Tejretics

Forfeits. Good case, Pro.

Pro’s first claim is that this makes relationships worse, as they often break apart when you know the political opinions of everyone you know, and in many cases, “cancel culture” invades personal life. Con has two responses. (1) They say that this impact -- relationships breaking down and large amounts of pressure to have the same political views as your community -- causes people to become brave and learn to keep holding their opinions regardless of disagreement. But this is a bare assertion; Pro argues this actually creates an atmosphere of fear in friend groups because you’re afraid to lose your relationships (an actual warrant), while Con lacks any equivalent warrant. (2) Con’s other response is that there could be other factors leading to a rise in cancel culture and social divides. But, as Pro points out, this isn’t a real response -- Pro highlights ways that social media contributes to this harm, even if it’s not the sole contributor, so Con’s point that there “could” be other contributors doesn’t do much to Pro’s argument.

Pro’s second claim is that this makes news clickbait-driven, as people have low attention spans. I think this argument could use more work proving why this is specific to social media (even without clicking involved), people could simply ignore a news story otherwise if the headline didn’t grab their attention, but as it stands, it seems reasonably persuasive. Con tries to turn this argument, arguing that if people have low attention spans, then it’s good to have clickbait, as it “piques people’s interest” in the news. Pro successfully beats this turn, by pointing out that, if anything, social media as a source of news distribution has created information overload, which, in addition to harming people’s mental health (thus turning the impact of getting people interested in the news), also causes them to not fully process the information they consume (e.g., causing them to skim rather than read the full text).

For his case, Con lists a bunch of possible benefits of social media in the abstract (rather than linking it to the rise of social media as a source of news distribution). But it seems to me that most of these arguments are non-topical -- as Pro points out in Round 3, you can still use social media to build friendships, offer emotional support, and find an outlet for creativity without getting your news from it; and I think Pro’s information overload argument is enough to beat the “raising awareness” point. In the end, Pro has a bunch of tangible disadvantages (making relationships worse, causing people to be unfairly canceled, causing news stories to be worse and attention-grabbing, information overload hurting people’s mental health) that are tied to social media as a source of news distribution specifically, and Con has none. Thus, I vote Pro.

There are two pieces of offense from Pro I could vote on.

First, Pro argues that news platforms without impartiality requirements often function as echo chambers, thus reducing people’s ability to access information (as they’re only engaging with one viewpoint, rather than coming to the truth themselves) and increasing the likelihood they’re presented with misinformation (e.g., because if one political ideology has anti-vaxx views, they never hear the pro-vaccine perspective).

Con has two responses. (1) He points out that objectivity is often used as an excuse to give large amounts of coverage to viewpoints that align with a platform’s political views (e.g., Fox covering election lies by arguing it’s giving due weight to multiple opinions). I don’t think this is actually an offensive argument from Con -- Fox could use this excuse even without the impartiality requirement, so it’s unclear why requiring impartiality makes things worse -- but I do think it shows that biased media platforms can find ways to present information in biased ways, such as uncritically presenting non-fringe but factually incorrect views, even under BBC’s standard, thus mitigating Pro’s argument. (2) He points out that the public has an active preference for biased news, with a bunch of evidence for this in Round 3. I think he doesn’t quite enough work here (since if a news organization is currently *only* covering anti-vaxx views, it would be *forced* to cover both now, even if a news organization that is currently only covering pro-vaxx views is also forced to cover both), but I buy that he at least proves that media organizations will look for ways out, and will often succeed (consider his examples of Fox News picking their quotes of opposing viewpoints selectively, or choosing not to cover more compelling criticisms of their viewpoints). So I don’t think Con beats this argument entirely, but I do think he mitigates it.

Second, Pro tries to turn Con’s claim on elitism by arguing that for-profit companies have strong incentives to present viewpoints that appeal to them. I don’t think Con does a great job addressing this turn directly, but I think this turn is insufficiently explained -- as Con points out, the public wants polarized news anyway, and Pro doesn’t explain why an impartiality requirement would solve for the problem of for-profit companies controlling the content of news media (nor why, indeed, the fact that you own a news company means its content is entirely in your interests).

