Total votes: 1,434
For this debate the description which includes "and to the way in which it was carried out" is key to pro's victory. That opens the door to Russia drafting their people and the death toll suffered by them needing to be justified. Without this, he indeed would have been moving the goalpost to off topic areas. As is, it hurts con having tried to dismiss so much, since it leaves them implicitly against his case that he'd even need to try striking them from the record.
Con excels at pushing for the subjective nature of justified, which since BoP is on pro would favor con if we can't say if it's justified or not.
I should say that I get what con was going for with using the USA as a point of comparison, even if it got long winded.
Con also does quite well showing that the invasion didn't happen out of nowhere, there were clearly warning signs. Pro did well against this with building a case for Russia routinely flip flopping (such as how they'd never invade Crimea, and then did just that...).
The Crimea one favored pro, due to having easy access to sources which show that Russia was the baddie in that. I will add that I enjoyed the joke comparison to Kim Jong Un. Con trying to dismiss this and more since the sources are biased against Russia, doesn't close the gap to showing better evidence that Russia was well behaved there. As for Ukraine being against free press, that's not a comparable level of crime, even while it's useful to show that they're no angels.
The pathos appeal issue is an interesting one. Hard to weigh lose of human life in an emotional void. We should be able to at least separate Russia's history of genocide in Ukraine from the current conflict. Of course disagreeing with calling an invasion a full scale invasion seemed quite odd.
Forfeiture.
BoP failure. Con was able to counter everything with the fact that different people have different preferences, and a lack of benefits shown in throwing those out. Pro eventuality brought up STDs, but I could not understand where he was going with it; and there was also something about ho men prefer more experienced partners, which kinda goes against the grain of the resolution. Further con pointed out different sexualities, which invalidates the resolution when considering it would force lesbians to date men.
Also, it wasn’t until R2 that it became clear this about about sex instead of the number of kills.
Need I even say it? Forfeiture
Really like pro's framework opening, setting the stage for an easy to weigh scale.
Defense:
Having T in NATO means T is not with Russia or other enemies. ... Apparently T doubled its trade with Russia since Russia's invasion of Ukraine (a country that was trying to join NATO).
It keeps T and Gr from fighting.
T contributes soldiers and such. ... Apparently T receives more military assistance than they give, which they then use for genocide. ... Wow, pro comes back with other member nations doing war crimes and being supported by T in this as a good thing, and I am buying it (it's evil, but a sound point). Further, T is the second largest contributor. ... And wow wow wow, con comes back with pointing out that maybe the USA should be kicked out too for failing to live up to the values of the organization.
T is allied with ISIS, and can veto new member states joining NATO.
Trade:
T being in NATO helps trade routes. ... Apparently they would likely still trade with Europe, and are trying to get into the EU.
Tradition vs Costs of Kicking T out:
Con does well pointing out the length of time is not too meaningful to the question of continued membership, but pro comes back pointing out how difficult it intuitively would be to kick them out. Pro also points out the harm of the public perception of kicking out a 71 year member state. ... Con defends with a point that for NATO to be meaningful, continued membership should not be guaranteed if you're too far opposed to NATO.
This is damned close until pro's final round.
Con made a really good point that the resolution is not about kicking Turkey out, but a question of the current value in their membership. Until this was said, I did not see the distinction, yet it's a valid one. It's one step less in the conclusions. After this is raised, pro continues to talk about what would happen if T were kicked out, which, I would do the same (it's somewhat mitigated, but it's still on target).
Pro's twisting things with the 1915 genocide, confused me quite a bit for the relevance in the debate, since con had not mentioned said genocide. I was leaning towards making this vote a tie before that, but it's just too desperate of a gambit. Because they have a history of doing bad things, we shouldn't consider the harms to security by them doing more bad things today? That's the best sense of this I can make.
I'm left to consider that their continued presence is more of a hindrance than a benefit; but the cost of kicking them out would fairly likely make it not worth revoking said membership (the points that they're already teaming up with ISIS and Russia, very much favor con).
Full forfeiture.
Good setup regarding what it means for shared BoP.
Pro make a good case that scientists can be mistaken. And then builds that social pressures gagged scientists regarding Covid.
Con builds a case that there's a ton of misinformation, and combatting it is good. He turns the covid point, by showing news media spreading misinformation about it (technically disinformation but this debate seems to treat the terms as synonymous); this bridges into the benefit of fact checking (and connects to earlier points that increased trust in scientific institutions is good).
He goes on to make a good counterpoint about how governments have defunded scientists since long before the term misinformation was in common usage.
