Total votes: 16
Full forfeit.
I just want to open by saying that I have absolutely nothing against either debates and that particularly for Barney, I have nothing but respect for the contributions you have made in this site. Of course, debates ought not be awarded to who we respect, but rather who articulated better arguments.
Burden:
From the get go Vici establishes the Chaos state as the proof for a burden shift towards his opposition. For Barney to accept this is an absolutely terrible decision . It means that I must enter the debate judging Barney as if he were a new user, and then assessing whether the proofs he provides are sufficient in elevating him to "good" status (they could have just cited Wikipedia and asserted that Vici was the claim maker and quite convincingly threw the burden back). Even though a lot of us see Barney as "good", it is actually very difficult to establish what qualities contribute to "good" in a quantitative manner in the given character limit.
Metrics:
Vici provides the combined record analyses as his means for judging whether a debater is good, whilst taking note to emphasise why it is superior to the traditional elo and leaderboard system - "more difficult to find 10 bad opponents who've won 100 times than to snipe 100 people". I find this system problematic, but nonetheless far more capable than the traditional system. Note that if this argument is successful, two of Barney's contentions are nullified. Barney has some scattered rebuttals - he says that Vici cites the later records of his opponents rather than what they were, but Vici's reply of the boxer seems sufficient to me.
The "controversial" rule in the descriptions:
I was drawn to this debate quite frankly because of the abhorrent quality of the other votes (sorry), especially the ones which deducted arguments on the basis of the alleged "rule" in the description. This is entirely unconvincing. First, from a logical standpoint, Vici provides sound reason as to why we ought accept universal definitions with the example of the public speaker - that if someone asks "are you a good speaker, answer whilst only considering X website", it is clear that "consider" implies that we ought derive sources from only the website as opposed to any other source, not that we ought to define the term "'speaker". Obviously, all definitions are outside of this site (no such thing as a debateart owned definition) so it is entirely logical to derive definitions from a dictionary. Those who argue that "Vici must prove that Barney is a not good debater within the standards of this site" have terribly misunderstood the definition of "debater" and ought to bear the burden of conjuring any source which indicates that "good debater" refers explicitly to this narrow definition. Secondly, from just an emotional intelligence perspective, when Vici says "we only consider debateart because debate.org is gone and we don't know about it" it is clear that they mean that we ought derive sources, as debate.org was mentioned as a prohibited (clearly indicating that Barney's record from there cannot be utilised).
Overall arguments:
The argument comes down to Vici's metric, which acts as a preemptive rebuttal to Barney's entire case. Barney's refutations of it were not sufficient and amounted to poking holes at it instead of attacking it's essence. Furthermore, that Barney took up the entire burden meant that even if Vici's metric was disproved, he would be left at square one, for it is his burden to build bottom up a case why he is good (simply refuting the metric would have left him as the status quo 1500 debater). I mean this with absolutely zero disrespect, but in my opinion, this is a clear cut argument point allocation to Vici from me.
Source:
Equal. That Barney sites common sense claims (his profile, the leaderboard) does not constitute a point awarded.
The crucial contention in the debate is one which lies far from the topical stipulations. We can all agree that, in the intended debate regarding the moral aspects of animals, Novice_II clearly wins - however, this was not how the contest panned out. Oromagi opts to instead critique the fundamentals of the instigator's case, by exposing that the definition results in a tautological impossibility. It’s a risky strategy - let’s see if it pays off.
R1. PRO
Nothing which will be substantive in the overall decision is said here because Oromagi will undermine the entire argument. Thus, I need not make any comment.
R1. CON
Nothing much needs to be said here either - CON establishes the beginning of their Kritik - that the term “another” implies “in addition”, which further implies that according to the provided definitions, slavery is that which must include at least two agents. Thus, the rest of the instigators case is null, for they apply to animals as opposed to “another” human being.
R2. PRO
PRO responds compellingly here (personally, I had thought the debate was over already and that CON had won). They argue that “person” refers to “that who has personhood” and further compliments this by showing examples, where in the traditional definition of “person” is insufficient (ie, the abortion debate is one where “person” is in contention, there was once a time when the status of African’s or Jew’s were questioned etc).
R2. CON
CON replies by arguing that PRO’s definitions fall prey to the stipulative fallacy, wherein the ambiguous defining of a term is done so in order to bolster one’s own argument. They also claim that PRO does not use the most common of definitions. I don’t buy this - if it were the case that we can only use surface level definitions, debates regarding abortion and the rights of minorities could never be accelerated, as PRO observes in both rounds.
R3. PRO
Much of the same here, though PRO adds that CON’s reliance on “common sense” defines an argument from incredulity. I buy this - once upon a time, common sense determined the subjugation of African Americans, a point which PRO made in the prior round and also supplements when stipulating “ When discussing ethical issues regarding how we ought to treat entities, we discuss whether or not these entities are persons”
R3. CON
CON refutes the charges of an appeal to incredulity by arguing that the definitions are not “common place”, but this is exactly what PRO had charged as being an appeal to incredulity - the sentiment that “we ought use the common place definition” is exactly what PRO described as being incredulous. Furthermore, critiquing the notion that the "personhood" doctrine is uncommon isn't actually an engagement with the argument, merely a stipulation that it isn't very common (might I add as an example that it was once uncommon to hold that African Americans had rights). CON could have very easily argued that animals do not qualify for moral calculation, however, they did not.
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Overview of arguments
CON's entire argument is that PRO does not conform to most dictionaries. In a clearly philosophical debate, it is clear you must do more than this (e.g. arguing abortion is wrong because it is illegal is akin to this level of argumentation). PRO correctly argues that, adopting the narrow view of CON's case, we would never have been able to further the rights of Africans and Jews, or have any dialectic in the abortion debate. CON could have won the debate if they had invested more into the moral aspect, as they did in round two, but it must be admitted that the majority of their case is semantics, and as the semantics was nullified by PRO's personhood doctrine, the argument is neutralised and the rest of PRO's arguments go untouched. Like Whiteflames said, it is clear that in a debate like this, crucial terms like "person" are up for grabs (especially in a distinctly morally grounded debate) , and I ultimately favoured the engagement of the personhood definition when compared to the regurgitation of dictionaries.
Conduct
I don’t appreciate that CON hinges their entire argument on semantical grounds - a kritik here and there as a supplementary riddle for the opponent to address is fine, but when you base your entire case on semantics, it’s quite annoying. Nonetheless, my personal dissatisfaction does not constitute enough of a justification to deduct a conduct point.
As per the voting policy (https://info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy)
"Repeated forfeitures waives the need to consider arguments (you still may, but by the choice of one side to miss at least 40% of the debate, the requirement ceases. And yes, this does apply to Choose Winner, which otherwise would not allow conduct to be the sole determinant)."
No arguments to be considered.
What intel said. Good job deadfire!
Obviously.
Nothing was achieved. .
Full forfeit.
Nothing was achieved.
Fully forfeited.
Half forfeited, leaving CON's case undisputed.
Full forfeit
No rebuttal was made.
Concession
I speculate whether the two debaters actually know each other....