In the end, I think the forfeits hurt Pro’s ability to respond to Con’s offense equally. For instance, Con argues that criticism of particular dominant viewpoints is likely to be shut down as impartial, and that news organizations “index” a narrow set of mainstream views and primarily cover them (including the BBC), thus shutting out views that are less mainstream and not controlled by elites, with lots of evidence for this claim. At the outset, there are two major problems with this, that Pro could have exploited had they not forfeited. First, this argument is not comparative -- I’m not clear why indexing becomes worse with an impartiality policy (a lot of Con’s evidence applies to media platforms in the US right now, where this requirement does not exist). Second, Con never quite explains why criticism of dominant news by media organizations is likely, common, and influential in the status quo (which is Con’s alternative). But neither of these problems matters if Pro doesn’t make these responses -- and I’m able to buy, to some extent, that these problems are worse with the BBC, and Pro doesn’t successfully address indexing specifically. Similarly, Con gets some offense from (1) the idea that a *sheen* of objectivity makes criticism of news organizations that uncritically air widely-held false information (like voter fraud in 2020) harder and (2) the claim that, in some cases, this would make misinformation worse as you’d be forced to air and give weight to widely-held views that are false.

Since Con is able to show that media organizations will have incentives to be biased, and will find ways to be biased anyway, I think his benefits of critiquing the status quo, the sheen of objectivity, and making misinformation worse are just larger. So due to Pro’s forfeits, I’m pretty much forced to vote Con.

RFD in comments.

You can also access it in this Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pOY9a1bwLbi8_NbXueqZmjcMuCYflkoWQgoQIANbZQg/edit?usp=sharing

I’m unclear what the definition of “gender pay gap,” for the purposes of this debate, is. If the definition is simply “a difference in average earnings between men and women,” the topic is a truism, because you don’t even have to consider the additional factors Pro names in R1. However, the debaters seem to agree that, in broad terms, what matters is whether men and women in similar professions have a gap in pay per hours worked.

Pro’s claim that the pay gap is not because of gender discrimination is non-topical, because, as Con points out, this debate isn’t about whether gender discrimination caused a pay gap, only about whether it exists. Pro has two remaining claims. First, they argue that most discussions of the pay gap don’t account for factors like career choice and hours worked. Con observes that Pro’s source concedes that, even after making the adjustments Pro wants, you end up with a pay gap of $0.07 per hour -- and this isn’t a negligible amount, as these amounts add up. Second, they argue that there are some professions where women get more hourly pay, and others where men get more hourly pay. But Pro’s own definition, in R1, notes that what matters is the average difference. Con uses examples to show that the magnitude of difference is larger in the latter cases. Besides, the fact that a $0.07 gap exists suggests that there are either more professions where men earn more than women, or the magnitude of the differences is bigger. Besides, I’m broadly compelled that a “reverse pay gap” continues to be a pay gap, as Con points out, and hence doesn’t affirm the resolution.

Hence, I vote Con.

Con argues that African-Americans are more likely to be given high sentences or convicted of drug use and sexual violence, and that terrorism against Black people goes unprosecuted in the United States. Although Con doesn’t explain why this debate has to be set in the United States (the resolution doesn’t specify this), nor do they do much work in tying these disparities to racism in the justice system (although I personally agree with Con), Pro forfeits, so I have to vote Con.

The description says Con is allowed to advocate for tighter gun control than the status quo. So Pro’s claim in R2 seems disingenuous to me, as if Con proves gun control should be tighter than it is right now, Con wins -- and I’m not sure why the words “on balance” in the resolution change that. That said, I don’t see why Con’s shell works; I don’t buy Con’s claim that my remedy should be to give Pro the loss because they broke the rules. My remedy is just to force Pro to abide by the rules; I’m generally hesitant to vote on theory arguments of this sort, and I don’t think Con explains why the only or best way to deter future violations is to vote Con.

