studies on social media use, and of course that social media is not on cell phones by default.
Con catches that some do come with these things pre-installed, and further that the text only means of communication offered by cell phones (at least on social media...) is poor for relationship quality.
Pro defends that cell phones open up more means of communication than text only, and implied.

BoP issues ultimately leading to a concession.

Concession.

However, neat topic. Con catching the limit was a good one, since it means that not everyone could reliably be brought back.

I hate to disagree with things from the description, but the whole being brought back at your mental best but with memories intact thing, was proven to not just be weird, but contradictory as we'd remember our murders and likely have PTSD from those memories.

To The Moon sounds like a beautiful game... Side note: I had to go and read a story summary, and it sounded tragic. The problem of regret stemmed from his parents modifying his memories, and then in the end he and his wife buried side by side, aren't the same people who were married...

The key problem for pro in this debate was immediately hamstringing himself with replaced memories instead of additive memories. A president who wants to escape into a fantasy world where China launched 9/11, sounds somewhat dangerous, yet were his own memories of 9/11 overwritten it would risk a need to retaliate (I know the debaters did not get quite this deep, but with the point about being doomed to repeat things, in the world of replaced memories how would individuals be certain if we did or did not retaliate already for that attack?). Adding to it, is intuitively it would not even be a problem like cognitive dissonance of denied reality, their new reality would be wholly valid to everyone who drinks to Kool-Aid (or however the memories are transmitted). This is way worse than them lying, since to them it would not be a lie, it would be the factual truth.

While one case should not be decisive, it implied many more like it.

Skills was an interesting area, but it was pretty non-decisive if we could successfully do more than memorization through whatever the tech is. It was further hurt again by To The Moon, as the idea of rapid advancement that we could explore strange new worlds... was called into question of fake memories that would let people have their ambition fulfilled without the risk or actual reword for humanity.

Okay two part resolution, meaning pro must support:
1. "Biblical faith is not faith without evidence or doubt."
2. "It's ok to doubt in the Christian faith."

Thankfully con immediately concedes the second the second. While the second is likely intended as a conclusion, with the first as a key premise, it's still very good that not every little thing will be argued for the sake of disagreement.

R1:
Pro builds an opening, using a couple passages of the bible, both in support and opposition to his point (for the opposition he deep dives to show flawed translations).
Con counters with a semantic kritik, focused on the word faith; to which my mind immediately goes to the resolution having the modifier of biblical faith, as opposed to just faith alone (it still affects the confidence interval, it's just not an instant win). He goes on to show faith within the bible (using one of pro's own bits, but with a different translation).

R2:
Pro tackles the unfairness of the kritik (unfavorable definitions, when the debate is obviously a thematic argument against those). Then gets lost in a side discussion. It does get to a seat belt analogy (which con immediately points out is seen working if people care to review the easily accessible evidence).
Con compares biblical evidence to Spider-Man. Con (while not accusing pro of going this far) makes a very good point "Biblical literalism is patently absurd," which combined, undermine efforts to call the bible itself evidence given such things as the age of the earth and such.

R3:
Pro gets into the complexity of the bible. Does conversational replies. Makes the strong start to a point that "God's existence is evident in creation." He does make a cool point that the witness testimony (which con wisely points out are even in modern times known to be unreliable) and such had no way to know any of it would be compiled and shared around the world later.

R4:
More of the same. And yeah, trimming text is a good thing. As a reader, I don't want to accidently re-read too much. ... And yes, I am skimming at this point.

Conclusion:
Biblical faith should not be faith without evidence. /Should not./ Sadly, there is a basic Burden of Proof issue to the assertion, that it needs to be shown that it (at least in general) is not. As a Catholic, I'll say "Right on, Amen brother!" As a voter, to favor the pro side, I need a clear cut reason, outside of my own bias; in the absence of that, and with questions to the reliability of the bible as evidence for biblical faith requires evidence, con is able to take the win.

My big advice for how to improve from here, is to practice writing out your basic case in logical form. A series of clearly labeled premises, leading to a conclusion or two.

