whiteflame

"The majority of animal agriculture in the United States is slavery"

That's the topic, and given how much back-and-forth there is in this debate, I think it's surreal that my decision comes down to a single, seemingly unimportant word in that resolution: is. Animal agriculture IS slavery. That's a fact resolution. It's not a should resolution. There is room in this kind of resolution for discussion of the terms, but those discussions surround the facts of what slavery is and how it is defined, not how we ought to define it. So when I look at Pro's case, I'm not seeing engagement with how slavery is defined (if anything, that's largely agreed up front), but rather with how persons are defined. Even in that sense, Pro's case focuses on how we should define persons, critiquing the way that we use to determine whether an entity is a or is not a person. I've got problems with that argument that I won't get into here because they aren't pertinent to the debate (Con did start down some of these lines, but I didn't think he went far enough in his analysis), but the long and short of it is that I end up agreeing with a lot of it... but it doesn't seem relevant to the debate. I could wholly agree that farm animals at least SHOULD BE considered persons and end up still voting Con because that doesn't mean that they are.

And that's the fundamental sticking point for me. I can understand how Pro's argument works and I can see him using rather careful language to say that his argument means that farm animals ARE persons and therefore the term slavery DOES apply to them, but just saying it that way doesn't make it so. I can accept that standing definitions for persons are arbitrary and deeply flawed, but that doesn't change what they are. Hell, I can even grant all the points about how the definitions for persons have changed over time, since those points only demonstrate that the term has been used to exclude humans that most or all of us would now consider to be persons. All that tells me is that the meaning of persons should change, not that it already is what Pro wants it to be. And Con does a good job of pointing that out, arguing that common usage supports his position on the terminology, and that there are many definitions of what makes a person that support his case whereas Pro's only definitions that support his require expansions on and selective readings of existing definitions.

At the end of the day, while Pro spends most of his time pointing out the problems with our delineations between persons and non-persons, and I largely agree with him that he has demonstrated those differences to be problematic, they are insufficient for netting him this debate. This is the topic Pro chose and, yeah, it doesn't give him a lot of wiggle room to argue this way. I can't just agree that the definition should be what he says it is. I need to see good reason why the definition of persons already includes animals. Bringing up issues like the abortion debate and whether the unborn have personhood might have been a start down that road, but all it does is show where there is disagreement over existing definitions of personhood, i.e. what wiggle room exists within the definition. It doesn't tell us that animals are within that span of wiggle room. Without doing that, Pro fails to meet his burden for the debate, so I end up voting Con.

I will say that I don't end up buying the two Kritiks from Con. I didn't really see this as a tautological trap, especially given that terms like person were up for debate. As for sensationalizing, I get the point being made, though I think it would have to be clearer that Pro is somehow degrading the human suffering the results from enslavement. I didn't see him doing that, though he was certainly applying it to a much larger subset of life on this planet.

Since I already gave a vote for the other debate on this same subject, I'm going to keep this one short and focus on the differences between the points made here and there. Note that I am not referencing that previous vote as this does stand alone, I'm just making clear that if voters are interested in thoughts that are largely consistent between the two debates, they can refer to my vote on Pro's other debate on the same topic.

Pro spends little time actually defining his impact or subject here. The impact appears to just be "freedom of association good" and "best to avoid bringing out peoples' worst impulses." These are decent points, but in order to support them, Pro has to give more analysis than I'm seeing. If we should always get the choice to associate only with those people that we want to associate with, then I need to see some reason why those who cannot do that in a society that denies them those basic interactions (often by facilitating racism) is one that's better than a society where some forced interaction leads to a more widespread freedom of association. Pro doesn't do that. Instead, he leans on the latter impact, arguing that it makes for bad interactions that are actually harmful. I need to see some comparison of impacts where Pro provides me with some quantitative measure for how bad this is and compares it with Con's own measures for why the benefits of forced integration outweigh. I don't see that. It's a short term vs. a long term impact. Con tells me to favor what yields the best impact for everyone as well, and Pro doesn't address that.

What changes in this debate is that Pro presents a few subjects to debate on, though they're still rather vague. Pro doesn't actually state what instances with businesses, the military and sports yield bad outcomes or how we can generalize from specific bad outcomes in these. Instead, he just asserts that forced integration yields bad outcomes for each of these. After a round that is copy-pasted from the other debate and doesn't apply here since it's responding to points not made in this debate (bad on Con for that), Con tells me why those are in place and, in some instances, challenges that these even are instances of forced integration. I don't see any direct responses from Pro, just repetition of the same points. Con clearly supports certain instances of forced integration and, in general, the idea of forced integration as a means to ensure improved freedom of association. Neither he nor Pro necessarily have to deal with all instances of forced integration, but only Con gives me some basis for determining who has the burden to address them and demonstrate that they are bad (Pro), while he only has to show that forced integration can be good. He does so. Therefore, I vote Con.

A debate like this is one where the instigator has to provide a clear delineation, i.e. what is forced integration under his case and what is not. I don't see that clarity, nor do I see any specific breakdown of the burdens in this debate from Pro. At several points, he says that it's not actually his burden to show that all cases of forced integration should not have been done, but he never tells me the number of cases he has to show are unjustified in order to win this debate. A vast majority? A bare majority? Some unknown minority? Pro doesn't say, and that's just begging the question: what does Pro have to do to win this? Con tells me that he has to present a specific case with a subject and enforcement, and while that may not be absolutely necessary (we could be talking about a broad array of subjects and enforcement), we do still need something solid to latch onto. It's only in the later rounds that Pro suggests some instances of this and brings up a clear harm: violence. However, Pro doesn't quantify that harm, instead largely leaving the issue vague. Saying that it's bad for violence to happen and that forced integration can result in violence just isn't enough. It doesn't tell me why individual cases of forced integration are bad, nor does that suffice as an effort to weigh Pro's impacts against Con's.

