Total votes: 337
Full forfeit.
Full forfeit.
Full forfeit.
Full forfeit.
Con never made an honest attempt to argue his side of the resolution. His only points went unsourced and ignored all of Pro's case. In contrast, Pro put forward a good case for the role of religion in building societal cohesion and standing as a bulwark against extremism.
Sources to Pro for the aforementioned lack of sources from Con.
Conduct to Pro for Con's lack of effort and, in effect, resignation from the debate before it even started.
Full forfeit.
Concession.
Con puts forward an unorthodox definition of a free market, but instead of supporting his definition, he just conflates two meanings of the word "free." This is why Pro offered a definition of a "free market," a well established concept in economics, while Con simply defined the word "free," which can mean a wide variety of things depending on context. Hence, I will accept Pro's definition for the purposes of voting on this debate.
Pro puts forward an effective case arguing that free markets decrease prices, give consumers power, and subvert the inherent inefficiencies of government control. Con never really offers a response other than his ranting about the definition of a free market. Other than that, he just gets outraged at the idea of a society with no taxes without any substantiation as to why taxes are important. Pro responds by simply pointing out the dubious morality of taxation and the possible substitutes to government programs financed through taxation. These rebuttals are never addressed.
Basically, Con drops all of Pro's points and never offers a case of his own.
Even with Pro's forfeitures, Con never took advantage of Pros absence to put forth a well structured argument. Both sides offered a pretty simple case with little substantiation, but Pro's case was clearly better thought out. From Pro's arguments, I can glean that humans will be able to outsource many tasks to AI, thereby allowing humans to specialize in creative endeavours. Con's response about the loss of human braincells and the threat of an AI takeover have no logical reasoning or evidence to back them up. Moreover, Pros response to these critiques, that humans have a long history of killing each other, is good enough to debunk Con's idea that greater AI control will lead to more death and suffering.
Full forfeit.
Full forfeit.
Pro gets very close to slam-dunking this debate. His definition of suffering includes death, and it is not hard to argue that if a human is born, they will inevitably die. This argument does indeed accomplish the task of proving that suffering will always occur if birth occurs. Where Pro's argument loses its power is in the case that a person dies before they are born. If this can be shown to happen, which Con does, then there is really no way to prove that birth is the origin of suffering. That word ORIGIN is very important here. If the debate resolution was simply that a person who is born will always suffer, I probably would've voted Pro in this debate. However, the inclusion of the word "due" implies that being born and suffering are causally linked. What Con was able to prove was that existing is the true origin of suffering, and because existing precedes birth, a person born will always suffer, but a person who suffers is not necessarily always born.
Basically, Pro's conflation of existing with being born is a critical error that he accepts as such. He asks Con to reinterpret the resolution, but Con does not do so. Given that Pro himself was the one who equated being born with existing, I think this debate should be redone with a resolution that better describes Pro's beliefs.
For a debate like this, a higher character count is really needed. The use of ellipses throughout the debate made it quite illegible. Other than that, I am glad Pro decided to join the website, and I hope to see more of ToLearn's debates in the future.
This debate was about as lopsided as it gets. Pro offers a comprehensive case, ranging from America's geopolitical leverage over her Eurasian rivals (Russia and China) to the lives of everyday Americans through the positive downstream effects of trade. Pro also brilliantly rebuts one of the most obvious possible counterarguments to his case, that being the environmental effects of human activity in the Arctic. Instead of just arguing the environmental effects would be minimal, Pro is able to argue that an American military presence in the Arctic would allow America to furnish the resources needed for to pursue green initiatives. Pro drops all of these points and argues for greater U.S. military presence in Asia and Europe. Ignoring Pro's rebuttals to this, which were also dropped, Pro's first round argument already addressed how the Arctic was inextricably linked to U.S. tensions with Russia and China.
Pro also offers great citations and compelling evidence throughout. Con doesn't even attempt to cite his statements.
SAY A PRAYER AND TAKE YOUR VITAMINS!!!
Both sides put up an interesting case, and each had their own challenges, but as I see it, Pro edged this one out.
