That's just silly. Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate Biden's son, not outright make up dirt on him. If the investigation had happened, and then turned up nothing, Trump would've been like "dang it" and moved on. He was hoping something was there, of course. As a petty man and cutthroat politician hellbent on getting re-elected he was clearly hoping that the investigation would've turned up something. And he did threaten to cut off government aid for the sake of an investigation which would've pretty much only benefited him. But you are at least somewhat misstating what happened. Ultimately, we don't know whether Biden's son was involved in anything, since Trump was thwarted from making the investigation happen. Let's remember that.
Even if corrupt, Trump's investigation would've smacked of proportionality. No detail of Trump's life has been withheld from scrutiny, nor any detail of the lives of his close family. It's only fair that his opponent, a man trying to take his place as President, should have to undergo the same. The only question is by what means this proportional situation of mutual investigation was imposed (or, rather, by what means Trump attempted in vain to impose such).
"Let's talk reparations. It's plain and simple, American needs to cut the check to the descendants of slavery to write the wrongs of the past."
Should this be interpreted as the specific position you'll be arguing for? If so, I might be interested. Send me a challenge if nobody else accepts soon.
The producers of fanfiction get something out of it, and somewhat more rarely other people get something out of reading it. That's really all that matters, right? They get to have "more" out of a series, explore it to such a depth that the actual thing wouldn't touch on, because the actual thing is just written by a few (probably rather unimaginative) guys oftentimes who are doing it more for the money than to have fun, and because they're obviously time-constrained in how much content they can include in their work.
Fanfiction means popular participation in a franchise, which can make it much richer, if only in a superficial way (since any resulting work is going to be non-canon). I've been writing a rather lengthy fanfiction series for close to 4 years now, which has branched off quite considerably from the actual work. The person who's gotten the most out of the project has obviously been myself, and that's why I've kept writing even though I've gotten terribly few reviews on any of it these past few years. It's a highly enjoyable exercise, and that's why I do it. Even if objectively my work isn't very good, I am satisfied with what I've accomplished. I'm sure most dedicated writers of such feel the same way. It was never supposed to be a professional endeavor and there's no reason why I or anyone else who writes fanfics should be held to that standard of quality.
Now, mind you, some people (I presume mainly of the female variety) write fanfics basically as an aide for *ahem* certain self-pleasuring activities. Most notably there's the woman who wrote "Fifty Shades of Grey" (which started out as a Twilight fanfic). These works tend to be extremely erotic (and usually homosexual), which is what most people unfamiliar with the pastime think of when they think of fanfiction. But the full range of the fans' creativity can be so incredibly diverse as to capture virtually every imaginable genre or category. Eroticism is just one part of that.
I've only done one debate on this Site, though I've done a fair number over the years on DDO. My ELO was never very good, and the one debate that I did here I lost, so doubtlessly mine won't meet that standard. However, I think I could make some rather unusual arguments, if you were to let me accept.
My style is casual dialogue to reach a common understanding, so debating per se is not my forte. That might come across as rather undisciplined of me, and it is. But I *can* debate formally. Maybe you want a debate with somebody considerably better than me here but you could also do this topic with me elsewhere on the side?
If you're going to go the "stolen land" route then absolutely any non-Native American person in the United States who is a landowner is equally culpable. You have large numbers of Asian-American immigrants who came voluntarily, and in any case as for, say, blacks, whether or not their ancestors came voluntarily doesn't change the fact that anybody born here today was born here involuntarily. As for the Homestead Act, that's irrelevant for me personally. For starters, my family lives too far east, and in any case I doubt you have any large number of cases of "we've been living on the same plot for 150 years" over in, say, Nebraska. Families expand, which means each new generation needs to find their own place. My dad, when he married my mom, found his own place, a trailer somewhere. Whatever level of prosperity that his parents had managed to accrue did not benefit him in that instance. He never went to college, so the "his rich parents helped him get through college so he was the next generation of highly paid skilled laborer" argument also doesn't apply here. Likewise, he did not get his career job as a result of nepotism. As a young adult he had very little and he worked his way up until he succeeded. As far as I know no member of my family (or at least not on my dad's side) was ever in the military so the G.I. Bill is also irrelevant. There was little in way of "freebies" involved there.