It also doesn't help that much of Pro's impacts, especially early on in the debate, seem to focus on freedom of association. Pro never really acknowledges the point by Con that many people lack that basic freedom and that forced integration offers a method to resolve that problem. Is it painful in many instances? Yes. Is it worth that pain? Con tells me it is. Pro doesn't really give me any reason why it isn't beyond the assertion that the pain is bad. Again, I understand that it's bad. Tell me why it's worse than the benefits that Con gains in terms of improved freedom of association and overcoming issues of racism. You can tell me that the forced integration requires that we abrogate freedom of association, but you can't simultaneously argue that we had freedom of association to begin with without defending its existence in the status quo before forced integration. Pro doesn't do that, so since freedom of association already doesn't exist for large swaths of the population as Con points out, forced integration at least offers them opportunities to associate that they never had before. Those opportunities may result in bad short term outcomes for some, but Con shows that in the long term, that freedom of association becomes more widely available. He's essentially piggybacking on Pro's main impact from R1.

So Con is the only one really engaging with the issue of what matters most in this debate. Pro gives me things that matter, but by making no comparisons to the benefits of forced integration (or, for that matter, challenging those benefits), he resigns himself to Con's directing of the debate, and Con's direction clearly nets him the win.

Full forfeit.

Good debate, guys.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n1CIv5uWOGzCN_y_A70F0Sn__tiAUGJ-hlzRK3SZ_Pc/edit?usp=sharing

This debate is largely two ships passing in the night. Both sides largely stick to their own arguments and ignore their opponents' points, with Con doing this across all three rounds and Pro doing it to a slightly lesser extent, but largely missing the opportunities to respond to Con's central points. This places both sides in a more precarious position, though to evaluate just how precarious, we need to start with the burdens analysis. Pro gives me the sole analysis to that effect, and while his R1 leaves the door more open on this front, his R2 is rather specific, arguing that he has to show that "PSA is ethically tenable, that is, it is defensible to the point that it is not “obviously or demonstrably unjust.”" That's an important distinction, since it effectively places the burden onto Con to show that it is unjust in some very clear way. In that sense, Pro's opening round provides a means of viewing PSA as ethically tenable, and it's up to Con to either present an alternate framework that he believes outweighs it and demonstrates that it is unjust, or to argue on Pro's framework that PSA is unjust. Con never tries the latter, so the focus is on the former.

There's a lot in Con's arguments that just doesn't matter for the purposes of this debate, though I'm only going to focus on the points that Con emphasized rather than issues like the Jesus-Lucifer connection that are entirely irrelevant. There's an effort to attach the issue of original sin to PSA, and while there might be some association between the two in terms of establishing what sins are being atoned for, these responses at best serve to mitigate the sins that PSA was meant to address. Both sides acknowledge individual sin, so though I'm left questioning whether Christianity upholds a collective sin as well (the sources appear to disagree on this one), that only suffices as one part of the picture. Con could have argued that PSA necessitates proof that collective sin exists, but I don't see that as necessary to prove Pro's point. Even if it was, Con is arguing that, based on several parts of the Bible and his frustrations with original sin, it is illogical and contradictory for original sin to apply collectively. That doesn't mean that it does not actually apply, just that there are contradictory parts of the text with regards to this issue, which renders this more of an issue of whether original sin ought to apply rather than whether it does. For sin in general, Con does suggest that free will might not exist, but when presented with compatibilism from Pro, he provides no responses.

But the main thing that sticks out to me from Con's argument is a lack of a clear framework. There's quite a bit of analysis of deontology from Con... in R3, when it's too late. Much of Con's arguments focus on how illogical and problematic some elements of Christianity are, but never a clear framework that he uses to challenge the threshold deontology framework that Pro provides. We get lots of points about how the Trinity makes PSA appear nonsensical, though again, the resolution regards its ethics and, at best, this questions the value of Jesus's sacrifice rather than the ethical tenability of that sacrifice. That might have yielded some points about how a symbolic gesture is an empty one or even a negative, but I don't see Con taking that tack, largely just leaving the point after clarifying why he is and we should be incredulous. Expressing incredulity is the vast majority of Con's argument, and while that does challenge Pro's claims on some level, it largely skirts around the issue of whether PSA is ethically tenable. The most he does is minimize how important PSA is.

There's actually very little in the way of offense relevant to the PSA from Con's case, since the lack of an ethical framework through which to analyze the PSA effectively means that he is arguing on Pro's framework the entire time, yet his engagement with that framework is too minimal (or too late) to meaningfully challenge the central tenets that Pro sets up. All of this might have been enough regardless if the burdens weren't set up to so distinctly favor Pro's side. He outright tells me that "as long as the question of PSA is sufficiently indeterminate to the voter, PRO has fulfilled their BoP." Con never challenges that. By not furnishing an opposing framework (the most I can take away from Con's case is that original sin and collective sin are morally problematic), Con's best case scenario is that I discard Pro's framework and am left without one entirely. Assuming I do that, I have no good way to analyze PSA, and am thus left with no ethical framework to assess it. That leaves it indeterminate. So whether I'm buying some elements of Pro's case (and I kind of have to, since Con drops the vast majority of it), or I buy Con's framing that we should discard his framework, I'm still left with the same decision: I vote Pro.

I'll leave the other point allocations tied.

In a debate like this, what makes the difference is understanding what "better" is and how to weigh the issues to determine what could make either country better. Con is the only one that lays out some metric for determining what makes either of these countries better, reducing it down to issues that affect what an average human being in either of these countries would experience. I take that straight up, meaning that we're talking about how a human being would experience living in both of these countries now. That means issues of what these countries have done before and whether they've harmed other countries or put the world in a better place are irrelevant.

To that end, Pro gives me a good deal of statistical data showing that the US is better for the average American than North Korea is for the average North Korean. Con's response to all of these sources is that they are "US propaganda sites that offer no proof," though in taking this method to respond to all of these sources, he doesn't end up responding to any of them. He never proves that these are US propaganda sites, never provides alternate sites with alternate high level statistics (instead focusing on much narrower issues that either only look at some small piece of these larger statistics or are tangential to them), and never addresses the contents of these sources individually. Instead, what we get from Con is a laundry list of responses that, in many cases, are irrelevant under Pro's metrics for the debate. In other cases, they range from small snapshots of much larger issues (e.g. evidence that, in some cases, North Korean soldiers help civilians) to claims that never get direct support (no starvation in North Korea). Con is also pretty scattershot with his sources, providing support in some instances and not in others.