Pro then tries to move the goalposts, which is all but an implied concession that the benefits outweigh the harms. To use vacines as an example, if someone started a debate arguing that vaccines are harming people, and then cited the injections being painful and asked all the benefits to be ignored, it'd not hold water. Similarly, with a shared BoP how would the con side even be expected to argue as more than just rebuttals without listing benefits?
They go on to assert that con has not proven false information to be bad to begin with... Honestly, I do not see much potential for the debate to recover.
Pro goes on to add that government funding for science is minor... Kinda stabbing himself in the foot for the political side to this.
Somehow the debate starts talking about Biden...
Con gives a simple and intuitive definition, turns the scientists can be wrong point around since scientists should listen to subject matter authorities, not politicians (who apparently don't really affect their funding) nor media hotheads. He defends the goalposts by pointing out that benefiting scientific progress is the opposite of harm, therefore cost/benefit analysis is valid. He does standard expansions of his stuff and defenses thereof.
Pro tries to double down on benefits to harms not being tied to this debate, and that we can't really know what's true and false anyways...
Arguments:
A debate can and should be held that gagging discussion around covid was a net harm. When applied to the larger topic of science in general, it doesn't come close to comparing to the benefits.
Forfeiture.
Forfeiture
Forfeiture
Forfeiture
More forfeiture.
Forfeiture
pro treated this with video game logic, wherein supply lines do not matter. Con easily countered with Songun nations not feeding their people or their armies. With the focus on Sun Tux’s bit about how best to win at war is to not even fight a traditional conflict shows the most likely tactic Libertarians would take in the opening of said conflict; basically resulting in what we’ve seen over time with North Korea startling themselves.
Pro would have done well to show the Swiss having bad policies which lead to famine, or actual sources which show North Korea never suffered such as he asserted. With sources challenged but challenged so weakly, con is able to take sources with his evidence of North Korea’s great famine in the 90’s.
The accusations against pro seem unfounded, but there is no pro case to weigh.
Apparently they scare cats, which is bad. But Pro did not argue that, con did, so tied.
Con is readily able to show that it would not be a good argument for suicide and other self harm. Pro is able to defend that when it comes specifically to abortion it’s a good argument in that she’s the only person whose choice it is, for the good of herself, her family, etc.
Trying to say it shouldn’t be applied to various other topics, has no weight in its argument for the one; especially as it gives clear educational value in summarizing much of the issue as to if women should have a choice or not
This is an odd one, in that pro seemed to be arguing against the resolution and con for it… still they adapted, and pushed through. She’s mostly a victim yet chooses to harm her friend with continuing. It’s relatable but still clearly wrong and she seems to know it (at least based on the description in this debate, I don’t watch the show)
First off, going to give pro the benefit of doubt. His by comparison to the West should have been in the description; but if Islam isn't shown to be more than Authoritarian by definition (submission to FSM or whatever) then pro wins.
Allah>Everyone else
Pro defends that con is wrong with "Allah>Leaders>Men>Women>Children>Animals" that there is absolutely no hierarchy other than just Allah is over everyone else.
Which potentially makes this really easy, since anything else means it's more authoritarian than just being religious...
Rape:
Pro really needs to grow thicker skin. It's going to come up due to the weak link of a repulsive pedophile founder. I can look at modern Islam as sperate from that piece of shit, just like I can look at modern Christianity as separate from the witch trials.
It's really something to dismiss as no longer relevant, rather than trying to defend that rape isn't rape due to special pleading.
Haram vs Halal:
Con explains that Islam is forced to be authoritarian by creed (mainly the loss of personal freedoms for everyone who isn't Muslim, such as voiding marriages if a Muslim wishes to rape someone's wife right in front of them), even going so far as to declare murder isn't murder due to special pleading, and pro drops this...
Seriously, showing Muslims>everyone else falsifies the Allah>Everyone else dismissal of the authoritarian structure which sometimes places women below animals.
Con extends, and pro declares this was not part of con's argument (if so, then why would he need to bring it up that it wasn't there?).
Conduct for forfeiture.
This debate should have really focused on modern Islamic nations, to show that while they have roots in authoritarianism, it is no longer valid today. A fine example would be the number of Jews serving in their governments (not sure how many, but I know is Israel Muslims have full freedom to serve in government; so by showing a greater percentage in Muslim nations, they should be proven to be less authoritarian than their neighbors).
The focus on weird terminologies for things, puts voters to sleep. Likely why there's been no votes yet in spite of the forfeitures.
Good job to both for making me laugh. Hard to say either really came ahead.
This is really close. I want to give the win to con, largely due to his rational consumer but being dropped by that forfeiture; and yet he didn’t really challenge the oh so weak depression point…
In the end, I find neither case convincing.