As for me myself, well, of course I'm enjoying freebies. I'm living well as a result of his hard work. I'm not going to argue otherwise. But your overall point falls flat.
By your own admission also, the Southern economy was decimated during the Civil War, in large part due to the actions of such war criminals as General Sherman. The rebuilt economy of such, therefore, could not have had as its foundation unfree black labor. A large Southern middle class did not fully ripen until the economic boom of the 1980s and 90s (well over a century later), which explains their switch to Republican in 1994 (middle class people have always tended to vote GOP).
Freebies? You mean the good life I now enjoy because my father spent his entire adult life working hard?
Your comment is non-sequitur. The fact that there are poor and unskilled people in prosperous countries (though on a per capita basis China is a middle-income economy) does not in any way prove your claim. The North surpassed the South because by 1860 it was an industrial powerhouse whereas the South was still agricultural. Farm-based economies will always be at a critical disadvantage compared to modern ones, which've moved beyond mere resource extraction. I think virtually any orthodox economist would agree with me here.
If slavery made a country rich then Mauritania would be a superpower by now. If anything it hinders the long-term growth of a nation by artificially deflating the value of labor, driving up profit margins well beyond what's normal for a business and so killing incentive for investment (since easy money is guaranteed no matter what basically). It also renders a large portion of the potential workforce unable to do anything beyond menial labor, though we now know that a large skilled workforce is needed for a country to thrive in the modern era.. The North overtook the South economically for a reason, and so the very idea that a prosperous modern society can be "built on the backs of slaves" is ludicrous in and of itself.
The Byzantines developed treatises on the intricacies of war, as did possibly the Romans before them. And of course, Machiavelli wrote to a very similar tune circa the Renaissance period. That is to say, Sun Tzu was a visionary for his time and his society, but overall he laid out a set of principles that other people elsewhere in the world were eventually able to discover and elaborate on for the purposes of their own societies. I suspect that he ultimately did not have much of an impact on the West, aside from certain corporate contexts today where he might as well be required reading material.
That has nothing to do with this debate, of course. I have no idea who the other guy is, and I'm sure he's nowhere near as important as Sun Tzu was.
In the same ruling, al-Azhar found that the man's children, presumably raised Christian but considered Muslim because of their father, must be killed upon reaching puberty if they did not renounce Christianity and become Muslims.
RM, here's a tip:
Don't just look at the Qur'an. From what I've heard, the Qur'an is the relatively innocuous part that Muslim proselytizers want the outside world to see, kind of like what Mormons do with the Book of Mormon, though in the latter case it was probably more intentional.
Look at the Hadiths, and at the prevailing interpretations of Muslim holy texts. In 1978 al-Azhar University, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, issued a fatwa ruling that a Muslim man living in Germany who converted to Christianity must be put to death.
Round 5: Mharman. Didn't particularly like either, but Mharman's was slightly more interesting. I can see RM was trying to go with something beautiful, but in my opinion he could've done a lot better than he did. For example, a well-done electronic version of something of the Celtic music genre (that is, an electronic version which does not detract from the beauty of such). Back on DDO it was I think Mishapqueen who once posted a link to something of that nature, and it was a delight to listen to.
In any case, I'd clearly peg Mharman as the winner of this debate. Not sure whether I'm actually going to cast a vote, as it's possible that the Mods wouldn't be satisfied with the stated criteria behind my decision.
You are 100℅ entitled to your opinion on the matter. However, this debate is largely a matter of personal preferences, and as a potential voter I'm telling what I think.
Round 4: Mharman. RM's piece had some good lyrics, but Mharman's submission for this round was dope. "Good", even. If the two of you picked more stuff like that, I'd be more enthused about judging these kinds of debates.
Round 3: Narrow win for Mharman, because I like that song and the screen was showing something other than a gross chick with her tongue sticking out, though your rendition of the piece wasn't the best by any stretch of the imagination.
Just keep in mind that the vast majority of innovation comes from highly capitalist countries, namely the US, China (ironically enough), Japan, etc. The heavily socialized European continent, for an economy and population of that size, punches below the belt in terms of patents and whatnot, with the possible exception of Germany: the US alone probably equals the total number of yearly patents filed in all of Western and Central Europe combined.
So I guess it'll boil down to Round 5. (Might I add, I usually dislike this genre of music but whatever. A few of the entries here were interesting enough.)
