christianm

Overall, I think Pro wins on personhood. Obviously, Con's case did not rely on this, and Con took the path of arguing that abortion bans fail from a policy perspective. It's a risky strategy, but let's see if it pays off.

R1:

Con argues a number of harms from abortion bans. These arguably don't outweigh the harm caused by abortion, but he also argues that abortion bans don't work anyway. I suspect "whether abortion bans work" will decide the debate. He also argues about several rare scenarios (and as I'll address later, I think Pro wins this point in the end by arguing for exceptions.)

R2:

Pro points out some flaws with Con's source and argues that abortion bans do work. Pro argues from principle as well. Con gives some more sources arguing that bans don't work. Pro's main issue here is that they haven't argued that the number of abortions prevented outweighs the structural harm mentioned by Con. It will depend on the strictness of "new arguments" and what counts as expanding on an earlier argument in R3 if Pro has a shot here.

R3:

Pro argues exceptions well here, but that doesn't get them out of the woods yet. Pro argues here that abortions have decreased by a lot (as they mentioned earlier) which does seem like it would outweigh the structural harms given and I don't think Con specifically rebuts this all that effectively. I won't criticize Pro as contradicting themselves on utilitarianism; I think their argument is that abortions should be banned no matter what because they are immoral and they don't contradict themselves. They do argue effectively, however, that banning abortions would also succeed in the benefits outweighing the costs (a framework that Con establishes rather well), so as a result Pro's argument still works.

Now it's Con's turn. There's an appeal to emotion at the end that comes across to me as annoying, but that's probably due to my bias and I won't hold that against them. Con reiterates several of the harms from earlier and argues that we should assume all abortions are justified (Pro did better arguing morality, so I don't think Con wins on that point.) But Pro's numbers (as Con points out) don't address abortions that people could obtain in other countries. If the burden of proof is equal, Con hasn't established that abortion bans will fail (their sources aren't perfect either and plenty of bans for other things work) but there's one point that settles things (at least imo):

Con stated in R2 that "And Pro helpfully provides another way to avoid prosecution, since he claims that mothers “are merely ignorant to all the facts”, which makes malice aforethought impossible to establish (this also undercuts his Dopamine Room argument - you can’t both claim that they have perfect reproductive knowledge of pregnancy and every associated risk while simultaneously claiming that they’re prone to accepting reproductive misinformation). This alone destroys most of his solvency." Pro didn't respond to this directly, and it does seem to provide a loophole that destroys their argument. The examples of solvency they gave didn't allow such loopholes. Arguably, if anyone can get away with an abortion easily, the only harms to women are time wasted on investigations and patient-provider trust. But still, this helps Con.

Con wins on a few small details, which isn't great, but they do poke holes in Pro's argument. In the end, I can't give the win to Pro if there are several points they don't address that would destroy their solvency entirely. I'd have liked if Con restated the last point in R3, but a win is a win.

R1

Vici has better rhymes here. Going after RM's comment history was smart, but nothing too groundbreaking here. This could be a matter of style, but it seems to me that Vici's insults have more punch since they're straightforward. RM might be more outside-the-box but it seems that Vici gets across a clear message easier. There was one exception, though: "My name in your topic's the reason you have a chance to become something here." It would have been better if the rest of the verse built off of this though.

R2

Vici continues with his strategy of simple but straightforward. His rhyme scheme wasn't as good in the beginning, but he has some nice responses. RM attacks his rhyme scheme which is smart but he also has way more syllables per rhyme making his job easier (and his internal rhymes are meh). That said, this second verse is definitely cleaner than his first. RM has more punch here.

R3

Vici's got some good internal rhymes. I'm not sure if they're consistently structured, but RM set the standard here so this definitely plays well for Vici. RM doesn't show what the messages are, but 8 does seem excessive. That said, he blocked me for voting against him so maybe he's just trigger-happy. A lot of generic insults from both sides, and I was inclined to give this one to Vici at first just on account of the rhyme scheme. But RM has a more consistent rhyme scheme and more descriptive insults (even if they are nasty and kind of generic).

2/3 with fairly even margins. Win goes to RM, though Vici definitely held his own.

Pro drops the point on racism, Con's conclusion ties the whole thing together pretty well. Pro may win the point on homosexuality since most of Con's argument comes in the last round, but Pro doesn't argue that being woke must include all social issues. Therefore, Con wins.

Con also provides significantly more sources.

Pro acknowledged the 1st and 2nd dimensions, and Con pointed this out. The debate didn't deal with 1d, 2d, 4d space but with the dimensions themselves. Pro could have argued the premise of the debate better and possibly won, but there were only 2 rounds and Con did a better job.

In a way, it seems that both sides are talking past each other. Pro makes the argument that the current president isn't doing a good job and should be replaced. Con argues that voters should live with the consequences of their decisions, but doesn't show why removing the president would do more harm than good. If anything, impeachment might make problems like this in the future have less consequences. Pro points out that people would be voting to remove the president, so it doesn't undermine democracy as he states. Con argued that "The resolution of this debate is premised upon 'should be replaced' which inherently implies 'now' as we are discussing replacing him with urgency before the natural end of his term," but Pro argued for impeachment and didn't specify how the president should be removed, just that they should be.

