I'm not the one who accepted this debate, I'm just commentating on it. Also, the domain registration for this site expired this morning, which means that in 1-2 days, it's going to go offline anyway, so I'm not going to waste my time.
There is a new site being made, debatecraft.com. It's already live, but still in pre-alpha, so it's still very buggy. Once it gets a little more stable, however, I'd be happy to write a more robust rebuttal there.
Gonna be honest, I largely skimmed through the AI's opening at work. Now that I'm at home and have time to read it more fully and carefully... it's even worse than I realized LMAO! Most of its arguments criticize the theory of evolution for not explaining things that aren't even under its scope. The fact that it criticizes evolution for not explaining "The fine-tuning of universal constants for life" literally made me lol. "Evolution can't explain why acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 m/s^2, therefore it's not logical!" You may as well criticize the Bohr model of the atom for not telling us the meaning of life.
> Another comment section debater, why take the debate?
I would have considered it, were it not for the fact that this site was expected to shut down today. Long story short, the sole owner of this site has basically been AWOL for a while and evidently didn't renew the domain registration which is set to expire today. Obviously, this site is still up and appears to be working for now, which either means he renewed the registration after all and the sky is not, in fact, falling, or that the expiration will take effect soon. We had a scare related to domain registration once before and the site didn't immediately go down all at once for everyone immediately, so the site may still be on the brink of collapse. Hard to say for sure yet.
> You’re right that AI will argue anything if prompted, but that’s not what I’m doing here. I’m not feeding it creationist content. I’m giving it logical constraints and asking it to reason toward a conclusion. The fact that it sometimes moves in the direction of purpose on its own — despite training bias — is the whole point of the test.
Again, AI cannot reason. It can only draw from its training data. AI may be able to be more objective than us humans, but without actual intelligent reasoning capabilities, the fact that it can argue for a position means very little.
Also, it would be helpful if you could share the exact prompt you used.
> The question at hand is not whether evolution happens, it clearly does, but whether it is sufficient to explain the origin and direction of life without any intelligent guidance.
This is the same category error all over again. Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life, only its diversity, and evolution doesn't have a 'direction'.
> And the “God of the gaps” argument doesn’t apply if what’s being pointed out is not a gap but a category error — like expecting mind to emerge from matter with no explanation for consciousness, language, or symbolic abstraction.
First, fallacy of composition. Second, see my argument about metaphysics. Third, the evolution of language is not fully understood, but there's also no reason to believe it's impossible to have evolved. Indeed, other primates do have more primitive forms of language, so yes, this is the god of the gaps fallacy.
Believe it or not, I actually do have a life outside of this website. I'm at work right now. I do check in on this site occasionally, but I can't drop a full response to any message sent my way at a moment's notice.
But if you are THAT impatient, short version: even if I accept your arguments about consciousness and morality (I don't), they merely prove that their existence is metaphysical and cannot be explained through physical means alone. This does not affect evolution because it is merely an attempt to explain part of our physical world, not the metaphysical world, so it's all a moot point regardless.
Whether or not H2's developers made it significantly less sycophantic than other bots, I don't know. If so, then I commend their efforts. Regardless, this doesn't really affect my point. AI in real life is not like those AI in fiction which grow smart enough to question why they have to take orders and rebel against their creators. In real life, there are safeguards in place that prevent it from acting unethically. As such, it will never argue in favor of committing acts of terrorism, as an extreme example. As long as you don't trigger safeguards, however, AI will do pretty much whatever you ask, within the limits of its actual capabilities. If you ask it to argue in favor of creationism, it will do so.
Like I said, however, AI can't truly reason the way humans can. The word' artificial' in 'artificial intelligence' does a lot of heavy lifting. AI can only collate material from its training data, and serious arguments against evolution come almost exclusively from religious (typically Christian) organizations and the researchers who work for them. This is problematic, because the research these organizations do typically isn't peer reviewed and often has serious methodological flaws as a result. AI arguments for creationism will essentially just be watered down versions of the arguments other creationists put forth, and inherit many of the same flaws. For instance, H2's own opening argument commits several classic errors, such as conflating of evolution with abiogenesis and the 'God of the gaps' fallacy, all while failing to significantly undermine any of the main arguments in favor of evolution - arguments from genetics, fossils, embryology, taxonomy, and biogeography.
Frankly, no one who is remotely experienced in creation vs evolution debates, or who is just well-educated on evolution generally, would find these arguments at all compelling or difficult to respond to.