Conduct:
This doesn't need to be listed since I am leaving it a tie, but both were stellar!

Childrearing and socialization
Pro did a very good job here, particularly that we would would on four limbs if raised that way.
Con does decent pointing out the n value of 1, pointing out specifically the texas sharpshooter fallacy... Before shooting himself in the foot, by talking about the unique languages we learn based on where in the world we live.
The debate mainly goes back and forth on this point, with con insisting it's instinct since babies babble, which relates to a car analogy about how much movement comes from the battery (instinct) and how much from the engine (learning).

Instinct lead to unique behaviors
Con does better with arguing that our instincts guided us, even aiding in walking. Pro defends that con's own link indicated that walking for humans is learned.

Ship of Theseus
Con builds on this as a thought experiment, and pro wisely points out that it's not more than that. I think pro goes a little far in treating this as outside content (getting a voter to ponder an idea should be good), but his defense against this leading to any conclusion is solid.

Conclusion:
In pondering this I give credit to con, since without any instinct, we would not be able to learn anything (we would be minerals instead of animals, and I haven't noticed any unique behaviors from rocks). However, it's not the silver bullet he seems to think it is, as I don't see that bridging the gap to our unique behaviors (language, walking, hunting, etc.) not primarily being learned. Specifically when con's own source agreed those things are learned.

Ultimately, I can agree with the premise that to seek to learn is instinctive, but that still leaves the unique expressed behaviors (to the benefit or detriment of the organism) seems to be learned (even more so with learning conceded as overcoming instinct).

Sources
Dolphins being unable to instinctively adapt back to the wild is a really good piece of evidence, which is hard to get out of my head, and I would have liked to see a direct response. The major place pro gets this for, is catching con cherry picking from sources, so flipping con's own KateAnswers one against him. Con does better with a .gov source on curiosity (which supported that instinct plays a role in learning), but it was not enough to bring this back into the default tied range.

So many misnomers...

So pro makes a case that there are indeed some parallels.
Con counters that the parallels of shared humanity, overshadow those.

There's some back and forth on if the debate implied just social roles, but to me those can obviously be included, but nothing implied other aspects would be excluded.

Sources are a no brainer, as pro seriously put his research in, and con just kinda muddled in (he did use a couple pictures effectively in the last round... well one, the other tried to force a download which I don't do). Of note from pro's, was showing the average living conditions of dogs as living outdoors (which con wrongly said living in a cage in his final round... the house and house of humans was however spot on).

My impression on this is that con agreed with pro, so used the Final Round Blitzkrieg tactic to support pro's conclusion of how bad single round debates are since they would force the contender to do that. As this was not forced, using that tactic is such a severe conduct violation that said final round gets dismissed, affirming a win for pro by default being the only person to offer arguments in R1.

Pro opens with a Kritik that everything is immoral and objectively meaningless.
Con points out the errors that if meaningless, it's not objective morality.

Con makes a case using an intentionally invalid logical form to show that morality comes from the very subjective mind, so is not objective.

Pro argues until we find God or aliens to tell us what to do, there must be some standard; and seems to argue a Darwinism ethical standard of survival of the species.
Con challenges that outside of any species, the survival of it is meaningless (obvious counters of the web of life come to mind, but it's pro's job to point such out).
Pro defends that it's not immoral to want to survive, which misses the point that it should be universally moral to outside perspectives.

Pro finally argues that within the range of morality, one has got to be my chance objective... Sadly, it was his job to indicate one.

Seriously if anyone else tries to get through this, you would do well to stop after R2 (ctrl+f to look for key terms you wish to follow), the debate turns into a real mess.

In short: Pro swiftly shows objective morality that is not dependant on God. This never gets adequately challenged, even if it were proven that divine command theory can also be objective.

Summary...

R1:
Pro wastes no time getting to the meat and potatoes of this, with a declaration Utilitarianism > Divine Command Theory, and goes on to critic the Euthyphro Dilemma (the bit about God commanding murder, would have been strengthened with a quick example or two from religious texts).