Con argues that you disempower criminals, by denying them access to guns. I don’t think Con quite proves that there are ~485,000 fewer violent crimes in their world (as people could just use black market guns, or use alternatives to guns), but I buy that gun-related crimes are more common than the self-defense cases Pro names, thus outweighing self-defense. Guns being less attainable to stop crimes is also a better-explained mechanism than Pro’s claim about deterrence, which is largely a bare assertion, especially as Con points out that, without proper training, good samaritans and people engaging in self-defense might not be able to fight off a criminal. Finally, I don’t buy Pro’s tyranny claim, both due to Con’s impact turn (that sometimes, encouraging people to fight governments is bad), and because Pro doesn’t show that guns are sufficient to successfully fight tyrannical states. In general, Con advocates a series of regulations, and is fairly clear about how they’d work to attain these impacts -- the simplest ballot is that banning handguns would probably heavily mitigate the harms Con identifies, without suffering much of the disadvantages Pro names (given Con’s answers).

My main piece of feedback would be to warrant arguments better. A dropped argument is a concession if, and only if, the argument was warranted properly in the first place -- and at many points in this debate, there was either a brief mention of a claim without justification or explanation, a statistic without an analytical explanation, or an analytic without real-world evidence, and all of those could substantially weaken an argument.

Pro makes many arguments for Pakistan’s state failure, naming violence, instability, and underdevelopment. While this isn’t backed by much evidence or reasoning, Con doesn’t respond to any of them, so I’m forced to vote Pro.

RFD in Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wu0ZWTbTBLRSkOfcum6Wf7jRRZvrJGcYy9CmQ6aHZas/edit?usp=sharing

I thought this was a good debate, but quite messy from both sides. So my RFD might strike you as a bit unclear; if it’s unclear at all, please feel free to ask me any clarifying questions.

RFD in Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a5RZoIQ_zcTmffBB3dgmBwgT-6nLbkhk0icwoCfFM3A/edit?usp=sharing

Con’s advocacy is one where humanity eats less meat. However, to show veganism isn’t in humanity’s best interest, Con has to show that world is the likely alternative, something Con fails to show. All Con says is that animal products become more expensive thanks to more sustainable production, but they don’t prove that sustainable production will happen.

Con has two main contentions. One is to argue that meat consumption is better for health. Con’s only justification is that meat consumption is natural, failing to explain why that entails it’s better for health. Pro points out that things like B12 supplementation and similar attempts at artificial supplementation can mitigate this problem. Con notes that they were just replying to Pro’s argument on health, not trying to make a substantive contribution. Con’s lack of description of how veganism would hurt health or evidence for this claim weakens it. Con later expands this point to be about dietary choice. I’m not sure why expanded options necessarily means better health (after all, people can make bad decisions) – that claim is underexplained. The other contribution is to argue that, given the oceans’ size, fish consumption is a good idea to maintain or improve food security. Pro’s rebuttal to this is that overfishing can eventually cause scarcity in fishing supplies, but that response is underexplained because it’s not clear why that much overfishing is likely. I buy this point to some degree, but Con never tries to explain the scale of the impact. Con has some other attempts at arguments (e.g. the claim that veganism is too “extreme”), but they aren’t actual arguments against the topic. There’s a brief argument in there about how being bad doesn’t mean you eliminate it (Con says, for example, that you shouldn’t eliminate “snacks” or “the Middle East”), but I’m not sure why (those things don’t seem immediately bad to me, compared to Pro’s claims on veganism), nor how those examples are comparable.

Pro’s weakest argument is the argument on morality. It’s weird to me that the debate mostly centered around it. The argument pretty much fails to fulfill Pro’s burden of proof, because Pro doesn’t tie it to a tangible impact on humans (which the topic requires Pro to). Pro says humans have some conceptions of morality that conflict with meat eating. Con points out that different people have different ethical conceptions, and meat only conflicts with some of them – it doesn’t, for instance, violate Christian ethics. Pro tries to argue from that that meat consumption is immoral, but that’s besides the point. Pro’s argument needed to show that people would perceive it as immoral and that would hurt them, which Pro never does.

Pro wins on their other arguments. Con pretty much concedes the argument on the environment (besides saying they support more sustainable meat production, which they can’t just have “fiat” over and had to show was likely) and simply says it’s not an overriding concern. Pro seems to convince me that a less sustainable form of food production that contributes to pollution and food security is a bad one. That itself is enough to outweigh the intangible impact of food security through the oceans, because Con never explains why fish are necessary for food security, while Pro explains the scale of how much meat takes away from it. Pro’s argument on health is also stronger than Con’s corresponding argument on health – because while Con’s claims on health, e.g. lack of B12, are manageable through supplementation and careful diets, Con doesn’t have a path out of antibiotic resistance increasing the risk of disease (though sanitary conditions do mitigate the risk of simply ordinary disease spread). The argument on health from Pro also outweighs Con’s argument on fish supplies, because Con doesn’t explain why the latter are necessary for access to food, while Pro explains why their benefits tie specifically to transitioning to veganism.

