Total votes: 13
I'll begin by checking in my baggage: I am pretty hostile to semantic maneuvering that undermines the clear intent of a debate. For that reason, I was predisposed against Con's argument that free market economies - or (sigh) free market *based* economies - do not exist. It is very obvious what Pro meant when establishing this debate; instigating a debate around labels is juvenile.
Regardless, the debate did revolve around whether or not free market based economies exist. If they did, Pro had sources reporting the expert consensus in his favor. If they did not exist, well, the point would be moot.
It was a good move for Pro to highlight the "based" part of free market based, as it allowed him to include regulated capitalist economies (i.e. literally almost every economy on the planet) in his case, instead of purely "free" market economies (of which none exist). Con took up the "based" challenge by appealing to capitalism's historical roots in mercantilism and monarchical command economies. While the thread does trace its way back there, I think Pro did well to point out that mercantilism is defunct and the core principles of free markets form the foundation of all modern economies, which he defines as "free market based."
At this point, the debate was close enough that Con could have pulled off a win in the final round, depending on how he played his cards. But the forfeit simplifies matters, leaving Pro on top.
I should also note that the general tone of the debate was acidic, unsportsmanlike, particularly on Con's part. Had Con not conceded, I would still have considered docking conduct. But, again, the forfeiture simplifies matters, transforming a borderline case into a clear case.
Pro comprehensively established the utilitarian benefits of indefinite mask mandates, demonstrating the reduction in illness and deaths that would result. Con conceded the utilitarian benefits, but responded with objections concerning oppression/freedom, psychological distress, and preferring vaccine mandates as an alternative.
Pro's response to these objections was to reframe the oppression question into something less dramatic and thus more beneficial to their case, disputed the psychological distress inherent in masking, and poked holes in the efficacy of vaccines. While neither Con's objections nor Pro's replies were slam dunks, in my opinion, Pro held the line here, casting doubt on Con's objections. After Pro's R2, I lean Pro, as their utilitarian case is highly substantiated, while Con's objections (which had no sources to back them) and Pro's counters left a stalemate.
Given that Con forfeited the final 2 rounds, whatever ambiguity as to who was winning disappeared.
Forfeiture
I believe Pro met their burden of proof, but they could have done better. Here is my assessment of the major points of contention:
Should the debate be restricted to humans?
-Firstly, I'd like to point out that Con should have defined this when they set up the debate. As a voter, I would rather read substantive arguments over the issue at hand rather than read a battle over definitions. Do the legwork when setting up a debate to avoid unnecessary definition battles. That being said, Pro demonstrated that sex is usually referred to as between humans, but not always. Thus, Pro is justified in extending the scope of this debate to all organisms that sexually reproduce.
Pro's opening arguments.
-Both of Pro's opening arguments were solid and remained solid by the time the debate had concluded. That reproduction enables survival is a no-brainer, and Pro takes advantage of this. As stated previously, Pro defends his extension of the debate to include all organisms, so his second argument is solid as well.
Con's prevalence=importance argument.
-As I understood it, Con argued that because so many people have sex for pleasure, pleasure is the most important role for sex. Pro countered by saying that happiness does not equal importance, which is ok, but I think Pro missed the true weakness in Con's argument. Why should prevalence equal importance? This implicit assumption is not defended by Con and is not attacked by Pro.
Conclusion: Though Pro could have done a better job countering Con's only positive argument, Pro still succeeded to a great enough degree in all the areas of contention for him to secure points for arguments.
Additional note: Con, if you set up a 2-round debate, and you put yourself in the underdog position (as you clearly did here), the last thing you should do is voluntarily waive a round. The fact that your opponent got the last word only made your decision to waive all the more devastating for your cause.
A dead tie. I'm not a big fan of it, especially after reading a lengthy debate like this, but that's my honest assessment.
Here are my assessments of the major points of contention:
POE - A solid opening argument for Pro. After reading his outline of POE, I believed Pro had done a decent job of demonstrating that the Christian God, as defined, is a logical contradiction. Presumably, this means he doesn't exist. I awaited Con's reply, as I could imagine some ways to counter. To my understanding, Con essentially offered two defenses: 1) God has decided not to violate our free will. 2) Evil needs to exist for good to exist. There were problems with both of these, both in terms of execution and logic. With respect to execution, in the case of #1, Con alternated between describing God as incapable of violating our free will and unwilling to. The difference is enormous in the context of POE. With respect to logic, in the case of #2, I wonder why there needs to be so much evil in the world. Can't we get just the minimum amount necessary to establish the existence of good via contrast? Despite my issues with Con's counters, Pro had no reply, so I have to consider POE to be a virtual draw.