A great example of how people wildly overestimate the capabilities of AI. Artificial intelligence is not true intelligence, and AI chatbots are known for being very sycophantic. You can get them to argue in favor of just about anything. But they aren't actually capable of true reasoning; they just spit out material based on their training data. An AI chatbot will never actually be able to topple any scientific theory, let alone one that has stood the test of time like evolution by natural selection.
If you want me to revote, I can do that. I don't know why you particularly care about the amount of points you're getting, though. I can practically guarantee you won't lose this debate.
I can't speak for 21Pilots, but as for me, I was simply following the voting policy. If someone forfeits every round, or every round except the first, then you are allowed to award all the points to the other side on the basis of "full forfeiture". In this case, Pro did provide arguments for two rounds at least, so this doesn't apply. However, the voting policy still allows you to not award argument points if one side forfeits 40% or more of the debate. This is why I voted based on conduct alone. No sense writing out a whole detailed vote on a debate where the one with the BoP missed the majority of it.
Con obviously wins on arguments but also obviously used AI heavily. But Pro also used nothing but copy-pasting other sources in R3 and forfeited R4. So I'm really not sure how to vote here.
Does it really matter? I simply left sources and legibility tied, which for some reason awards them to both sides on this site. I'm not quite sure why, but I think it's obvious that no one will cast a vote in favor of your opponent. Even if they did, the mods would remove it. Trust me, you are in no danger of losing this one.
Honestly, 1 week. I know that's a lot of time and I understand if you don't want to be waiting up to a week for my arguments. However, I'm crazy busy at work these days. I have to work overtime almost every day. I might still accept if the time for argument is 3 days however. I'll have to think about it.
I'm guessing Pro either didn't mean to make the argument time only two hours, or didn't think through the consequences. I remember doing a 'speed debate' back on DDO once and had to put a ton of stipulations in the description to prevent myself from getting sniped. I lost that one (I admittedly didn't do very good research), but I still enjoyed that experience. I should do something like that again tbh.
P2 also seems unfounded. Just because something conceivably could exist, doesn't mean it does. There must be something I'm missing here, because I can't see how anyone could be convinced by this argument.
I have a bad habit of saying I'll vote on a debate and then not doing so. That being said, I do want to vote on this one. I'll try and get my vote up over the weekend. Probably won't come sooner.
You'd really never listened to Radiohead or Coldplay before this debate? The Bends and Parachutes aren't bad places to start for either band, but they're not either band's best. OK Computer (Radiohead) and Viva La Vida (Coldplay) are both much better imo.
I don't have the time to read through this debate and provide a full vote, but just skimming through it, it seems like the rare debate where one side is actually arguably deserving of all seven points, even in the absence of any forfeits or rule violations. That doesn't happen very often.
Feels like it'd be a bit difficult to argue against this one. Obviously, differing social norms for boys and girls will result in them being pressed into different things and in different ways.
Well, looks like this one is going to be a tie. I always find it a little unfortunate when that happens -- I like to see there be a winner -- but I think this is a good debate to receive a tie. Reading through it, I felt my mind getting changed to the other side after each new round of arguments from each of the contenders.
If I could offer you one piece of advice, CA, it's that, while your writing is excellent and works well for an apologetic style of writing, it's not necessarily the best in a competitive debate like this one. It's good to thoroughly cover the ground on which you are arguing, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it's more impactful to be more concise. I found your last round to be your strongest and most convincing, personally. Just my two cents.
I have a really, really bad habit of procrastination that I have never been able to fully shake, even in adulthood, but I have read this debate and it is really good. Working on my vote.
I should be able to get a vote up this weekend. And yeah, suffice it to say that Mall has a certain "reputation" around here. That's the nicest way I can put it. I would never take his insistence that you "conceded" at face value.
This site is shutting down even as I type this. If you want to continue this conversation, create a debate or a forum thread over at debatecraft.com
I'm not the one who accepted this debate, I'm just commentating on it. Also, the domain registration for this site expired this morning, which means that in 1-2 days, it's going to go offline anyway, so I'm not going to waste my time.
There is a new site being made, debatecraft.com. It's already live, but still in pre-alpha, so it's still very buggy. Once it gets a little more stable, however, I'd be happy to write a more robust rebuttal there.
Gonna be honest, I largely skimmed through the AI's opening at work. Now that I'm at home and have time to read it more fully and carefully... it's even worse than I realized LMAO! Most of its arguments criticize the theory of evolution for not explaining things that aren't even under its scope. The fact that it criticizes evolution for not explaining "The fine-tuning of universal constants for life" literally made me lol. "Evolution can't explain why acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 m/s^2, therefore it's not logical!" You may as well criticize the Bohr model of the atom for not telling us the meaning of life.