Crap. I'm not sure whether I'll have enough of a character limit for my argument. I'll try my best, of course, but it's very possible that neither of us will be very satisfied with the end result.
I have no gripe with you, and I hope that you have no gripe with me, and in any case it'd be silly for me to get up in arms over this. If you decide not to restore my vote in its original form then I'll understand (not as though I could do anything about it but still). However, there is a reason that I normally do not debate or vote: I'm too lazy for it. I usually have no motivation for anything beyond casual discussion in the forums. Accordingly, I'm not about to take the time or effort, as miniscule as such may amount to from your perspective, to review the debate and rewrite my vote. So in that event I guess the current vote tally will stand, pending another vote by somebody else or another removal of somebody's vote by you or another mod.
I would argue that this debate in itself was sort of a truism (or whatever you call it). For example, imagine that the topic was "God Exists". Since obviously that could not be proven, a more reasonable way of phrasing it would be "The likelihood that God exists is higher than the likelihood that God does not exist". Unless stated otherwise by the rules of the debate, I think any reasonable voter would interpret the resolution in that way.
But in this case, there is no such room for interpretation. "Lewis's Trilemma is valid unless there should originate a fourth option" would be an awfully constructed debate, because the whole idea of the Trilemma is that there are only three possible options. It'd amount to "I am right unless I am wrong", in which case it's impossible for the instigator to lose. That's what I'd regard as a debate undertaken in bad faith, with no intention of honestly hashing it out but rather just exploiting a loophole in the rules to claim victory. So I think we simply have to interpret the resolution as "Lewis's Trilemma is valid and there is no fourth option".
@bsh1 I need to provide evidence that Pro has not satisfactorily debunked the reasonable possibility of Jesus being a mythical figure, or otherwise the reasonable possibility that Jesus Himself did not say many of the things attributed to Him in the Gospels? Really? Is this really how votes are going to be handled on DART?
That's just silly. Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate Biden's son, not outright make up dirt on him. If the investigation had happened, and then turned up nothing, Trump would've been like "dang it" and moved on. He was hoping something was there, of course. As a petty man and cutthroat politician hellbent on getting re-elected he was clearly hoping that the investigation would've turned up something. And he did threaten to cut off government aid for the sake of an investigation which would've pretty much only benefited him. But you are at least somewhat misstating what happened. Ultimately, we don't know whether Biden's son was involved in anything, since Trump was thwarted from making the investigation happen. Let's remember that.
Even if corrupt, Trump's investigation would've smacked of proportionality. No detail of Trump's life has been withheld from scrutiny, nor any detail of the lives of his close family. It's only fair that his opponent, a man trying to take his place as President, should have to undergo the same. The only question is by what means this proportional situation of mutual investigation was imposed (or, rather, by what means Trump attempted in vain to impose such).
"Let's talk reparations. It's plain and simple, American needs to cut the check to the descendants of slavery to write the wrongs of the past."
Should this be interpreted as the specific position you'll be arguing for? If so, I might be interested. Send me a challenge if nobody else accepts soon.
The producers of fanfiction get something out of it, and somewhat more rarely other people get something out of reading it. That's really all that matters, right? They get to have "more" out of a series, explore it to such a depth that the actual thing wouldn't touch on, because the actual thing is just written by a few (probably rather unimaginative) guys oftentimes who are doing it more for the money than to have fun, and because they're obviously time-constrained in how much content they can include in their work.
Fanfiction means popular participation in a franchise, which can make it much richer, if only in a superficial way (since any resulting work is going to be non-canon). I've been writing a rather lengthy fanfiction series for close to 4 years now, which has branched off quite considerably from the actual work. The person who's gotten the most out of the project has obviously been myself, and that's why I've kept writing even though I've gotten terribly few reviews on any of it these past few years. It's a highly enjoyable exercise, and that's why I do it. Even if objectively my work isn't very good, I am satisfied with what I've accomplished. I'm sure most dedicated writers of such feel the same way. It was never supposed to be a professional endeavor and there's no reason why I or anyone else who writes fanfics should be held to that standard of quality.