Sources to Pro because, while Pro misrepresents their sources at times, I found their basic argument backed up by sources. For instance, the claims on agricultural land being overused by meat and on water pollution being caused by fishing, as well as the claims on antibiotic resistance, are backed by evidence. In contrast, while Con has some sources, they don’t back up the parts of Con’s case that carry most weight, on food security related to fish consumption and on health, leaving them with somewhat intangible impacts. Hence, Pro’s sources contribute to their case in a way that Con’s sources did not.

Pro conceded. I agree the topic was vague enough that it gave Con too much ground (i.e. they could support any particular gun control policy) and Pro’s case wasn’t specific to the policies they supported.

Feedback to Pro: (1) Make your case specific to the topic. As you noted, your case was more a case against banning guns than one against any gun regulation or tightening of gun control policies. (2) A lot of your case wasn’t an argument against tightening policies, but rather preemptively rebutting arguments for tightening. I’d spend more time on the first type of argument, as that’s the type that can win you the debate (whereas the second type just mitigates Con’s potential arguments). (3) I think your structure was a bit hard to follow. It seemed like you were jumping from one argument to the next without much transition. Perhaps some clear headings and following a structure of “claim, explanation, impact” could be useful.

Feedback to Con: (1) I think it’d have been useful for Con to give examples of gun control policies for which Pro’s arguments didn’t apply. (2) In general, simply citing a source doesn’t mean your argument is presumed true. You need to summarize what the source says in the character limit of the debate, because judges don’t read every individual source. It’s also useful to add more logic/analysis to your argument. (3) I think you dropped a lot of Pro’s arguments, including (a) the claim that guns are often trafficked so gun regulation is ineffective, (b) the argument that gun control limits the ability of people to respond to state oppression, and (c) the argument on autonomy.

Conduct due to multiple forfeits by Con. Arguments because Con drops Pro’s argument that gender is a social construct by definition and that Con’s argumentation conflates sex and gender.

Occam’s razor doesn’t do enough to negate independently. It proves that, other things being equal, we should assume the naturalistic position. As evidenced by Pro’s entire case, he doesn’t think other things are equal. So really, it doesn’t do too much for Con beyond shifting the burden of proof.

Pro’s cosmological argument clashes directly with Con’s argument on a caused universe. Pro argues that since the universe began to exist, it must have a cause, by intuition. I’m not sure I buy Pro’s intuitive justification for this, given that it’s unclear why a rabbit is analogous to the entirety of space-time, especially since Pro’s own quote says “the laws of physics are broken down” at the beginning of the universe. Pro also fails to link this contention to the definition of God in the description—“extremely powerful” doesn’t mean “omnipotent,” and I’m unclear why the other three properties of God are met here either. Con has a convoluted description of the A-series and B-series of time to challenge that the universe began to exist—but there’s a couple of sentences here and there that make it somewhat clear what they’re talking about (e.g., “[there is] no *objective present* as each frame of reference perceives the present differently and are all equally correct”), which means that the universe does not require a cause. This argument gains offense from the idea that if the universe exists as a tenseless block, it cannot have a cause that precedes it. (In practice, this seems like a defensive argument because simultaneous causation would still be possible, if my understanding of this is correct, but Pro doesn’t respond to it or bring it up so I don’t factor that into my decision.)

Pro has a bunch of other arguments remaining that Con doesn’t address—the ontological argument and the one from a fine-tuned universe. Neither of these seems to link directly to the very hard BoP Pro sets on himself through the debate description of proving an omnipotent/omniscient/omnibenevolent/omnipresent God. The ontological argument is underexplained, because I don’t know what “maximally great” means. Pro needs to show the link that a being defined as necessarily existing which also carries the definition of the four Os exists in some possible world—and that’s a pretty high BoP that Pro doesn’t fulfill. The teleological argument links to some intelligent design of the universe—not necessarily from the kind of being defined.