Pro starts off, as one would expect, listing all of the economic, political, and military resources China has at its disposal. To counter this, Con outlines an 8-step plan to infiltrate China with Americans, causing internal strife which can be exploited by the United States to destabilize the country. In response, Pro takes down every point Con offers relatively well. Most importantly, he questions how practical it would be to promote mass immigration into China without sparking suspicion, and that the Chinese (taught to hate the Americans) would naturally be weary of any and all American activity in the country.
The main problem Con had, more so than anything Pro said, was that he never really explained how the U.S. could reasonably achieve any of the steps he listed. This leaves his case feeling rather hollow, and given that he dropped Pro's refutations, I cannot say Con's plan satisfied his BoP. It is easy to say: "Do A, B, C, and D and China will fall," but it is significantly harder to elaborate upon the mechanics of A, B, C, and D. This issue followed Con throughout the debate.
Con changes his tune in his second round, arguing for cooperation with other countries in Asia to bring China down. However, Pro offers a satisfactory rebuttal, pointing out that China's political and economic leverage over Asia would make orchestrating a unified front to bring the CCP down quite challenging.
Conduct to Pro for Con's forfeiture.
All in all, a fun debate. I personally love playful topics like this.
This debate was effectively one about where our definitions should come from. Pro basically argues that chess is a sport because it is treated as a sport and because the definition of a sport, broad as it may be, encompasses the game of chess. Con leans on the origins of the word, the fact that the term sport loses much of its descriptive power at the limits of the definition (thereby requiring a new word, cogni), and that the very existence of this debate calls into question whether chess is or is not a sport.
There isn't very much to talk about with regard to Pro's case because Con basically agreed with all of his points. Con choosing to emphasize the origins of the word is interesting, but he undermines his own argument by talking about English as a fluid and ever-changing language. With Con admitting this fact, he has to prove that one should ignore the flexibility of the English language and refer to a word's roots, but this groundwork is never established.
Con also creates a cumbersome burden of proof for his case. Instead of arguing that the word "sport" does not apply to chess, he takes the more complicated position that the word "sport" ought not be applied to chess. Though, Con does put in a good effort, proposing his own replacement to the word "sport," "cogni." The main issue I had with this argument was, as pointed out in the debate, that "cogni" can very well overlap with the term sport. While Con does a good job arguing that his word better describes games like chess, he struggles to establish that "sport" and "cogni" are mutually exclusive terms.
Con is able to string together his best point when he talks about the implications of this debate's very existence. He basically states that the existence of this debate reflects the fact that chess doesn't satisfy the common conception of a sport. This is a good point because it begins to approach the question of why a new term ought to be created, but again, I am left wanting a little more. Even if I accept what Con said, I still don't know why the term "sport" and any replacement term cannot comfortably overlap. Sure one might have more descriptive power or specificity, but why does that mean that both words cannot apply? Again, I really like where this point was headed, but I felt like it just needed a little more work to go seal the deal.
In short, while Con made some convincing points, Pro's case was left practically untouched and Pro did a good enough job of poking holes in Con's case. Pro accomplishes this by discussing the flexibility of the English language and the lack of mutual exclusivity between "sport" and "cogni." Con had the much tougher case to argue, and while he did a good job, he fell just short, in my opinion.
Basically, Pro was never able to establish the definition upon which his argument rests. Con did a good job of outlining his conception of the word "murder" as a purely legal term in his first round. Pro doesn't contest this until the final round, and at that point, by virtue of not criticizing the definition before, Pro tacitly accepted the definition. Therefore, this debate is, in my mind, strictly about whether abortion satisfies the legal requirements for murder. In regard to this point, Pro never truly offered a meaningful argument, while Con clearly cemented the legality of abortion, necessarily meaning abortion is not murder. To his credit, Pro did attempt to deconstruct the idea of using the law as a measure of what does or does not constitute murder. However, all of Pro's retorts were either unclear or blatantly contradictory. For example, Pro initially alleges that the law is not subjective, and when challenged by Con, Pro admits that the law is subjective but insists that there is an objective basis to the law (without ever explaining what that objective basis is).