ABD - I had a problem with this from the start. Pro asserts that if God exists, the Bible would not have the appearance of flawed human authorship. Says who? Con eventually offered some less-than-clear rebuttals to this, which was sufficient for me to consider this a draw as well. If Pro had participated in the debate more meaningfully, this (as well as other areas of contention) may have yet worked out for him.
Faith as a 6th Sense - Con tried to argue that since some animals have senses we humans don't, maybe we have a special 6th sense: faith. A review of my notes indicates Pro didn't address this, but frankly, he didn't need to. At best, this argument establishes the possibility that Faith is a 6th sense. But it fails to prove that it is a 6th sense. This argument fails to assist Con in meeting his BoP.
Faith and Evidence/Evidence through Faith - The center of Con's argument seemed to hinge on that handy passage from the BoM where they basically say "close your eyes, and if you want to believe, you will!" Confirmation bias at its finest. Again, Pro didn't respond to this besides trying to say BoM was off-limits in the debate, but that didn't really matter to me. This is such an obviously flawed argument that I won't award Con any credit for it, even if his opponent failed to mount a meaningful counterattack.
For these reasons, arguments are a tie. Con prevented Pro from meeting his burden of proof, while Con's arguments were prima facie unable to meet his burden.
Con prevented Pro from meeting his burden of proof as the claimant. Con points out that setting up this debate and making a gibberish argument is smart, in a way. Obviously, another way to look at the matter is that this debate is a colossal waste of time and energy, thus making it stupid.
But since Pro didn't do much work to make me prefer the latter interpretation over the former, he fails to meet the burden of proof. Con wins.
See comments.
CONDUCT - I know Con forfeited two rounds, but Pro's behavior was totally unsportsmanlike. Opening R1 by taking something his opponent said in another debate was sophomoric and a borderline ad hominem attack. It does not matter what a debater has said outside of the debate they are participating in. Additionally, Pro's writing is rude, to put it mildly.
ARGUMENTS - Because Con didn't participate much, many of Pro's points were left unchallenged. For example, Pro convinced me that his definition of omnipotence should be favored over the version Con proposed. Had Con offered a rebuttal, I might have been brought back around to Con's side. But that didn't happen. Same story with Pro's examples of logical contradictions. Perhaps Con could have solved or rebutted them, but without any attempt, the arguments stand in Pro's favor.
Conduct to Pro, as Con made blatantly bad-faith arguments that completely subverted the intent of the debate. Pro wanted to have a debate about a particular football player. Con knew this. Con decided to exploit a failure to define to goat, thus turning the debate on its head.
Other voters may believe Con's behavior was acceptable, as Pro simply should offer better definitions. I think Pro should have defined GOAT, to be sure, but that does not justify Con's decision to intentionally make bad-faith arguments. Simply put, Con's actions were petty and unsportsmanlike.
Arguments - Pro opened with a simple argument about democratic rights and enfranchisement. It was not the most sophisticated or in-depth argument I've ever seen on the subject of territory statehood matters, but it was adequate. Con responded by suggesting that granting PR statehood would lead to its increased exploitation. Con used examples like US neglect of PR during Hurricane Maria to support this. Unfortunately, these supporting examples failed to support because Con failed to link them to his original claim. In the case of Hurricane Maria, he points out that the US neglected PR, but he fails to show how granting PR statehood would make situations like this worse. For these reasons, I give arguments to Pro.
Sources - Pro
Pro's sources are decent (although I recommend using the sources within Wikipedia instead of Wikipedia itself), but the main reason sources are going to Pro is because Con made several statements that should have been validated by a source, but were not. For example, he asserted the US was engaged in forced sterilization of PR women, but provided no evidence to back the claim up. Essentially, Con lost sources, rather than Pro winning sources.
Extra comment: Pro, your opening round was filled with too much debate groundwork (definitions, burdens, basic description of PR status quo). That stuff should go in your debate description, for two reasons. One, it allows you to devote more characters to substantive argument in R1. Two, it allows prospective opponents to have a clear idea of what they're getting themselves into before joining. Just my two cents.
Arguments -
According to the debate description, Pro was to advocate for Hedonism over Con's chosen philosophy, and Con was to advocate for their chosen philosophy over Hedonism. In the end, both sides did a better job of savaging their opponent's philosophy than defending their own.