Pro could have won this far more quickly with a simple mention of blockades and a source on how much food NK needs to import. Similarly, he should have used cons claim that NK would fire ICBMs are the USA to counter the claim of the populace opposing the war. A bigger mistake was scope creep about what would happen with out her countries.
All that said, it was crystal clear that in most scenarios the USA would dominate. NK cannot even transport troops, so would lose automatically if they’re the aggressor. Their Air Force would be wiped out swiftly if the USA is the aggressor, forcing them to go underground; which would of course be an annoyance but would not assure the survival of the current regime. I could not understand why con was claiming every last soldier must die for victory to be attained; by such a standard Germany would have never been defeated.
I loved the whole "Life pertains to the holistic spectrum of life" argument.
Every sperm is sacred!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk
That said, con committed the not even wrong fallacy. If not storing your sperm in the refrigerator is murder, does not nullify if it's also murder when more advanced in development.
Pro would do well to not argue for the sake of argument when it doesn't support his case. Any attempts to refute con were distractions from his R1 victory.
I thought con was doing ok, until he argued that when talking about AI he wasn't talking about AI. Pro took a bad hit there in not explaining why killing robot people and animals would not be murder (he recovered at the end of that round with pointing out that as a first step we should assign protections to those which most clearly resemble us and are therefore easy to assign protections to) but con could not follow through with even understanding the hint of what he himself was talking about.
Honestly, I want to just assign a legability point to pro due to con not formatting his case at all (not even line breaks after the quotes); but as is, I have to give full victory to pro for the blunders.
I'm also very concerned with the mention of ChatGPT, leading to the strong suspicion that con's argument is plagiarized.
Forfeiture.
Interesting points about sperm, but it was apparently copied from elsewhere.
Reading into R2, and so far it seems to be a copy/paste of another debate...
So definitions: While I find con's to be preferable for seeming like a real definition, for the sake of this debate I am ignoring the explicit legality part (which I am pretty sure their case did not depend on anyways). Very strangely pro gets hung up obsessing over legality...
Con clarifies he is arguing in defense of early abortions, not late abortions. He leverages that an embryo is clearly different from a full grown person, and from a newborn person. That pro is clearly arguing from the point of conception forward, means this is well fitting for this debate (in essence, con concedes abortions from 18 weeks onward). Pro counters with an appeal to ignorance that he doesn't understand that there's any difference.
I do not buy that skin cells are the same as an embryo; however, were we to harm the skin cells of any other organism it would seem to be murder as pro is defining it. They both fell into a habit of repeating themselves on this one. Similar to this, pro says con is wrong and that killing a brainless husk would be full on murder, without expanding upon why. It's basically an appeal to if you wholly agree with them going in, you should continue to, rather than giving reasons to change any minds and offer a convincing argument.
Ok, this gets better near the end with a discussion of consciousness, un-consciousness, and pre-consciousness. Con uses this to pull things back to unintelligent collections of cells (such as skin) not having the morality of murder assigned to their death; he expands with a morality which would make killing a person who is presently unconscious murder whereas scratching skin would not be.
In the end I've got to agree with con, particularly with pro's complete inflexability. When you want to call something literally murder, it's not much to expect to be able to show some level of ill intent. I'm left with an impression that slapping someone else would be murder in pro's world; along with apparently it being ok to kill coma patients who will recover (he got really weird towards to end); that against a consistent morality that we caught to not kill people.
Conduct for forfeiture.
Con was able to show that McDonalds as we know it has an origin story of greed. Pro did little to push back on this, mistaking cons words for a concession.
Exactly what constitutes an origin story is ambiguous. It leaves key events in the distant past as fair game unless there’s a significant reason to rule when the origin must cease.
Interesting debate.
The focus on one rule overrode the topic too much. Were con to have booped in R1, I'd not consider more; but he honored the spirit of the rule in giving a real case.
Still, conduct to pro for the rule violation (even while it was argued pro broke it too, clearly con broke it more).
Needless to say, I do not see a concession in R3. It was more of a throw your hands in the air 'do you want to debate or not?'
I must say I find it weird to try to classify a legal term not in the legal sense. That said, I get it that pro did not want con to just point out that abortion is not illegal.
I do prefer con's offered definition, in large part for the "malice aforethought" which shows why it's different than mere killing, and of course for looking like it came from a dictionary (the legal part being irrelevant for this debate). Whereas pro's definition seems like it was pulled out of a hat, and is complete with pathos appeals (which would make killing of any person aside from Jesus Christ not murder).
I enjoyed pro's joke about two hearts, four arms, etc. While clearly intended to be funny, it gets across the point that the fetus is not merged with the mother at those developmental stages.