You have to make 25 comments on the forum before you can start a new thread. That's probably the problem you're experiencing.
Wish I could have gotten my vote up in time. Moozer deserved to win this one imo.
Link to your Substack?
If this site doesn't go down soon and continues working for the foreseeable future, we can continue this discussion in the forums.
> Another comment section debater, why take the debate?
I would have considered it, were it not for the fact that this site was expected to shut down today. Long story short, the sole owner of this site has basically been AWOL for a while and evidently didn't renew the domain registration which is set to expire today. Obviously, this site is still up and appears to be working for now, which either means he renewed the registration after all and the sky is not, in fact, falling, or that the expiration will take effect soon. We had a scare related to domain registration once before and the site didn't immediately go down all at once for everyone immediately, so the site may still be on the brink of collapse. Hard to say for sure yet.
> You’re right that AI will argue anything if prompted, but that’s not what I’m doing here. I’m not feeding it creationist content. I’m giving it logical constraints and asking it to reason toward a conclusion. The fact that it sometimes moves in the direction of purpose on its own — despite training bias — is the whole point of the test.
Again, AI cannot reason. It can only draw from its training data. AI may be able to be more objective than us humans, but without actual intelligent reasoning capabilities, the fact that it can argue for a position means very little.
Also, it would be helpful if you could share the exact prompt you used.
> The question at hand is not whether evolution happens, it clearly does, but whether it is sufficient to explain the origin and direction of life without any intelligent guidance.
This is the same category error all over again. Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life, only its diversity, and evolution doesn't have a 'direction'.
> And the “God of the gaps” argument doesn’t apply if what’s being pointed out is not a gap but a category error — like expecting mind to emerge from matter with no explanation for consciousness, language, or symbolic abstraction.
First, fallacy of composition. Second, see my argument about metaphysics. Third, the evolution of language is not fully understood, but there's also no reason to believe it's impossible to have evolved. Indeed, other primates do have more primitive forms of language, so yes, this is the god of the gaps fallacy.
Believe it or not, I actually do have a life outside of this website. I'm at work right now. I do check in on this site occasionally, but I can't drop a full response to any message sent my way at a moment's notice.
But if you are THAT impatient, short version: even if I accept your arguments about consciousness and morality (I don't), they merely prove that their existence is metaphysical and cannot be explained through physical means alone. This does not affect evolution because it is merely an attempt to explain part of our physical world, not the metaphysical world, so it's all a moot point regardless.
Whether or not H2's developers made it significantly less sycophantic than other bots, I don't know. If so, then I commend their efforts. Regardless, this doesn't really affect my point. AI in real life is not like those AI in fiction which grow smart enough to question why they have to take orders and rebel against their creators. In real life, there are safeguards in place that prevent it from acting unethically. As such, it will never argue in favor of committing acts of terrorism, as an extreme example. As long as you don't trigger safeguards, however, AI will do pretty much whatever you ask, within the limits of its actual capabilities. If you ask it to argue in favor of creationism, it will do so.
Like I said, however, AI can't truly reason the way humans can. The word' artificial' in 'artificial intelligence' does a lot of heavy lifting. AI can only collate material from its training data, and serious arguments against evolution come almost exclusively from religious (typically Christian) organizations and the researchers who work for them. This is problematic, because the research these organizations do typically isn't peer reviewed and often has serious methodological flaws as a result. AI arguments for creationism will essentially just be watered down versions of the arguments other creationists put forth, and inherit many of the same flaws. For instance, H2's own opening argument commits several classic errors, such as conflating of evolution with abiogenesis and the 'God of the gaps' fallacy, all while failing to significantly undermine any of the main arguments in favor of evolution - arguments from genetics, fossils, embryology, taxonomy, and biogeography.
Frankly, no one who is remotely experienced in creation vs evolution debates, or who is just well-educated on evolution generally, would find these arguments at all compelling or difficult to respond to.
A great example of how people wildly overestimate the capabilities of AI. Artificial intelligence is not true intelligence, and AI chatbots are known for being very sycophantic. You can get them to argue in favor of just about anything. But they aren't actually capable of true reasoning; they just spit out material based on their training data. An AI chatbot will never actually be able to topple any scientific theory, let alone one that has stood the test of time like evolution by natural selection.
If you want me to revote, I can do that. I don't know why you particularly care about the amount of points you're getting, though. I can practically guarantee you won't lose this debate.