Con declares there is a soul. (not sure how that was supposed to refute the conclusion)
Con goes on to call the Euthyphro Dilemma off topic to objective morality, since God is immoral (but then later God is beyond morals due to special pleading); but that if we obey Divine Command theory we are moral... huh?!
Oh and Batman!

R2:
Pro defends, and even uses con's own sources to explain that no car was magically lifted like a soccer ball in Top Gun (I don't think con implied it was that easy, but it's a nice mental image for the criticism all the same). And goes on to introduce the concept of biologically being able to explain things.
Pro clarifies the lack of an objective standard to God's morality within the Euthyphro Dilemma, and hammers home that hell would prove God to be immoral via infinitely disproportionate punishments.

Con asserts that killers have yellow eyes; and mostly drops pro's case (something about how death would be meaningless if it actually killed us, God will eternally burn all parents in hell...).

R3:
Pro does point by point extensions.

Con talks about shooting fireballs from his hands. And makes a very confusing sentence: "Rape stealing drinking milk from a carton pedophilia" I think it's missing the IS, but that still wouldn't make sense of it. ... Ok, he intended that to be a list separated by commas.

R4:
Dear god, I'm only half way through...

Pro denies that people shoot fireballs out of their hands (ok, I need to go to the store to get some Fireball whiskey!).

Con says drinking olive oil cures cancer...

R5:
Nothing that wasn't in the earlier rounds.

---

There is more to this debate. When I see the start to dead end things like rants against gay people, I skim right past looking for things that could affect the outcome.

It apparently could harm some overly sensitive moms that take obviously hyperbole seriously, rather than just accepting a compliment as it was intended. Pro of course argues that since superheroes are not real, it is not an insult, but just a compliment to say their hard work amazes a child. On balance, I would assume the very few that would be broken by trying to rise to the preternatural expectations, would probably break anyways. Whereas sane mothers, would at worst roll their eyes, but would usually be likely to have their spirits slightly lifted by the acknowledgment (even over acknowledgement) of their hard (or even average) work.

Concession.

Seems like a debate that wanted to go a lot deeper than it did (such as con challenging if AIs shouldn't fall in love with humans, without first properly exploring the idea that AIs might count as people).

---

Pro's case:
Love would be non-reciprocal. To which con counters that most people don't care, so long as they get off.

If it's true AI, then us altering the code or otherwise making us love us would be the crime of slavery. OR If not a true AI, then it's akin to falling in love with a microwave (so many jokes could be made here...), which denies there being the chemistry for it to be a good match.
Whichever form, pro estimates that about 88% of us would abandon human relationships (pro really should have mentioned children here...) if sufficiently advanced sex dolls were available (or possibly just really sexy microwaves that know just how you want your hot pocket...). Con counters this by suggesting that the consequences of relationships should not be considered within the scope, soley the act of falling in love.

---

Con's case:
Love isn't a choice. AI's will soon complain of headaches and such ruining the dream relationship...

Love really isn't a choice due to chemicals in our brains. It's no different than any other addiction. Therefore should or should not is irrelevant.

Pro eventually defends why lack of self control isn't a valid criticism, using a potato chip analogy.

---

Conclusion:
Going into this I thought it would be a matter of weighting cost to benefits. The costs definitely could have been laid out better. The benefits were very much lacking (including a point about headaches, which seemed to be arguing the wrong side of the resolution). Sure people will do it, but that doesn't imply that they should do it; just like how pro should not kill himself by binging on potato chips, which choice or not, he clearly shouldn't.

Sources:
Only pro had them, but they did not contribute enough to gain those two points.

A few suggestions for if doing this one again:
Lack of children.
How unhealthy human relationships tend to be.
Training relationships.
AI overthrow (neatly this could be argued both pro and con, since the world might be better off without the meaty oppressors).

100% ff. Disappointing.

Going to call that a concession...

First I should state that I wouldn't hesitate to press the button.