Now, mind you, some people (I presume mainly of the female variety) write fanfics basically as an aide for *ahem* certain self-pleasuring activities. Most notably there's the woman who wrote "Fifty Shades of Grey" (which started out as a Twilight fanfic). These works tend to be extremely erotic (and usually homosexual), which is what most people unfamiliar with the pastime think of when they think of fanfiction. But the full range of the fans' creativity can be so incredibly diverse as to capture virtually every imaginable genre or category. Eroticism is just one part of that.
I've only done one debate on this Site, though I've done a fair number over the years on DDO. My ELO was never very good, and the one debate that I did here I lost, so doubtlessly mine won't meet that standard. However, I think I could make some rather unusual arguments, if you were to let me accept.
My style is casual dialogue to reach a common understanding, so debating per se is not my forte. That might come across as rather undisciplined of me, and it is. But I *can* debate formally. Maybe you want a debate with somebody considerably better than me here but you could also do this topic with me elsewhere on the side?
If you're going to go the "stolen land" route then absolutely any non-Native American person in the United States who is a landowner is equally culpable. You have large numbers of Asian-American immigrants who came voluntarily, and in any case as for, say, blacks, whether or not their ancestors came voluntarily doesn't change the fact that anybody born here today was born here involuntarily. As for the Homestead Act, that's irrelevant for me personally. For starters, my family lives too far east, and in any case I doubt you have any large number of cases of "we've been living on the same plot for 150 years" over in, say, Nebraska. Families expand, which means each new generation needs to find their own place. My dad, when he married my mom, found his own place, a trailer somewhere. Whatever level of prosperity that his parents had managed to accrue did not benefit him in that instance. He never went to college, so the "his rich parents helped him get through college so he was the next generation of highly paid skilled laborer" argument also doesn't apply here. Likewise, he did not get his career job as a result of nepotism. As a young adult he had very little and he worked his way up until he succeeded. As far as I know no member of my family (or at least not on my dad's side) was ever in the military so the G.I. Bill is also irrelevant. There was little in way of "freebies" involved there.
As for me myself, well, of course I'm enjoying freebies. I'm living well as a result of his hard work. I'm not going to argue otherwise. But your overall point falls flat.
By your own admission also, the Southern economy was decimated during the Civil War, in large part due to the actions of such war criminals as General Sherman. The rebuilt economy of such, therefore, could not have had as its foundation unfree black labor. A large Southern middle class did not fully ripen until the economic boom of the 1980s and 90s (well over a century later), which explains their switch to Republican in 1994 (middle class people have always tended to vote GOP).
Freebies? You mean the good life I now enjoy because my father spent his entire adult life working hard?
Your comment is non-sequitur. The fact that there are poor and unskilled people in prosperous countries (though on a per capita basis China is a middle-income economy) does not in any way prove your claim. The North surpassed the South because by 1860 it was an industrial powerhouse whereas the South was still agricultural. Farm-based economies will always be at a critical disadvantage compared to modern ones, which've moved beyond mere resource extraction. I think virtually any orthodox economist would agree with me here.
If slavery made a country rich then Mauritania would be a superpower by now. If anything it hinders the long-term growth of a nation by artificially deflating the value of labor, driving up profit margins well beyond what's normal for a business and so killing incentive for investment (since easy money is guaranteed no matter what basically). It also renders a large portion of the potential workforce unable to do anything beyond menial labor, though we now know that a large skilled workforce is needed for a country to thrive in the modern era.. The North overtook the South economically for a reason, and so the very idea that a prosperous modern society can be "built on the backs of slaves" is ludicrous in and of itself.
A plane with 2005 avionics vs one with mid to late 2010s avionics?
The Byzantines developed treatises on the intricacies of war, as did possibly the Romans before them. And of course, Machiavelli wrote to a very similar tune circa the Renaissance period. That is to say, Sun Tzu was a visionary for his time and his society, but overall he laid out a set of principles that other people elsewhere in the world were eventually able to discover and elaborate on for the purposes of their own societies. I suspect that he ultimately did not have much of an impact on the West, aside from certain corporate contexts today where he might as well be required reading material.
That has nothing to do with this debate, of course. I have no idea who the other guy is, and I'm sure he's nowhere near as important as Sun Tzu was.
In the same ruling, al-Azhar found that the man's children, presumably raised Christian but considered Muslim because of their father, must be killed upon reaching puberty if they did not renounce Christianity and become Muslims.