This next point does not have much to do with the legality of abortion, and therefore has little bearing on my vote, but I thought I would comment on it considering the debate was so short. Con attempted to compare preserving human hands to a fetus. I understand the basics of Con's point, effectively arguing that the mere presence of a human cell does not represent a "person" worthy of the right to life. However, I think Pro did a good job of clarifying that the presence of a human cell is not sufficient to attain the right to life. Rather, Pro asserts that it is the potential to become a person (through uninterrupted or manipulated processes). Pro offered two responses to this, one being that human hands can be cloned and become a PERSON, which is a claim he never really supported properly (I know he linked a YouTube video, but it wasn't particularly illuminating). He also argued in the final round that fetuses do not develop independent of external resources, but Pro never really seemed to disagree in his previous arguments. Pro very explicitly referred to external INTERVENTION, which I interpreted to be a reference to an action on the part of another agent to disrupt the development of personhood.
Pro's first argument is basically a write-up on the contradiction of individual rights and human rights. He constructs a compelling case for mandating the equitable distribution of resources as a means of serving the public good. Where Pro falters is in his advocacy of communism as a liberating force, and then immediately referencing North Korea as an example of communist ideals in practice. As one would expect, Con highlights the repressive nature of North Korean society. Con's main response in round one was an argument in favour of private property because, in his view, there are enough resources to go around. I think the main problem with Con's argument was twofold. First, Pro did a good job of cementing the fact that a constant state of abundance cannot be assumed. Therefore, Pro argues that the equitable distribution of resources would alleviate the plight of the disadvantaged when there is no abundance. My second problem with Con's argument was that he never really established that communism would be destructive in a world with abundance. Rather, his arguments seemed to merely prove that communism would be less efficacious in a world of abundance than it would be in a world of scarcity. Much of the debate also centred around what societies are and aren't socialist. In the end, Pro convinced me that countries like America, Canada, and Japan satisfied many aspects of his definition of communism, which effectively boils down to "communism = welfare state." However, Pro did himself a disservice by focusing so much on property rights, because as Con points out, many repressive countries (he lists the Soviet Union) were avidly against property rights. Ultimately, I was convinced that The most successful countries of the modern era integrate communist principles (as they're defined in this debate) into their societies through their welfare state. That being said, I am not convinced that the wealthiest countries in the world share the communist perspective on property rights. This topic brought out another key contention in the debate, the definition of communism. On this issue, I will say just one thing: I understand Con's frustration with Pro's unconventional definition of communism, but it is well established that definitions pre-defined in the debate description override definitions derived from intuition or the dictionary.
In short, I think Pro was able to make an interesting case in favour of equitably distributing resources for the purposes of looking after the disadvantaged. Con never made a concrete response to this, other than with his argument from abundance, which as I previously explained, is stained by two big flaws. This is the primary reason arguments are going to Pro. The rest of the debate was about what societies are communist and what constitutes theft. With regard to the presence of communism around the world, I thought Pro did a good job of proving that the modern day welfare state is fundamentally communist, while at the same time, I thought Con did a good job at tearing down North Korea and combatting the idea that countries today share a communist (again, as it is defined in this debate) property rights doctrine. I view this as a pretty even point. The argument over theft was fairly boring. Instead of proving why the theft in question was justified or not, it was just about throwing around the label and hoping the moral baggage associated with the word would constitute an argument. Because neither side gave me a good reason to care about whether communism necessitates theft, I am not considering this point.
I am giving Con the conduct point because Pro basically resigned from the culminating rounds of the debate.
In my opinion, most of this debate was not germane to the subject of discussion. Instead of arguing the legality of restricting guns, most of it seemed to be oriented around two main points:
1. The purpose of the Second Amendment
2. The practicality of removing all forms of gun control.
I feel like one of the debaters could have tried to make the first point relevant by reconciling the wording of the Second Amendment with its original intentions, but neither debater accomplished this, in my opinion.
As for the meat of the debate, Con effectively referenced an 1876 court ruling which clearly empowers state governments to impose restrictions on different types of arms. In his response, Pro effectively concedes the debate when he admits that the states are empowered to pass gun control. In admitting this, I, as the voter, can only side with Con. The statement "all gun control is unconstitutional" is simply not true when one observes the power of individual states to pass gun control legislation, as Con argued. Pro attempted to respond to this point, but it kind of confused me. He insists that "they [the government] may only do so [legally pass gun control] through a constitutional amendment, which has not been done," even though Con clearly outlined how the Supreme Court gave an interpretation of the constitution which empowered the states to pass gun control. I feel like a prompt along the lines of "all federal gun control measures are unconstitutional" would be a more interesting subject for a future debate.