More importantly, though, I'm just not sure what to do with these huge lists of points. How do I compare it to the points Pro made? Con just straight up tells me he's lying without ever entertaining the possibility that his statistics could reflect actual issues that he might need to use his arguments to counter. What I see here is a bunch of small points that might come together into bigger benefits, but never coalesce. If free housing is so widely available, for example, how do I compare that with the lack of economic security that Pro cites? How do I assess the purported absence of school shootings vs. Pro's human rights abuses and murder in prison camps? How much do higher birth rates and a faster growing population matter to the average person? How much does having a large ICBM matter to them? These points clearly matter, but on their face they don't rise up to the scale of Pro's statistics, and it was up to Con to justify the comparison. In the absence of that, I vote Pro.

Conduct to Con for the forfeit.

Frankly, I feel as though a lot of this debate just wasn't relevant to the topic.

Pro keeps talking about how news sources can come from stories that aren't real so they should all be taken with a grain of salt, though he never provides any reason to doubt this particular news source nor does he engage with the support for that news source. Even if I buy the grain of salt thing, it has no bearing on the resolution. If I slightly distrust the source, that doesn't mean that the miracle claim is untrue, that just means that there's some unknown possibility of it being untrue. If you want to argue that that possibility makes all miracle claims that appear in a news article improbable, then make that claim. I don't see it, so I don't see why this point matters.

And this kind of argumentation plagues Pro's initial round as well. He says that these don't happen often and that our daily experiences don't confirm their existence. The former is an argument from common knowledge, which isn't particularly relevant for this debate. Low probability doesn't invalidate all instances, yet that's the point Pro is trying to make. The odds of any single one of us existing are abysmally low, but that doesn't mean it is impossible. Moreover, giving me an overarching probability doesn't tell me anything about single instances, which become the focus of Con's argument. The latter argument is pure anecdote and, once again, fails to examine individual instances. Con is not required to show that it is probable that a certain portion of the population will experience miracles, yet Pro's argument solely focuses on that much bigger picture.

So that largely just leaves us with Con's arguments and his support thereof. It's never argued that the set of events that were said to occur in this instance actually occurred. Pro doesn't contest that any of what occurred here actually happened, and his arguments about appeals to authority don't affect that, either. Instead, he solely argues that there is a potential naturalistic explanation for why this boy could have survived. It's a viable option, but in order to argue this way, Pro had to show that it's the more plausible explanation for the boy's survival. That requires a good deal of 1-to-1 analysis, i.e. these are the set of circumstances the boy experienced, and those experiences mirror what we would expect to occur if the "dive reflex" was in play. Two problems: one, Pro doesn't provide clear evidence that such a reflex exists in humans, which Con points out is impossible to get without getting into immoral trials, and two, Pro doesn't establish that this other teenager who went through a similar experience either resulted from a dive reflex or even represents a comparable situation since, as Con points out, this person went into a coma and required extended life support. In other words, while a "dive reflex" may have been in play, Pro failed to establish that it exists in humans and that there's even a comparable circumstance that is likely to be explained by such a reflex.

So, I'm left with Con's version of events, where he says that the prayer must have acted in some way to address/prevent the resulting physical harms. I think that was entirely arguable, but Pro didn't make any arguments questioning how we would assess whether the prayer played an active role. Con relies on a sort of "prayer of the gaps" argument, saying that in the absence of an obvious medical/naturalistic reason for the child's survival and rapid recovery, we should attribute these to the known prayers that occurred. I personally don't find that argument compelling, but it's also the only explanation I'm given for what could have made this case different, and while I'm quite certain that others have prayed for the safety of a loved one in similar circumstances and failed to achieve these results, which may suggest that prayer is exceedingly unlikely to yield this kind of result, it was up to Pro to demonstrate that the prayer angle is improbable in this instance. Pro didn't do that, so I vote Con on arguments. And since Con also gives much deeper analysis of both his sources and their validity as well as Pro's sources and how well they apply in this debate, I also award him sources.

Given here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n1CIv5uWOGzCN_y_A70F0Sn__tiAUGJ-hlzRK3SZ_Pc/edit?usp=sharing

Long story short, despite some issues specifying the BoP, there was enough there to make me question whether Pro met it, leading to a Con win.

Pro forfeited after realizing he had been arguing for the wrong side, so arguments to Con. Conduct to Pro for recognizing his error and conceding gracefully.

This debate ends up being rather straightforward because of these quotes from Con's R1 and R2:

"If by the entrace of the belief of pantheism, any of those qualities are being altered so the "individual" quality lessened, Con wins as the topic is proven wrong."

"You are an individual to some entities, but not to others. In that case, Pantheism adds one thing that you are non-individual to, God, which makes you less individual when considering all and everything. Pantheism does deny you of individuality in some degree."

Pro never really addresses the first of these quotes, which already sets the stage badly for him since it means he has largely conceded this bit of burdens analysis. As far as I can tell, Pro doesn't suggest an alternate way to interpret the burdens based on the resolution, which is a shame because I think this was arguable. The words "does not deny" have a specific implication, i.e. it must impose some form of denial - I could see that as being rather distinct from choosing to follow a religion, which isn't necessarily an imposition. I could also see the burden being that at least most of their individuality must be stripped out for Con to win. Since his argument basically functions by saying that it's one among many of the ways that the individual is subsumed by some larger grouping or entity, it could be argued that this doesn't make for a big reduction in individuality.

That being said, without a direct response to this, Pro spends the debate mitigating Con's points without recognizing that mitigation does nothing to improve his position. The second quote, which Pro conceded in R3, ends up sinking him by itself in this debate because it's an acknowledgement that individuality is at least somewhat reduced by pantheism. Con told me that that reduction can be any amount to meet his burden. By this point, Pro would have had to argue that pantheism in some way imparts greater individuality to counter this, but instead focuses on the aforementioned mitigation. That doesn't do much to help him and leaves me little choice but to vote Con.