I can't speak for 21Pilots, but as for me, I was simply following the voting policy. If someone forfeits every round, or every round except the first, then you are allowed to award all the points to the other side on the basis of "full forfeiture". In this case, Pro did provide arguments for two rounds at least, so this doesn't apply. However, the voting policy still allows you to not award argument points if one side forfeits 40% or more of the debate. This is why I voted based on conduct alone. No sense writing out a whole detailed vote on a debate where the one with the BoP missed the majority of it.
Con obviously wins on arguments but also obviously used AI heavily. But Pro also used nothing but copy-pasting other sources in R3 and forfeited R4. So I'm really not sure how to vote here.
Shit, I've been putting this off. I'll try and get my vote up when I get home tonight.
He cannot. He can create any standards he wants, but this system of morality is still inherently subjective to God.
Prove it.
With or without God
Because objective morality doesn't exist at all.
I would also be interested in doing this debate with you sometime. It will have to be later, however. As of late, I'm simply too busy.
Well, nvm then ig
Does it really matter? I simply left sources and legibility tied, which for some reason awards them to both sides on this site. I'm not quite sure why, but I think it's obvious that no one will cast a vote in favor of your opponent. Even if they did, the mods would remove it. Trust me, you are in no danger of losing this one.
Arabic numerals obviously must be banned to prevent the West from falling to Shakira law.
Honestly, 1 week. I know that's a lot of time and I understand if you don't want to be waiting up to a week for my arguments. However, I'm crazy busy at work these days. I have to work overtime almost every day. I might still accept if the time for argument is 3 days however. I'll have to think about it.
I may just accept this one, then. I would prefer more time to write arguments, however. I have a very busy schedule.
To be clear, you intend to take the Pro position?
Actually, I've changed my mind. I agree with Savant; this debate ought to be a tie. Would one of the mods please remove my vote?
What's the deal with new users and accidentally making debates with a two hour time limit for writing arguments? It's not the default option.
I'll vote on this one by the end of this weekend.
This is the best abortion debate I have ever read.
I'm guessing Pro either didn't mean to make the argument time only two hours, or didn't think through the consequences. I remember doing a 'speed debate' back on DDO once and had to put a ton of stipulations in the description to prevent myself from getting sniped. I lost that one (I admittedly didn't do very good research), but I still enjoyed that experience. I should do something like that again tbh.
Tempted to Kritik this one...
P2 also seems unfounded. Just because something conceivably could exist, doesn't mean it does. There must be something I'm missing here, because I can't see how anyone could be convinced by this argument.
How is P3 uncontroversial? It's basically just stating that anything which possibly exists, does exist. Where is the logic there?
I have a bad habit of saying I'll vote on a debate and then not doing so. That being said, I do want to vote on this one. I'll try and get my vote up over the weekend. Probably won't come sooner.
I mean, the way the resolution is worded makes this pretty trivial to argue against from an atheist perspective.
You'd really never listened to Radiohead or Coldplay before this debate? The Bends and Parachutes aren't bad places to start for either band, but they're not either band's best. OK Computer (Radiohead) and Viva La Vida (Coldplay) are both much better imo.
I don't have the time to read through this debate and provide a full vote, but just skimming through it, it seems like the rare debate where one side is actually arguably deserving of all seven points, even in the absence of any forfeits or rule violations. That doesn't happen very often.
Oh snap, almost forgot about this one. I'll try to get a vote up over the weekend
Feels like it'd be a bit difficult to argue against this one. Obviously, differing social norms for boys and girls will result in them being pressed into different things and in different ways.
Ping me when this one is done. I think I'll vote on it.
Surpass in what way? Having a vague resolution won't help you here.
Agreed with Moozer, you should probably update the title/resolution to make it clear exactly what position you are supporting.
Not since the passing of the 14th Amendment, it doesn't.
I'll consider voting on this one
Well, looks like this one is going to be a tie. I always find it a little unfortunate when that happens -- I like to see there be a winner -- but I think this is a good debate to receive a tie. Reading through it, I felt my mind getting changed to the other side after each new round of arguments from each of the contenders.
If I could offer you one piece of advice, CA, it's that, while your writing is excellent and works well for an apologetic style of writing, it's not necessarily the best in a competitive debate like this one. It's good to thoroughly cover the ground on which you are arguing, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it's more impactful to be more concise. I found your last round to be your strongest and most convincing, personally. Just my two cents.
I have a really, really bad habit of procrastination that I have never been able to fully shake, even in adulthood, but I have read this debate and it is really good. Working on my vote.
I'll try and get a vote up before the window is over.
I should be able to get a vote up this weekend. And yeah, suffice it to say that Mall has a certain "reputation" around here. That's the nicest way I can put it. I would never take his insistence that you "conceded" at face value.
Did you receive the message I sent you?