RM, here's a tip:
Don't just look at the Qur'an. From what I've heard, the Qur'an is the relatively innocuous part that Muslim proselytizers want the outside world to see, kind of like what Mormons do with the Book of Mormon, though in the latter case it was probably more intentional.
Look at the Hadiths, and at the prevailing interpretations of Muslim holy texts. In 1978 al-Azhar University, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, issued a fatwa ruling that a Muslim man living in Germany who converted to Christianity must be put to death.
On second thought, it might be more appropriate to award Round 5 to neither party. But Mharman would still be the winner.
Round 5: Mharman. Didn't particularly like either, but Mharman's was slightly more interesting. I can see RM was trying to go with something beautiful, but in my opinion he could've done a lot better than he did. For example, a well-done electronic version of something of the Celtic music genre (that is, an electronic version which does not detract from the beauty of such). Back on DDO it was I think Mishapqueen who once posted a link to something of that nature, and it was a delight to listen to.
In any case, I'd clearly peg Mharman as the winner of this debate. Not sure whether I'm actually going to cast a vote, as it's possible that the Mods wouldn't be satisfied with the stated criteria behind my decision.
You are 100℅ entitled to your opinion on the matter. However, this debate is largely a matter of personal preferences, and as a potential voter I'm telling what I think.
Round 4: Mharman. RM's piece had some good lyrics, but Mharman's submission for this round was dope. "Good", even. If the two of you picked more stuff like that, I'd be more enthused about judging these kinds of debates.
Round 3: Narrow win for Mharman, because I like that song and the screen was showing something other than a gross chick with her tongue sticking out, though your rendition of the piece wasn't the best by any stretch of the imagination.
Round 2: Hated them both. Tie.
Round 1: Mharman.
Just keep in mind that the vast majority of innovation comes from highly capitalist countries, namely the US, China (ironically enough), Japan, etc. The heavily socialized European continent, for an economy and population of that size, punches below the belt in terms of patents and whatnot, with the possible exception of Germany: the US alone probably equals the total number of yearly patents filed in all of Western and Central Europe combined.
As far as I'm concerned, it's a tie.
And...I hated both Round 5 entries.
*Mharman, that is, not SupaDudz.
Round 1: RM
Round 2: RM
Round 3: Supadudz
Round 4: Supadudz
So I guess it'll boil down to Round 5. (Might I add, I usually dislike this genre of music but whatever. A few of the entries here were interesting enough.)
Crap. I'm not sure whether I'll have enough of a character limit for my argument. I'll try my best, of course, but it's very possible that neither of us will be very satisfied with the end result.
I have no gripe with you, and I hope that you have no gripe with me, and in any case it'd be silly for me to get up in arms over this. If you decide not to restore my vote in its original form then I'll understand (not as though I could do anything about it but still). However, there is a reason that I normally do not debate or vote: I'm too lazy for it. I usually have no motivation for anything beyond casual discussion in the forums. Accordingly, I'm not about to take the time or effort, as miniscule as such may amount to from your perspective, to review the debate and rewrite my vote. So in that event I guess the current vote tally will stand, pending another vote by somebody else or another removal of somebody's vote by you or another mod.
I would argue that this debate in itself was sort of a truism (or whatever you call it). For example, imagine that the topic was "God Exists". Since obviously that could not be proven, a more reasonable way of phrasing it would be "The likelihood that God exists is higher than the likelihood that God does not exist". Unless stated otherwise by the rules of the debate, I think any reasonable voter would interpret the resolution in that way.
But in this case, there is no such room for interpretation. "Lewis's Trilemma is valid unless there should originate a fourth option" would be an awfully constructed debate, because the whole idea of the Trilemma is that there are only three possible options. It'd amount to "I am right unless I am wrong", in which case it's impossible for the instigator to lose. That's what I'd regard as a debate undertaken in bad faith, with no intention of honestly hashing it out but rather just exploiting a loophole in the rules to claim victory. So I think we simply have to interpret the resolution as "Lewis's Trilemma is valid and there is no fourth option".
I mean, that would've made for one really dang impressive case on Pro's part. I think I would've remembered something like that.
@bsh1 I need to provide evidence that Pro has not satisfactorily debunked the reasonable possibility of Jesus being a mythical figure, or otherwise the reasonable possibility that Jesus Himself did not say many of the things attributed to Him in the Gospels? Really? Is this really how votes are going to be handled on DART?