Pro does a very good job pointing out the damage to other people's freedoms, which the very risk of ethically means someone ought to not press the button. Con does ok defending this, but he just misses the mark a little by insisting on the errors as part of perfection (they certainly help build toward improvement, but are not perfection in themselves). At the same time, I like what con says would be perfection to him; it is however not the perfection I would assume the average person would seek.

I can't get the impacts to other people out of my head... Even as someone who sides with pro, I realize that my perfect life would include a certain perfect someone; and the perfection would not allow them to ever voice if they would rather be somewhere else with someone else. So I would do it, but I should not.

Concession.

Pro was able to show immediate benefit across a number of areas. Con challenges a few, but they were low impact and pro was able to show how globalization was still generally beneficial to those people (such as with health care, even if there is increased risk from a few diseases...).

Intuitively globalization isn't a silver bullet cure for poverty, but it has helped improve conditions for the poor overall. And indeed as pro showed in China, India, and Indonesia, it is tied to decreasing the rate of extreme poverty.

Basically just going to make this advice for pro...

It seems like the resolution you wanted to have is "the scientific method does not point toward converting into any religion." Instead you wrote it wrong, and refused to defend your case when lists of famous converts was offered, as was the dual nature of the resolution to which you did not produce arguments aside from special pleading.

Of course conduct is penalized for missing a round.

This felt more like a forum discussion than a debate.

Con slightly hedges out pro with questioning if any action will occur when trying to run potential actions through all 5 systems. Whereas pro tries to show that on balance moral actions will occur, but does not seem to aim for the resolution mandate of the best possible action.

With so many moral systems, the debate could not get deep on any of them; which was a shame, as there's some really interesting discussion to be had on this topic.

Temporing them with each other is a decent idea, but in descriptions it seemed to boil down to getting a room full of unlearning philosophers, rather than seeking the best possible action (surprised I did not see a time sensitive point on this...) or at least true improvement. I would honestly say a better place to start on this idea would be picking just two of them, and showing how combined they yield better outcomes than either alone.

Pro argues there have been problems a really long time ago, there are short term side effects, and appeal to pro-lifers.

Con thankfully puts some effort into explaining the highlights from pro each round, and makes his own case that the benefits of vaccine result in negative harms overall. Of particular note from him, was the starving the death food analogy; which perhaps more people should avoid the dangers of food.

Concession. However, very cool idea for a topic.

Notable improvement from con, in not skipping R1.

The point I was most curious about follow up was on the white power tweet. Which con's stock reply of "Your interpretation doesn't make it so called racist." Failed to raise it above racism by any common definition, however it was then dropped.

There was a little irony in pro pointed out the Gish Gallop, when he started it with 8 separate proofs. Still, I wholly agree with consolidating down to just three. All three were affirmed, even if not to some overwhelming degree of Trump being Literally Hitler. 1. Trump accused the pandemic of being ethnic, which clearly puts down millions of people (it can even be correct, but still furthers racism against Chinese people... I should not that the it's only racist if someone is offended standard proposed by con was insane; in this case, pro showed someone of said ethnicity being offended, which as a huge problem of such stupid arbitrary standards). I'm not even going to address the whataboutism con directed at black neighborhoods.

Sources:
12 to 0. The Warren one was overwhelming, with con defending it as con personally being uneducated somehow transforming it to not racist, when the source used explained the context for why calling people insulting cultural stereotype names is racist.

S&G:
Pro chose to make their case easy to follow with headings and subheadings, even underlining what he was responding to. Whereas con was a disorganized jumble which made contentions harder to follow through the debate.

Pro declares at length: "9sk will win beyond the shadow of a doubt."
The problem is that con casts some doubt on it, by listing different ways the time paradox might favor the future iteration. However, pro defends that the main ones of those would prevent anything from occurring.

A weakness to pro's defenses of capitalized by con, in that con raised the problem of Mafia players taking the game too literal, this forcing the debate to tie. It is definitely not certain that no one will vote for any reason, but it is intuitively a reasonable possibility.