Full Forfeit
Full forfeit
Absolutely riveting.
Concession
Full Forfeit
Concession.
Full Forfeit
OMG, stunning content, I will never be the same after reading this.
Full Forfeit.
Forfeited Fully.
Concession.
Concession.
Concession.
Concession
Full Forfeit
Excessive Forfeiture
Full Forfeit
No meaningful argument was presented by Pro.
Conduct for the forfeiture.
Vote In Comments.
Concession
Full Forfeit.
Full Forfeit.
Full Forfeit.
Full Forfeit.
Concession.
I do not understand Con's third world argument, the description says " I am talking about people in 1st world countries who are eating meat because of the pleasure meat gives, and not out of necessity."
So I interpret the resolution to be,
---"people residing in the first world that eat meat for pleasure, not survival, ought not support the meat industry."---
What is Meat.
I think this point was well aimed, but it fails to convince me. I think there was an implication of what the meat industry is. I do not believe the intended spirit of this debate was to talk about how ethical lab grown meat is.
Name that Trait.
Pro openly concedes name that he can't answer name that trait.
"We don't, but we have meat that doesn't unethically torture them."
Emissions/Environment.
Basically Con said...
-More emissions than the whole transportation industry.
-A lot of land and crop use.
-Could feed extra people.
-Uses antibiotics children need.
Pro does not truly challenge this, merely stating that his critique of the resolution is enough.
Plant VS. Animal.
Plants are indeed killed in Con's system. But, they don't have a nervous system or the capacity to form connections. I thought that this would be a great point to go back and forth on, but it seems like it stops at that. Seeing how Pro never revisits this and leaves Con's contention to stand.
In short, Con won more contentions, though I felt like he blundered a few points like the plats VS animals point, where he could've made a more persuasive argument.
Nevertheless, this was a fun debate, and I hope my vote is satisfactory.
Good debate, and whilst I find Pro's position rather unappealing personally, I felt as though She made the more persuasive arguments. But, I thought Con argued excellently himself.
Conduct for Knub's forfeiture.
Both sides agree that there are problems with prisons. Sel believes the problems can be fixed while Pro thinks the system should be dismantled.
Also, keep in mind that when say something is better or more useful, I may just be referencing one debaters point of view.
Recidivism.
It seems as though reform can solve a lot of the problems prisoners face, but Pro contends that prisons have been proven to reduce recidivism, although her source does openly call for the abolition of prisons. Pro also cited the fact that prisons were never intended to recidivise, but were rather there
to punish.
In other words, we can take steps to fix the system, but in the end your merely reducing the harms of a net negative. (My takeaway)
Slavery.
It seems as though this may be a problem, but prisons do not necessitate slavery as Con points out.
Anarchy/Chaos
Con is never really able to back this up, Pro time and time again utilized scholarly articles that demonstrated the detrimental impact of prisons, yet Cons just seems to be relying on the ever fallible human intuition.
Jobs.
Whilst prison abolition may require mass layoffs, Pro proves mathematically that prison workers could be compensated with billions being left to spend on more useful projects.
Crime.
Pro did prove that generally prisons did not decrease crime, but Con did prove that when done correctly, prisons can decrease crime. And although these methods of reducing crime might be possible outside of prisons, prisons may be the only place a lot of people can ever attain the knowledge needed to become a useful member of society.
It seems as though there are few benefits to prisons, and actions that seek to improve prisons seem to call for prisons to be less prison like. The evidence offered by Con only serves to prove that prisons can be made better,not that a prisonless society would be worse than a society with prisons.
P.S. My apologies for the unorganized and sloppy vote, I really hope I didn't miss anything important in it. If Con or Pro have any problems, feel free to contact a moderator. I have also only skimmed through this to detect any grammatical errors, I hope it is still legible.
Full Forfeit.