I think fish abortions were stretching it too far, even while there's a decent point implied. As highlighted with the ants, we intuitively do not consider the destruction of non-sentient organisms to be murder. This builds with a reference to 14 weeks being the floor for when sentience could begin, and a concession that at such point the morality of abortion changes.
Pro relied too much on the pathos appeal that it's a "baby" rather than defending that the destruction of any unique organism is murder. Pro opted not to defend his points as applying morally in early pregnancy, instead treating all stages of life as identical when they are clearly not (as shown with the behavior, and expanded with the coma examples).
It felt like pro was leaning too much on pathos appeals about how the system discriminates against people who are bad at various aspects of debating, which con was able to counter with it encouraging improvement in those areas.
Were this debate to be on making winner select the default, pro would win. Con pointing out that people opt into the systems made it an uphill battle for wholly doing away with one system mainly because the other is easier for the less able to showcase intelligence.
Some potential harms would win out had con not been able to show benefits. Again, this is a proposal to abolish a system, which needs overwhelming harms, or some harms and a lack of any benefit.
Conduct for forfeiture.
Well played kritik by con, side stepping pro’s case by embracing pro’s definitions (in spite of what pro claimed). It set pro so of balance that he tried to argue that any case wherein the mother does not give consent doesn’t count as abortion (which would self evidently include so many terrible cases).
Pro argued he used weird definitions so he wins.
Con brings up that said definitions include cat abortions, IVF, and more; all cases in which it’s “abortion” but no human being has been killed for it to then be “murder”
I hate this. I am all but voting against myself, as con made almost the exact opening arguments I would make and also that I agree with. The numbers don't lie, intergenerational damage, etc. I'd just toss some jokes in there.
Pro on the other hand uses the spirit of debate to kritik the opposing case as a strawman. The debate setup implies that TS believes he disproved something, and the instigator is saying no he didn't. The problem here is that TS is a scientist who well defined exactly what he was disproving when claiming to have disproved it.
So we're left with disparity, and certainly institutional racism (separate from systemic racism), as seen with such examples as gentrification; but clearly not encoded systems as we see in other countries (the treatment of Native Americans could more easily prove systemic racism exists but they were not leveraged adequately to show more than coincidence).
A way con could have maintained traction would have been to embrace pro's definitions but focus on unwritten laws still being systemic problems. A good example of this is in Minnesota I think it was where they gave massive differences in punishment for cocaine use to blacks vs whites. As was, a competing definition to hold BoP was desperately needed.
“I agree to that definition of News. I agree that SM has successfully destroyed our capacity to comprehend that News has tiers and there are tiers so low they shouldn't qualify as News. You have people competing with actual solid and important News by posting the meal they are eating on the same feed for their friends' brains to absorb the information.”
That vs ‘prove it’ and ‘maybe’ leaves no real contest. In fact future debates on this topic would do well by paraphrasing his words or even directly quoting him.
It was already over before the forfeiture, but conduct for forfeiture
I have more commentary in the comments…
I really suggest redoing this one with clearly defined scope limitations.
So I wholly agree with con but there were too many missteps. The focus on the circle jerk algorithm could have ended in his favor with details of how mainstream news already did that (just macro instead of micro). The stopped crime one could have been linked to traditional media of a news broadcast ending with “call this number for the police if you have any information” rather than the semantics over definitions.
Con did one the increased opportunity for journalists point; however, it must be said that this highlights why the debate should be about news sharing on social media rather than every digital communication means.
Something > Nothing
Lame!!!!!!!
Foregone conclusion.
Seriously, two lines against a real case, and no defenses possible.
Forfeiture.
Forfeiture
Con easily builds a counter case focused on differences including Islams’s direct attacks against the other faiths in question.
Addie, forfeit.
Con made me laugh more.
Had con treated this as a reverse truism, I’d vote against them. Treating it as serious but in a funny manner, that is my type of humor.
The flippers being bad at cellphones, with pictures of them really helped. As did the question if pro may have photoshopped their photos… I’m thinking pro is most likely actually a narwhal.
I need to see this movie!
I think con was ahead with the investigative flaws before he dropped that, pros statement echoed his fears too well: “So long as the Source Code is used only as a tool to amplify investigating and doesn't substitute or become a crutch, I anticipate there will be more pros than potential cons.”
The view that killing people we won’t see again is ok so long as there are no consequences for us, is quite scary.
The view that the government would use the tech well, as opposed to twisting it into a tool for the CIA’s dark underbelly, seems like very wishful thinking. Same government who did all those crimes, and punished no one for them.
So ethically it is really best for the multiverse if the tech is not developed. President Kang would disagree but he’s not the one casting a vote in this universe.