I could go through a lot of points given in this debate, but honestly, I think it all comes down to a single quote from Pro:

"I realise rehabilitation prisons work better for crime rates, visitation rates, and the economy".

This, essentially, functions as a concession that Con's CP is better than Pro's case. I could buy every argument Pro is making and all it would tell me is that the slavery-based system is better than status quo, not better than Con's case. Pro's only argument against said case is that there is an inherent barrier to action, i.e. the US (which was the focus of this debate) would not implement a rehabilitation-focused system of prisons. Setting aside the fact that the only support for this is a single poll that doesn't detail political will (or lack thereof) to implement such a system, and the fact that Pro largely just assumes that his case will pass in spite of the fact that slavery is and has been banned via constitutional amendment, cases in debate function based on fiat. Both sides, not just Pro, have the capacity to fiat that something will happen. This debate topic uses the word "should" and thus focuses on whether an action is the right course to take, as distinguished from a "could" resolution that would focus on the capacity to implement a given change. Pro can argue that impediments to Con's plan would yield consequences if he simply bypassed them entirely, but he can't argue that Con's case is impossible, especially given the lack of support for such an inherent barrier to such a proposal.

As such, I vote Con.

Based on the no forfeits rule, I would already be justified in voting Pro, but I will give a brief RFD besides.

As I read the resolution, before considering anything in the description, it questions whether ODD should be in the DSM at all, not whether it should be there in its current form. That being said, Pro does go out of his way in the description to define what its current iteration is and establish that Con must uphold that position, and Con appears to recognize that more clearly in this final round than in his first constructive. Con doesn't go full CP, though, as he seems to just view the DSM as further limiting what constitutes ODD and delineate it from other, non-ODD cases.

That being said, Con doesn't really engage with the specific aspects that constitute ODD (the checklist) that Pro presents. I don't personally agree with Pro's assessment of that checklist and how it is used, and Con does point out that his numbers of people who would satisfy them are massively inflated, but that doesn't change the fact that some people at the fringes might become subject to the psychiatric system, which Pro paints as highly negative, a position that I think was arguable. I would have liked to have heard more from Pro about how actual people have been harmed by this diagnosis instead of appealing to potential harms, but as those largely go unaddressed, the harms of being subjected to this system stand even if I'm unclear just how many people will be affected by it. By contrast, I don't really get from Con any firm grounding in the harms of rejecting ODD as a diagnosis. Pro appears to acknowledge that there are cases that must be diagnosed, but that they would fall into the "Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder" camp. Maybe there are cases that don't fall into this camp that require treatment, but Con doesn't provide examples nor does he provide any clear idea as to the harm caused by leaving them untreated.

That comparison leaves me favoring Pro's case, though I will say that I didn't buy the larger issues of demonizing legitimate anger, defiance or human nature because Pro didn't do enough to show that his examples (which included MLK) would have been diagnosed with ODD. Potential harms like this don't really work for me, since you're appealing to what might have happened if that person was around with the current ODD definition in the DSM. Maybe they would have been medicated and harms could proceed from that, but I'd need actual cases, not just speculation that psychiatrists could do this. It's easier to argue that psychiatrists have the tools at their disposal with the current definition of ODD to abuse their positions, which could harm those they medicate, than it is to argue that they have some larger effect on society.

Frankly, without a second round’s worth of arguments, there was no way Pro could win this since he allowed Con to dictate a lot of the terms and therefore the scope of the debate. If spontaneous abortions qualify, as Con argues that they do, then they constitute the vast majority of abortions and do not fit Pro’s metrics for determining that they are immoral, though Con also argues that it is Pro’s burden to demonstrate that ALL abortions are immoral, so even fringe cases would have to be unjustified for Pro to show that the resolution is true. I don’t think that framing of the debate is particularly fair or accurate based on the resolution, but it is up to Pro to make that point. He didn’t, so it stands and automatically yields a Con vote.

Conduct to Con as well for the forfeit.

One round debates are extremely limited, particularly for the instigator who doesn’t get a chance to respond to their opponent. You built that into the structure of the debate, so you accept the consequences.

Pro presents a definition of “right” that they feel fits the resolution, though the lack of contextual analysis opens the door for Con to argue that the definitions are flawed. Con does argue that, and given that his definition contextually follows, it’s the strongest one in the debate and therefore wins the day. Pro tried to make the resolution a truism and Con demonstrated that isn’t, and since Pro has the BoP, their failure to uphold it automatically defaults the debate to Con.

I think that both sides could use some clarity in terms of what distinguishes one from the other.

Pro's case is that Airmax must be removed and there is a sense of immediacy to that portion of his case, though the timeframe for replacement is unclear. Con makes the case in the final round that there is also a sense of immediacy to his replacement, but even he acknowledges that this is "before the natural end of his term," which means anytime before December. There's something to be said about the need to replace him in order to experience some benefit over a longer period of time resulting from having an active president, so Pro's benefits are reliant on doing it sooner rather than later.

That somewhat complicates what differentiates Con's case from Pro's. He is advocating that we don't get rid of Airmax as president (i.e. he should ride out the term), but that any replacement in an upcoming election should be preceded by either the elimination of the site presidency altogether or some kind of overhaul of the existing system. The latter is really where the differentiation between their cases becomes complicated because both sides acknowledge that there is good reason to change the way the presidency works and both provide opportunities for those changes to take place, albeit Pro gives himself a narrower window during which to make this happen. Con never shows that this window is unworkable, so both sides can achieve solvency on this front.

So what really differentiates the two is Pro's willingness to keep the presidency vs. Con's position of doing away with it entirely, which leaves me with two questions: can a MEEP solve for the problems with the presidency, and if it can, does the presidency afford enough benefits to justify its existence? I don't love that Con chose to continue arguing for a MEEP to address these problems, since doing so is a pretty blatant acknowledgement that a MEEP would suffice as a means to resolve some if not all of these problems. I don't see a clear impediment to solvency for these problems should a MEEP pass along these lines, though Con does make the argument that people tend to vote against their best interests, so the passage of a MEEP is not guaranteed. That being said, the same applies to passing a MEEP that abolishes the presidency, so that is a non-unique argument. As such, it seems that whether the MEEP is an overhaul or abolishes the position, it encounters the same problems and has the same degree of solvency.