With the resolution calling for "definitely," the slight doubt is enough to tip it against pro. Without that, this would be closer to the tied range, maybe even outright favoring pro.

In R1 once the "all humans knowledge" point was raised, my mind went to the overload problem. I do not consider this twisting anything, due to pro bringing up the all secrets instantly revealed bit.

CAPACITY
The Scientific America source had a huge impact. Limited storage space, and too many people in the world. Pro defends that not all memory is import to us to be worth storing, and the storage usage is variable, so declares the limited storage is not a problem... Suffice to say, I don't buy that; even more since we don't know the consequences of overload, but when applied to the whole human race, I don't need to wait for anyone to tell me that's scary. Let's see, con defends, calls pro's arguments that the magic would make it all fine special pleading...

HARMFUL EXCEPTIONS
Very good point, highlighted with the nuke codes (some secrets are best kept secret... as much as I don't for even a moment believe there would be success at using nuclear weapons, it still raises a point of the types of dangers). Pro has a good defense here that access to all human knowledge would change people, but my mind jumps to the problem of loss of autonomy. Pro then undermines his own point by declaring we would not get the feelings, which if true would mean terrorists would have the knowledge without changed feelings to tamper them (note, I fail to see how you would get the skills without the related feelings, PTSD is a learned skill more than anything, an awful one, but still a skill; anyway no feelings are only hoped for, not assured). Pro does get to a really good point that more educated people commit less crime, to which con basically insults the point, then goes back to his cybercriminals point since not all crime would end.

Had one.
FF.

Not sure what the previous debate had to do with it, as much as that one had a much better opening.

Anyway, while it's nice to see topics reused, this type of one lowers the odds of victory each time people see it and learn from it.

Oh and yes, no E was used by con.

Pro affectively missed three rounds.

1. The first just pointing to a link, but not saying anything about the content.
2. The second saying he would post later...
3. And the third, forfeiting the final round.

This debate is a foregone conclusion, but without putting the work into reading it, I do not feel comfortable awarding the various other points.

The key problem to pro's case, was he was largely arguing by repetition, missing key details that would have easily defended his case. He did of course challenge the opposing argument as a no true scotsman (technically I think it was a Normative Kritic).

The key problem to con's case, was that he accidently built a good case for pro. The hypothetical that you're starving in Africa but you'll feel unsatisfied years later if you get fed, still leads to the conclusion that it is best to push the button and deal with the minor consequences later.

I would say the con case was more of challenging the premise of perfection being attainable, or even worth it if not worked for, but failing to show a worse negative from pressing the button than from not (as a note, pro really should have pointed to the damage to your life of regret if you did not press it). If not for the extreme example of you'll die if you don't press it, I might have made this debate a tie.

This could have been a really good one with that opening round. Oh well. FF.

So the pro case is two-fold:
1. Local crime will still happen.
2. The "my" in the resolution is pro specifically, with his unique circumstances.

It's a decent point, and then a good trap. However, con is able to navigate it.

Con leveraged the current pandemic to great effect. Pro had no effective reply to it, saying that people should just defend themselves from it, which wholly ignores that policies set by the president influence the need for said self defense.

Con further builds on hypotheticals about a disbanded police and a crazy president starting WWIII (to which con even pointed out that pro could be targeted by the draft, to which pro declared him being drafted into a war would in no way affect his safety and that referencing him directly is no no way referencing him directly... 🤦🏻‍♂️). To which pro replied that subjectively his feelings override reality he lives in... No, just no. Someone may declare they feel they are actually a potato salad, and it does not put them in real danger of being eaten at a picnic.

S&G for abuse of ALL CAPS.

This is surprisingly borderline, however after a delay pro did catch con using the... Crap, I can't even write a RFD without using E, but kudos to con for only slipping once during an actual debate, and minorly at that. Still, on one of these puzzle debates, once is enough.

I will note that I disliked pro's tactic of pointing to con's username, but on this type of debate stirring things up to try to unbalance an opponent is to be expected (no way would I vote arguments for that).