Con dealt what I consider to be a killing blow to Hedonism by pointing out that, for some individuals, committing horrible acts they enjoy would be in line with Hedonism. Pro attempted to counter by saying most people get pleasure from being good (essentially), but this does not negate the fact that Hedonism implicitly endorses murder if it makes the murderer happy. Since Pro fails to defend this position, Hedonism is sunk.
Pro, for their part, tore "HBOY" apart, and Con never managed to put the pieces back together. Pro's observation that HBOY runs into internal contradictions was a good start. Con pushed back by saying that HBOY merely requires you to *try* to help yourself and others, but without defining the limits and application of this injunction, it's unclear exactly how one is to live according to the principles of HBOY.
In sum, we have two defeated philosophies and no clear winner, at least in terms of arguments.
Sources and S&G -
Both are fine. At no point did I feel that sources were essential to this debate.
Conduct -
Con forfeited R1, thus, conduct goes to Pro.
Arguments - Pro puts forth reasons to value space exploration that are of varying quality. Perhaps the highest quality argument relates to the benefits of satellites (how they help us on Earth). However, this doesn't really explain why we should advance space exploration. Will we get better at predicting disasters on Earth? Maybe one could presume this, but Pro does not articulate this idea. As such, this is only a point in favor of the status quo, not advancement. Some of Pro's other points, such as those about asteroid mining exploitation, lack data. Since asteroid mining is an economic proposition, Pro should be able to present a cost-benefit analysis that favors him. He does not do this, so the point lacks oomph. This is overall emblematic of Pro's argumentation throughout: a good seed of an idea, but a failure to successfully follow through in support of his position.
Arguments - Con's argument boils down to opportunity cost. Con argues that all the resources - financial and otherwise - that are devoted to space exploration would be better spent elsewhere, or could be spent just as well elsewhere. In essence, Con relies on counterfactuals about resources. "If we took x away from NASA and put it toward y, we would benefit." However, without much data to support such arguments, I remain unconvinced. In R1 Con factored in infrastructure spending ROI to suggest we could beneficially put all space exploration funding into infrastructure, but Pro's rebuttal with the $10 ROI killed that point.
Arguments - In sum, I feel neither side did enough to tip the scale in their favor. Pro had some interesting points that could have gone far with more data and detailed argumentation. Con relied on counterfactuals that generally failed due to a lack of convincing data.
The rest - You both did fine with sources. Pro, your S&G was worse, but not so bad that I feel I should award it to Con. Regardless, if you don't proofread before submitting, definitely start doing that. You both were courteous throughout and upheld your obligations as debate participants - good conduct.
Last comment: Pro, instead of doing stream-of-consciousness tangents (as seen in R4), use all your characters for argumentation. Had you done that, you might have been able to devote more characters to your Kardeshev Scale point, which could have been interesting.
Arguments - Pro delivered a fleshed out argument, which essentially boiled down to identifying nifty interactions between nature and the human body and attributing said interaction to god. Although the basic structure of the argument is sound, in that a claim is made and points are given to support it, the substance of the argument is poor, in my opinion. Pro has a long way to go to convince me that silver regulates our body temperature because god wanted silver to regulate our body temperature (or that god's hand is behind any of the other phenomenon mentioned). In order to convince me of this, Pro would 1) need to explain why it is unlikely that some elements of nature have convenient reactions with our bodies, and 2) need to explain why it is likely an all-powerful supernatural entity would care if some elements of nature have convenient reactions with our bodies. In absence of these explanations, I am unconvinced.
Arguments - Con probably has a great seed of an argument here, but he puts in no effort to make it grow. Attempting to turn Pro's logic against Pro is a smart move, and it's quite possible I could have been convinced. But without putting in the legwork of explaining why god's existence should be considered analogous to Pro's proposed coincidences, and without fleshing out the implications of the supposed infinite regress loop (I don't think providing a definition of infinite regress is sufficient on this front, although it's a start), I cannot award arguments to Con.
Sources - I was not impressed with either side's sources. As far as I can tell, some of Pro's claims went unsupported by the sources he provided, and some of the sources he provided made claims that should have been sourced, but were not. See the Cure Joy pages for an example of the latter. Con dumped two sources in his last round, but they were just definitions. These were helpful but not game-changing.
S&G - I was very tempted to award S&G to Con, as Pro's writing is quite poor. However, it did not seem entirely fair to compare the two, as Pro wrote many words, while Con wrote very few. In a way, Con provided too small a sample size for me to feel comfortable awarding Con S&G. That, and I did note a few minor writing errors in Con's limited text.
Conduct - Since Con forfeited Round 1 and put in little effort Round 2, points go to Pro.