So that just leaves whether the position does any good post-overhaul. Both Pro and Con seem to acknowledge that it could do some good. I didn't find Pro's arguments very persuasive on why its current actions are beneficial, mainly because most any user could do those things and the attachment of the word "official" to events hosted by the president haven't shown the kind of uptick in involvement that Pro suggests would happen. All that being said, as a check to moderation, both sides appear to agree that a more empowered presidency would be beneficial, so there is at least an implicit admission by Con that such a system would be better than nothing. Since Pro's is the only system that guarantees the persistence of the presidency, that gives him the edge in this debate. There is the possibility that Pro's system preserves a presidency that is essentially non-functional like the existing one, but since both sides seem to acknowledge that it is more of a do-nothing position than one that does anything harmful, that seems largely identical to eliminating the position altogether. Also, since Con's position also leaves some uncertainty as to the long term existence of the presidency by similarly hanging his hopes on a MEEP (just one with an additional option to eliminate the position), it doesn't really improve anything. This debate might have ended differently if there was a clear harm to the presidency existing as it currently does, instead of just the absence of benefit functioning as the harm. It might also have ended differently if there was a clear harm to ending the Airmax's presidency early, which is largely reduced to a "must enforce the will of the people," which a MEEP would do as well.

As such, I vote Pro.

When it comes to burdens in a debate like this, I'd usually treat them as split if both sides are defending a single system, though this case is a little different as Con is defending the status quo, whereas Pro is presenting an untried system. That does place the burden firmly on Pro, which isn't good for him.

Pro's system has a lot of holes in it, and in his attempts to explain them, there's nothing beyond claims of evidence to go on. The closest Pro gets to providing evidence is listing details of a bunch of different crop types and explaining how they would fit within an acre, which is interesting, but should be supported by actual sources and not just stated by Pro, especially when there's a source on Con's side that contradicts those claims.

In general, though, Pro seems exceedingly optimistic without cause. He gives all these numbers, but doesn't show that they're likely to happen if someone is just beginning farming for the first time. He doesn't engage with issues of disease or famine of any sort (in fact, he dismisses all claims of poor food quality as not adding poison to it, rather than reflecting on the aspects of food quality that go beyond actively seeking to harm yourself), and when it comes to very basic issues of managing this feat, Pro kind of just spends the debate shrugging. He shrugs off the temporal and monetary costs of moving people across the country as though they're extremely easy to manage.

However, I think it's the following statement that got to me the most:

"If everyone wanted to implement my Socialism, those who own too much land would gift most of it to those who have none.
If half of people wanted to implement my Socialism they would have to find some way to buy land. If they cant do this, then its not possible."

Pro says something along these lines several times, arguing that it's everyone's choice to join his system. If that's the case, then Pro should be giving pretty good reason why there would be mass buy-in, especially if he's banking on rich people giving away a lot of land for free. Yet, at no point in the debate does Pro show that any rich person, much less enough rich people to make this feasible, would join into his system. And it's that second line that really does him in because he's actively admitting that he has no solvency if only "half of people wanted to implement" his system. Where's the money going to come from? Where is any support going to come from? The central government has no power in this system, so I have no clue where it would come from. So, it's unclear whether Pro can even secure the land to make this possible. Even if he's right that everyone can grow everything they need on one acre, he gives no basis for believing that he can secure even that much, much less the housing required to ensure these people aren't homeless, the base resources to ensure that they can start farming, the training required to get started, the transport required to get them to these sites, or even access to all the other jobs that he says these people will maintain in a brand new part of the country with likely few established hospitals, law firms, etc.

There's just too much that Pro assumes will happen to make his system successful that he doesn't ever substantiate. Con, by contrast, only has to show that the existing system works better than one that has no feasible path forward. It does, ergo he wins the debate. Sources to Con as well for providing them, since Pro actively eschewed their usage.

I think this debate largely comes down to framing. Pro frames this discussion mostly around bigger picture tactics with an emphasis on how the two armies should have behaved to best harness their advantages. Part of showcasing this is just in the numbers of casualties and the overall qualitative victories in the war, but there's also the factor of better addressing the mandate that the army needed to follow, better recognizing how the battle would work with his more modernized military, and, on Lee's side, failing to recognize when the cause was lost and failing to utilize their superior defensive position.

Con's focus is largely on individual battles, and though Pro does spend time here, it's really the lion's share of Con's argument. He's much more focused on tactical superiority in these encounters, with some broader concerns as well. Rather than focusing on a mandate, Con discusses the need for Lee to act offensively in order to strike at the North and potentially end the war, viewing any protracted effort as an automatic loss. This somewhat contrasts with his own argument that Grant wasn't the reason for the Union's success so much as the Union's resource advantages, suggesting that the Union's victory was inevitable regardless of their leadership.

One of the key factors to consider that I'm surprised doesn't get that much attention in this debate (it does get mentioned later in the debate but rather minimally) is that much of how we evaluate their effectiveness now is the result of good hindsight. We know now that the Confederacy likely could never have won the war, so does that mean that, at the time, Lee should have been aware of it? I agree with Con that he likely wouldn't, but that introduces a lot of questions as to whether, at the time, a lot of these choices made sense. Lee's tactical choice to act offensively was contradicted by many others at the time. In retrospect, it was probably his only way to effectively win the war, and even at the time he would have been aware of the resource disparity and how that would have affected a defensive effort, but I'm unclear that this isn't another instance of hindsight playing a role. Considering hindsight was mentioned for the first time in R3 (admittedly in response to an argument Pro made in R3), it's hard to know how much of a role it plays in evaluating what these generals should have done at the time.