R1:
Pro waives (technically pointing to some cliche lines he wrote in the description, still, no argument)
Con opens with the scientific method, explains about falsifiability, and concludes positive belief in God is useless and unscientific.
Con attacks the argument from ignorance fallacy, with an magic elf analogy (if pro goes on to prove the elf, I will take the logical leap of faith and award him arguments).

R2:
Pro refused to name the god in question (please be the elf!), but agrees the idea is untestable. And goes on to talk of about trends of things counting as evidence. Then does special pleading.
Con points out natural things which used to be declared gods, and asks: "If god is defined to be non-physical and undetectable, untested and untestable, therefore unfalsifiable: then what bearing on reality does that proposition have?"

R3:
Pro gives a non-answer to the question, and offers argumentum tr;dr.
Con mostly repeats...

R4:
Pro gets to one solid point: "The default position or neutral place in this matter is agnosticism."
Con defends "We can reject belief in the supernatural god as inevident. - Gnostic Atheism" And explains more about what the a means with being aelfish.

Arguments:
Con, for employing logic and explanations, against positive believe in some god that pro refused to specify.
I would have liked to see more of that elf. Particularly the possibility that the elf could be so magical that by existing it caused all other supernatural things to have never existed...

Sources:
Landslide... Oh and using nasa to show that lightening comes from natural phenomena instead of a shape changing-serial rapist in a toga, was quite effective in casting doubt on the credibility that we should believe in the supernatural in spite of the lack of evidence in favor of it.

S&G:
Leans con, as they used formatting to make their case easy to follow.

Arguments: Pro
The very first contention sealed this debate, but if looking deeper this was a true landslide in which pro won every major contention. For con to gain ground, he would need to support that not worshipping idols is worshipping idols, and other such abominations against the nature of shared language.

Sources: Pro
This is a pretty clear sweep. Pro refused to even support his key claim about St. Peter's Square with evidence. Both sides had the bible (once that’s in the hands of catholics, the resolution is self evidently false anyway). A key one was on catechism, which refuted con’s claim about idolatry.

---

Continued at:
https://www.debateart.com/debates/2152/comment-links/29955

Technically a dual FF, but something vs nothing still wins.

This is a pretty subjective subject, in which within the first round I saw con bouncing around both using the audience appeal and the failure of it somewhat contradictorily.

I will have to assume BoP is based on the description of goodness within the description, which really could have done without the "so on and so forth" which was too open ended and could allow anything to include the personal lives of the musicians (really hoping that doesn't come into it). Perhaps worse, starting with the audience reception of it, which implies victory may be dependant on people giving up on listening to music.

Science
Pro uses a very good article about pop substituting variety with loudness (I really wish he did not counterintuitively state in the next round "Isn't music all about making you feel enjoying and able to listen to it?"), but con counters that it's just pop music. Pro defends that 75% of what people listen to is pop music, which intuitively goes into other points that people can now choose to listen to so many more genres now. Pro uses hearing loss, and con goes on to explain that the loudness was misrepresented, with ultimate volume control (and yes, hearing loss) decided by the end user.

Lyrics
Pro shows that repetition is a problem.
Con counters that listeners enjoy it.

Availability
Pro shows that listeners don't appreciate it as much given that they can't listen to it all anymore and give in to buyers remorse. Con flips this point around to show that listeners can find anything, which encourages more diverse genres, rather than being slaves to the pop peddling DJs; this preemptively undercut pro's final round point "You can name far more world-famous rock bands from 1970's," as listeners are less likely to be artificially funneled, and of course con could name more recent ironic bands.

Conclusion:
Hate to say BoP, but BoP. Pro did a fine job on some points, but con was able to cast significant doubt onto the validity of the resolution. It falls into a pretty subjective and hard to measure area, to which a debate drilled down on any one aspect of quality pro may have been able to win, but when trying to an open ended thing which begins with the audience, it's becomes an uphill battle to prove which might be impossible to prove on such a subjective topic (to which I must thank pro for his first point being trying to make it non-subjective... I think were we limited to pop, he would have won).