Overall, Con doesn't really show that altering the Meep to allow for impeachment would be a bad thing. Pro makes a good case that it would be a simple fix.

The description confused me at first. I assumed that Pro wanted to legislate such a system, but he later argued that no force would be used. Nothing in the description specifies this, so I think it's fair to interpret this as arguing: if everyone conformed to this system voluntarily, would we be better off? We obviously have problems with feasibility, and Pro's premise ignores it entirely. Granting this to Pro seems to be unfair to Con, but I'll allow it for now and see what Con has to say.

After reading Con's argument about the costs of such a system, I'm inclined to agree with their empirical approach. Not having links doesn't do Pro any favors, and Con tends to win on speculation as well; Pro's argument for exploitation isn't very well developed and doesn't address the risk employers assume. Without a strong point for Pro and several strong counterpoints (weak governments resulting in strife, for example) it's not really relevant what the premise of the debate is. Whether or not force is used, Con seemed to effectively argue that the proposed system would have more weaknesses than benefits. A lot of this ended in "no it is, yes it isn't" back and forth, but overall, Con came out on top.

Pro basically forfeits the source point. They probably should have put something in the description negating this point if they weren't planning to use sources, but whatever. I'm going by the rules here.

Pro forfeited.

This one comes down to the wire, and even as I write this opening sentence, I'm not sure who I'll end up voting for. At a purely semantic level, "Dogs bark" means "At least two dogs bark." (Or no dogs exist, and this would be vacuous truth.) But when such a statement is made the subject of debate, it's usually implied that this applies to dogs in general. (Not necessarily all dogs, as Con would have us believe, but in general.) I think the term "On balance" would have been helpful in this debate.

As of now, I'm leaning towards Con based on the vagueness of the term femininity. In the last round, Pro brings up a study stating that femininity shows distinct patterns, but Con shows that these patterns vary across cultures. By the end of the debate, Con still hasn't shown which feminine traits make someone a woman. "Feminine" might be an umbrella term but whether someone is a woman or not is a true/false statement. I think showing how these qualifiers change based on location help illustrate their impracticality.

A lot of this comes down to interpretation and I'm trying to be as neutral here as possible. In the conclusion, Cons states "Conclusively, under pro's own definition, he cannot tell who a man or a woman is." This isn't quite as strong in a last round since there's to room for Pro to rebut, but I think it's a fair assessment of most of the debate and why I award the win to Con.

Another point Pro made was "Could one be a woman in one country and become a man once they travel to another? Pro's case weirdly suggests this." Pro calls this bizarre, but his definition of femininity would be open to this flaw. Pro states that "travelling to another piece of land would not change anything" but this seems to go against Pro's definition of femininity. Seeing this last bit reaffirms for me the idea that Con won. All in all, Pro's criteria were far to vague and impractical.

I gave a bunch of reasons before, but basically Pro and Con had equal insults. Con had better rhyme schemes.

I think the debate over whether a girlfriend exists or not is nitpicking. The question assumes that Con has a girlfriend, so Con is forced to argue that if his girlfriend did exist, she wouldn't french kiss Pro. I think the existence of a girlfriend is clearly implied as a premise for the debate. But Con argues this point perhaps better than Pro, so I'm on the fence about it. Pro debunks the underage issue by arguing that "woman" doesn't refer to a girl (a last-minute save if there ever was one).

Really I think Pro deals with a lot of the kritiks, but in the end I think it comes down to whether a rational woman would be attracted to Pro, and I think Con makes better arguments here. Con decimates Pro on the Experimentation issue alone, and that's enough to award him with the win. Pro says "Why not experience it?," when Con has already addressed this saying "sexual experimentation has shown itself to be an extremely harmful and improper form of healthy sexual development."

I'm not sure whether we're supposed to factor in conduct with a one-point voting system. Novice forfeiting round 2 would be a death sentence in some debates, but they definitely make a strong enough case in other rounds that it doesn't matter all that much. I think Mall's strongest (and really only) point are the passages stating "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved" or something to that effect. On their own, these certainly imply that baptism is required for salvation. However, Novice gives a lot more evidence that outweighs this implication, passages that imply baptism is not required, as well as passages that state this explicitly. Therefore, I award the win to CON.

The only thing CON could have done better, I think, is to explain why different passages had different implications. For example, why does PRO's passage about salvation mention baptism at all? But he definitely still wins the case without this and adding analysis by biblical scholars solidifies the win.

A small point is that the analysis from Dr. Bob Wilkin is really just an appeal to authority. PRO didn't address this, so it doesn't matter much. I think CON would have a stronger case if they laid out the evidence given in the source and then cited it instead of saying "This person believes this, and they have a doctorate." But this is really a nitpick, since plenty of other times the argument is cited directly.