That being said, I think Pro takes this debate. Even if I buy a lot of what Con is telling me about Grant's successes and how they came from other elements beyond Grant, he was the general in charge and the results came from his utilization of those resources. Another general might have been able to do it, but Pro presents examples of generals that were clearly failing in that regard. Maybe they were all just really bad at their jobs, but Grant presents as a clear step up. By contrast, while Lee certainly had impressive victories in many battles, it's unclear that he made good wider view strategic choices. He used outdated tactics that didn't recognize the modernization of weaponry beyond Napoleon's era, he pushed the highly risky effort to invade the North, prioritized defending their capital over more strategic sites (Con's response to that comes in R3 where Pro could not address it, despite Pro's making that point in R1 and R2), and while the attack on the North might have made sense in retrospect, it's unclear that it was the smartest move at the time with a highly aggressive, multipronged attack from Grant proceeding into the South. The defensive effort had its flaws, but it would have at least been responsive to the existential threat they were facing at the time. Even if I gave Con the point on attacking North being the best possible choice, that alone with the individual tactical successes just doesn't stand as enough to win over the successes of Grant that stand largely unopposed, if somewhat mitigated by the uncertainty of who/what caused them.

Don't vote on these much, but given the short time left, I'll make sure it has something up.

I went by who I believe won the most rounds with better rhyme schemes, more creative raps and more biting commentary. I think Pro did a generally better job throughout R1 and R2, particularly as I felt he was more biting than Con through those rounds and I appreciated his rhymes more, even though Con was usually more creative. Con picked up steam as he went and ended up taking R3, but that wasn't enough to outstrip Pro's previous wins. Still, I'll award one point for each round won, so that's 2 to Pro and 1 to Con.

Despite so much of the argument in this debate focusing on what's said in religious texts, I find that what it comes down to isn't so much who is right on those texts as who better addresses the topic. There are two very distinct visions of what the topic covers. Pro argues that a religion that says anything about instilling terror or pushing fear is supporting terrorism, whereas Con is much more focused on the specific acts that Islam supports and whether those constitute the act of terrorism. That may not sound like a big difference, especially as Pro does talk about many of the specific acts that Islam supports in R2, but in the end his case doesn't rely on those acts since he doesn't take the opportunity in R3 to defend those specific points. His focus is more holistic, talking about pushing terror rather than acts of terrorism.

The problem is that it's not quite that simple. Saying that others should feel terror, or even that anyone who disagrees with your belief system is due terror, isn't the same as endorsing terrorism. It may be interpreted that way by some, but both sides argue that interpretation can be messy. The question is whether this is a correct interpretation, and on that front, Con gives me a lot of reasons why the specific interpretations Pro derives from specific texts don't match up. Maybe he missed something meaningful, but I don't see Pro refer back to any specific quotes from his R2. Instead, he focuses on the holistic, which can only prop up his argument about how those of other faiths should/will feel rather than how those of the Islamic faith should act. Moreover, when there is agreement on the text focusing on actions that would inspire terror, it's unclear that that is terrorism because, as Con explains, those would be justified as self-defense. I don't see a response to that. There's an argument about retribution, but no direct link between retribution and terrorism. There's an argument about the behavior of Islamic organizations and sects being the most authentic, to which I see a number of rebuttals to specific organizations in R1 and to them more generally in R3. Even if I bought the latter point, I'm not sure why I should buy that the specific organizations and sects that commit to terrorism are authentic, while others are not.

Overall, I'm just not getting a clear link to the acts of terrorism that Pro would have to show Islam supports. The link to supporting acts of terrorism rather than just saying that others should feel fear for believing otherwise just isn't as solid as it should be, and dropping so much of Con's R3 responses doesn't do Pro any favors. I end up voting Con.

I'll keep this short.

Given how this debate is structured, Pro has given himself a hefty burden: prove that god must exist in some form. Pro goes about this largely by arguing that how the universe came into being is unexplainable in the absence of a deity that exists independent of space and time. That argument relies on being absolutely correct, i.e. Con must have no alternative explanation for what Pro says only god can explain. To that end, there are a number of individual arguments I could cover that may lead me to a similar conclusion, but the simplest one is quantum fluctuations. Con presents evidence that quantum fluctuations could explain the origins of the universe. So we have another potential means by which the universe could have begun. Pro's responses largely entail dismissing the theory on the basis that it has been disproved (and... I think mixing it up with abiogenesis? Kind of hard to tell) and arguing that what we conceive of as "nothing" cannot exist so quantum fluctuations wouldn't explain something coming from nothing. The former argument is an assertion without evidence and doesn't demonstrate where the flaw is in the theory. The latter may start down that road, but it is only a start. Pro doesn't explain why "nothing" cannot physically exist, though if that is true, that just invites more questions, e.g. if "nothing" cannot exist, why couldn't "something" have always existed? It bites back into another point Con made with regards to the eternal existence of the universe. If you're going to make this point, you have to be careful to explain it in full and not just assert that "nothing" cannot exist. Moreover, it's not an abject dismissal of quantum fluctuations. They could still explain the origins of the universe based on Con's evidence. If the argument is that they themselves must be caused, then Pro has to make that point, but I don't see it in his arguments.

That gives me one other means by which to explain the origins of the universe, and as Pro's argument relies on God being the sole possible means by which the universe could have come into existence, letting that point through means Pro fails to meet his burden. I vote Con.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LDaY6h7UUrc-B-ZKcNe6VPQvksMYiPWJBnqbkWUulrc/edit?usp=sharing

TL;DR - Pro doesn't do enough to establish a case against macroevolution, mainly arguing at the fringes of the topic, while Con does a lot more to clarify what the topic and build an argument around the mechanisms and experimentally derived examples of evolution.

I'm also giving Con sources, since those that he provided did a lot of work in the debate and were only ever mitigated, whereas Pro's sources are a combination of YouTube videos (all unclearly applied and unaccompanied by quotes), and citing the Richard Lenski experiment without sources.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1onP_cdOEhyona3ngpJoGZ8CmK2YB-aQE8kLUv26T29Y/edit?usp=sharing

This debate is really a comparison between a more scattershot approach to the topic (throw a bunch of arguments out and see what sticks) vs. a focused approach to the topic (narrowing in on a single point or pair of points and explaining them in detail). Both approaches can work, but it's the latter that wins the day here.