Concession. I am in a hurry this morning, but I would happily give feedback later if anyone wants it.

Just when it got interesting, a concession struck.

Concession.

Pro decided in R1 to hide his point, doing a really lengthy complaint about disliking some author for how they named a book. Some nuggets tied to the resolution were deeply buried in there, but weakened by his argument structure.

Con used the passage of time related to observable phenomena, and cause and effect, to prove that the past must be real. This leaves their existence having measurable impacts, rather than being just imaginary. This implied (and was followed up in R2) that the present we believe we experience, is actually past stimuli rather than present reality. As much as this is a weird rabbit hole of thinking, it ultimately shakes confidence in pro's claims, thereby denying him positive affirmation of the resolution.

Concession.

Ultimately a concession...

Pro did a fine job showing variety of education is double good plus (pardon the Newspeak pun). I think had the debate proceeded this ultimately would have been the deciding factor, that a variety of education improves the population via making them as a whole more complete.

Con did a good job countering given the poor performance of some, and the inability to actually prune the bad ones. I will say that I was unmoved by the appeal to pity that not everyone wins the lottery for them (sorry I've seen this type of thing too much, just because something does not lift up everyone, does not mean it should not be allowed to lift up anyone).

Pennsylvania is a fine point. It runs the risk of cherry picking, but even as a numbers guy, I do relate well to individual cases even while I know it's not everywhere (toss in one or two more bad states, and it would feel like it's not a mere outlier).

The ability to reform was a good defense, even if it was open to being exploited by con via expectations vs. reality (kinda like a proposal to raise taxes to put money into x, sure you can raise taxes, but that does not guarantee the earmarked money will actually go into x).

The wages one was a nice example of a defense which harms the credibility of an opponent. While it leaves an unexplained wage gap (around 3.6%), it isn't a significant one when it was promised to be a huge one.

Sources:
Flipping Rep. Roebuck's appeal from con was well played, when pro already had a significant lead from well utilizing the numerical data points.

Concession, not to mention clear mistakes starting in R2 with the forfeiture, and continuing with lots of minor S&G errors.

Probably a mistake of mine to read this one, much like how Mafia is a waste of time, debating is a waste of time, time itself is a waste of time (there was a classic debate on this topic, remind me if you want me to try to find it).

K:
Pro's opening is largely off topic to the contest, until he does a nice Epistemological Kritik at the end by questioning if it's a mistake to even accept the debate; which con successfully defends saying the rating shift is worth it to him.

Grammarly:
Con uses a website to double check for errors. Pro counters that the website is known to make mistakes, which sadly does not imply that con has made any mistake in using it to double check things. Con goes further by switching to another one in response to the credibility questions of that source.

Other people made mistakes:
Con literally asks my question to this, of how someone else making a mistake would equal con making a mistake

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Con actually made mistakes, but echoing pro's complaints that humans are better than grammarly, it was his human job to identify them. I was left agreeing with pro, but voting con on arguments for a superior job upholding his BoP relative to the resolution.

1. Therefore, spelling and grammar points go to me.
This is a mistake in understanding how those points are gained. Everything except for argument is only for excessive victories within said categories.

2. All I understood from your argument is "I made a grammar mistake,"
That ended a paragraph, so the comma should have been converted into a period.

3.
At the start of R3, con messes up the spacing related to the quotation tool.
See formatting best practices: https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/4536-etiquette-expectations

Concession!

Concession.

Kinda nice to see these paradox debates making a comeback.

The resolution probably should have been 'most likely' instead of will (still, I would not put the BoP beyond the realm of doubt or anything crazy like that).

Still, con did a good job showing there are different skill levels to the debaters, which leaves it more likely than not that one of them will pull it out of the defaulty tied range. Pro of course argued that tied is the default, and it's a non-traditional topic, but this did not even strongly imply the likelihood.

Sources from pro could have greatly improved his case, by showing similar such debates which indeed ended in ties.

Concession.

There's actually some fairly cool stuff you can do with this type of programming.