Pro’s arguments don’t link directly enough to the resolution, and he drops Con’s offense by forfeiting. Thus, conduct and arguments to Con.

Con’s case is as follows. In order for Pro to prove that migration “ought” to be a human right, they need to justify a particular normative ethical theory. The problem is that justifying normative ethical theories is impossible because it either (1) runs into an infinite regress of justifications or (2) attempts to ground itself in real-world facts. The first of these is a problem, according to Con, because any starting point is necessarily a bare assertion. The second of these is a problem since that would be committing a naturalistic fallacy -- the fact that something is the case doesn’t mean it ought to be the case. The problem for Con, though, is that this would be a post-fiat kritik. It’s a classic example of what formal debaters often call a “moral skep” argument -- it seems to argue in favor of either moral non-cognitivism or error theory, which challenges the resolution’s assumption that an “ought” is coherent. Rule 6 forbids that. Given that this debate operates under the assumption that moral realism is true, the question is: given moral realism, should migration be a human right? Pro offers two substantive reasons why it should be -- one is the argument that there is an individual right to the freedom of movement that shouldn’t be constrained by the random luck that determines where you are born and the other is the notion that humanity functions as a moral community, and movement within moral communities holds moral significance. Apart from the kritik, Con doesn’t attack these two claims. I understand Con’s frustration, but it’s their job to pay close attention to the rules. Thus, I vote Pro.

What participant made more convincing arguments? There was no actual argumentation in this debate. However, Pro pointed out that there is a consensus among mathematicians that 0.9r = 1. While Pro doesn't provide actual evidence for this argument, Con drops it and drops Pro's claim that the burden of proof, therefore, lies on Con. Given these drops, "arguments" points go to Pro.

What participant had better conduct? Con forfeited one round and *effectively* forfeited another. Thus, the conduct point goes to Pro.

Full forfeit.

RFD in Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BPC5a56HqsG68mIk_9bDdaV8h5YA8XPR_vN1AArGZ18/edit?usp=sharing

Pro concedes.

Which participant had better conduct? Pro forfeited two rounds. Thus, conduct goes to Con.

What participant made more convincing arguments? Pro had the burden of proof. However, their case was just a description of the Fibonacci sequence, never bothering to link it to God's existence. Con points out that God isn't needed to explain the prevalence of the Fibonacci sequence. Pro drops that by means of forfeiture. Therefore, arguments go to Con.

Note: "Con" refers to Buddamoose and "Pro" refers to Virtuoso.

The main offense from Pro is crime reductions, with evidence of gun-related homicides decreasing. Con attempts to mitigate this by saying it doesn't tackle mental health issues and that illegal guns will continue to exist, both of which are compelling, but don't mitigate the offense 100%, since clearly Pro proves there'll still be *some* people filtered out and -- despite the lack of an analytical warrant -- provides the NPR evidence showing crime reductions, which Con drops. So, while this is a poorly explained argument and Con points out the solvency issues, I'm forced to buy it because the solvency issues are mitigation and the empirical evidence stands.

Con's arguments on constitutional law are taken down for me by one sentence in the Pro case: "I strongly believe that there's enough evidence that the United States should amend the constitution to make such a law constitutional." I buy that Pro has the fiat to implement this plan and Con never explains why constitutional law is intrinsically valuable. Nonetheless, embedded within the constitutional law arguments are some disadvantages -- the argument on the right to privacy stands, at the end, because I buy that person-to-person transactions require a gun registry. Similarly, I buy that this hurts the ability of low-income people to access guns. However, Con never warrants the importance of privacy/equality in this context, and, prima facie, the magnitude of preventing gun homicides seems to outweigh; moreover, Con concedes that saving lives is important by omission (while Pro doesn't concede that constitutional law is important).

Thus, I vote Pro.

Con explains pretty clearly that liberal policies have often empirically been good for the US and that Pro, at best, is cherrypicking examples of when liberal policies hurt the US. Pro then forfeits and fails to respond to any of Con's arguments in that respect, leaving them standing. Straightforward vote for Con; happy to expand on RFD if requested.