Pro, it's not so much that your individual points don't work, it's that they don't really go beyond what you said in R1. Most of those points just sit there, and while some of them might have greater meaning to the debate as a whole, you don't go through the process of explaining why. What makes a list-like approach such as this work is when you narrow down to a few key issues as the debate progresses. You have to make the case that there are benefits to physical media that are the most important facets of the debate. I can think of a few points you could've gone with here, but what I'm seeing instead is more of a rebuttal-based structure where you address your opponent's points instead of building up your own. You also muddle your own points. For example, if Internet access is a concern (you don't really build it up to be one, but you argue that the need for it is a negative for Con's case), then why emphasize that YouTube videos can do so much to help narrow the field of choices? In general, it just doesn't feel like any of these points have heft to them because none of them get all that much emphasis. Bad media exists regardless, it's just a matter of volume and cherry-picking some exemplars isn't enough to tell me that the selection on streaming services is all bad. You could argue that it makes it harder to find the good stuff, but I need to see that spelled out and impacted meaningfully. Emphasizing the quality of Blu-ray tells me there's a loss in going to streaming, but it's not made all that meaningful.

Con, in emphasizing each of his points and focusing his attention, builds a more meaningful case about how the structure of streaming services and their availability to the public both improves the experience for customers and gives more opportunity for creators to introduce something unique and innovative at low risk. Those points establish to some degree what we would lose if we didn't have them. I can recognize that that creativity leads to many flawed products while at the same time recognizing that it leads to amazing work that would otherwise likely never see the light of day, and certainly not a wide audience. I don't think his points are perfect since investments from companies like Netflix can taint a production (they have a lot of say in how these are done), but I don't see that argument. That narrow focus just allows Con to hype up his arguments far more comparatively, and he capitalizes on it.

So I vote Con.

RFD given here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HO-fbavy6ECvmmx7CeO0EkTTZm--EIlZReGRSTDc1hQ/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xRykeoj6caFKwp3aJbDzs9ZzGUIjVfp4DxTSthN0vyE/edit?usp=sharing

I rambled on a bit, but I was trying to cover a great deal of the debate, so it went a bit long. Open to addressing questions and concerns.

It's difficult to judge this one because almost the entirety of Pro's argument is contained to R1 and consists of a series of short if/then statements and questions (I'll get to Pro's R2, but his R3 is just a summary of his argument), whereas Con's argument is also contained to R1 with a set of rebuttals to Pro's R1 in R3, which means most of what I'll be covering is in R1. I understand that there were issues posting R2 that led to that dropped round, so I'll abstain from awarding conduct, but it's difficult for me to weigh those rebuttals in this debate when Pro doesn't get a chance to address them.

Still, I don't think I have to do so. Con presents a case in R1 where he examines how cosmic inflation generates subspaces or bubbles in spacetime that could conceivably be defined as their own separate universes. Whether these can be defined as separate universes is an open question, one I thought Pro would seek to answer in R2. However, Pro doesn't engage with this at all, instead claiming that Con is guilty of the Gambler's Fallacy, which might be a decent point if Pro had taken the time to point out why Con's case violates some of the points he made in R1, though in the absence of that, he's leaving it to voters to decide whether Con's case violates those points. So, let's say I ignore Con's rebuttals in R3. While some of these R1 points might function as absolute rejections of the possibility of multiverses, to do that, I'd need more than just an assertion that these are physical impossibilities. I'd need evidence, calculations, studies, something more than just a set of potential logical problems that could potentially affect all multiverses. There's an ontological point in here that doesn't require that kind of support, but it does require Pro to provide good reason why we should define what is a universe in this manner. Con doesn't provide a direct definition of universe, but his argument implicitly contradicts all three of these definitions. I need to see a response to that, or at least something from Pro that makes a big deal out of how the universe should be defined and why that rejects Con's arguments. Absent that, all I have is the assertion from R1, which was contradicted by Con's argument in R1, so... essentially, nothing.

The other argument Pro provides in R2 is Occam's Razor, and this isn't going to be enough to give him the debate for two reasons. One, in his listing of assumptions, he doesn't tackle the evidence from Con's R1. That's a problem because his whole argument about how we came to a heliocentric view is built on evidence that contradicted the geocentric view. This is an important piece of evidence in the debate, one that supports a multiverse and would contradict Pro's model of a single universe. Pro, in ignoring it, violates the very reasoning he uses to establish how Occam's Razor works. Two, Occam's Razor can really only tell us that what is the preferred theory when presented with a given set of data. It isn't capable of supporting absolute claims like the one in the resolution. It can tell us that it's far less likely that a multiverse exists than does a single universe, and if I'm buying this argument, then that's my take-away. However, that doesn't affirm the resolution, so even if I buy it wholesale, it cannot independently lead me to vote Pro.

All this being said, Con has a case for a multiverse on the table that gets dropped. His responses in R3 are valid, but unnecessary as Pro's case is all pre-rebuttal or rebuttal that just ignores Con's case entirely. Pro is the one proving the absolute, not Con. Con provides evidence that there could be a multiverse, and given that it is unaddressed, it affords him some likelihood of being right. I vote Con.

While Pro only aims for the extremely low-hanging fruit in this debate, giving himself the most no-brainer form of gun control to defend (age restrictions) and the second-most obvious choice (background checks), that case sets up what must be debated here and I'm not seeing Con addressing the former at all until R2, where it comes up as new material in the final round. Even if I buy Con's entire argument from R1 wholesale and dismiss background checks as unnecessary due to other measures (e.g. good guys with guns stopping the bad ones), Con just straight drops the age restrictions point. At best, you could cross-apply some of the arguments you made about criminals to that point, though a) in doing so, you're asking me to do work for you as a voter, since you didn't cross-apply them yourself until R2, b) the cross-application doesn't quite work given elements like gun-free zones, and c) doing so doesn't fully address the reasons Pro gave for having this form of gun control in place, meaning it's mitigation at best. Note that this is if I gave Con as much leeway with his arguments as possible without just accepting the slew of new points about family structure, Judeo-Christian values, promoting "people who do the right thing," and addressing drugs that all appear in R2 and largely just function as a non-sequitur list of other possible ways to potentially address this or other problems without any support.

In general, Con's lack of rebuttal to Pro's case really hurts him in this debate. In a 2-round debate, you've got to put more effort into your R1 and make all your points there, including rebuttals. It also doesn't help that almost all of Con's case is built on the "there are better ways to do this" kind of argument, which might work better if you addressed the definitions and burdens analysis your opponent gave (this might tell me that gun control is unnecessary because other measures solve for the same problem), but absent that, it just looks like a bunch of half-baked counterplans that go nowhere. Even on background checks, all I'm seeing is reasons why other things could address the criminal element, which isn't enough to dismiss the argument by itself without couching it in the resolution.

Hence, I vote Pro.

The outcome is relatively straightforward largely because only one side is really framing their case based on the resolution, and that would be Pro. Pro is arguing that the life of a person who is LGBTQ is, on average, harder than the life of someone who is not. He explains what he means in expressing said difficulties, most clearly in his syllogism, but at several other points as well. He supports those points with numerous sources about how LGBTQ individuals generally have worse quality of life and are more often subject to pressures that lead to their suicides. While not all of this goes through perfectly, a majority of it stands largely uncontested.

Con's response is to engage in two different points of attack. He starts by arguing that we cannot know what "better off" means on an objective level, which functions largely as a Kritik of the phrasing of the resolution. It's fine if you want to argue that, but a) you have to be directly responsive to your opponent's points about what "better off" means in this context (I don't see much in the way of direct responses to that point), b) it has to be clear what I should do with that knowledge (though Con seems to be driving at a "voters should treat any improvement as equally beneficial since they can all exhibit different benefits in different contexts," a point that would have been nice to see directly instead of being vaguely hinted at), and c) absent a means for voters to do something with b), you need to give me an alternative interpretation (I'll get to this on the next point, though it's not framed as an alternative). The second point is potentially consequential, since Con largely dismisses Pro's case on the basis that his impacts are consequences of others discriminating against LGBTQ people rather than consequences of a person being LGBTQ. The trouble is that I don't get this framed as a distinct and preferable interpretation of the resolution. If you want me to think of "being LGBTQ" as those benefits/harms that exist in a vacuum absent other members of society, then you need to tell me why. It's fine if you think that the goal should be to focus on those aspects of LGBTQ people that are inherent to themselves, but you need to give me a reason to prefer them. Pro keeps telling me that the world imposing harms on LGBTQ persons indicates support for the resolution not opposition to it because that is how he framed the resolution. You have to either reframe the resolution or find some way to elevate your impacts over his. Unfortunately, I see neither. I see an independent case being made without addressing why I should prefer either your view of the resolution (which I never clearly see) or your alternative regarding what "better off" should mean in this context, and without either and with most of Pro's case (particularly suicides and mental problems - arguing that comparing them to depressed individuals makes them look good isn't exactly a point in your favor) standing, my vote goes to Pro.

There's not much of substance to this debate and that stems from the fact that the debaters cannot agree on the terms throughout. To some degree, that's a factor of just finding areas of disagreement with what Con views as a truism debate and trying to figure out where the burdens lie. For the most part, I don't see this as all that important to the debate. Even if I assume that the resolution is a truism as defined, the CoC doesn't necessitate a vote against Pro for creating it or for slanting the debate in his favor with his definitions. I also don't know why the burdens debate goes on for so long when burdens stop mattering early on. If I buy that Pro's definitions are the ones I should use for the debate, Con presents few if any direct rebuttals, meaning that he has upheld his burden. If I buy Con's view of the definitions, then the issue of BoP goes away because Pro's basis for establishing who has it also goes away, and simultaneously, he fails to uphold the resolution.

So, this debate comes down to topicality. It's a rare thing for me (at least on this site) to evaluate whether a given way of defining the resolution is valid, but it's essential in this case. In cases where the instigator sets a definition in R1, particularly when that dramatically shifts the direction of the debate, it comes off as opportunistic, i.e. someone will accept expecting a certain debate, but end up having to argue something demonstrably different, granting greater advantage to Pro. I believe that happened here, especially as Pro was willing to define some terms in the description, but left out essential items to understand the shift. It also doesn't help that, from a contextual level, this debate clearly should have taken a different course. The title "Creationism should be taught in schools" has a common meaning, referring to the teaching of creationism as theory rather than in the abstract as something to be analyzed from a distance (e.g. as a part of history, philosophy, religion). So, I'd say that based on common usage and context, Pro's definition of the resolution doesn't match what his opponent could reasonably anticipate upon reading the resolution. As such, I'd say that the way he defined the topic is off-base, especially as it slants the topic much more heavily toward Pro.

But even in cases like this, I'm looking for contender to make these points and argue why the debate should have gone a different way. In that respect, Con could have done better. There's a comparison with teaching things like alchemy, though appealing to absurdity doesn't get the point across that there's something wrong with the framing of the debate. The math point manages to demonstrate it a little more clearly, though even then he explains that the express purpose is to generate mathematicians (which Pro points out isn't true of everyone who learns math) rather than give people the tools to actually utilize mathematics in their everyday lives, which would've better gotten the point across. The point is better captured by talking about teaching language and science as means of imparting skills or knowledge of a given field. I don't see a response to that side of Con's point, instead saying that since this differs from his point about mathematicians, it can be thrown out. Contrasting rebuttals don't cancel each other out, particularly not a contrast like this. I need to see a reason from Pro why teaching creationism and teaching about creationism are both reasonable interpretations of this resolution, yet all he does is say that Con doesn't challenge his definition. He challenges it contextually. He doesn't have to present an alternative definition. Pro had to rebut his contextual standard, and I don't see it.

After R1, I'm just not given anything substantive by either debater to affect this issue, and since deciding it also decides the debate from where I'm sitting, I vote Con.

This was a pretty frustrating debate to read. I was going to provide a really detailed breakdown of the problems, but I think keeping this at a more generalized level will help explain what concerns me.

From the outset, I'm not really sure how each side is defining what gun control actually is. Pro spends a lot of his time jumping between different potential forms of gun control without focusing on any of them, though much of his case mainly applies to gun bans or heavily restricted access to guns, while Con tells me that Pro is just focused on failed methods of gun control without really defining what is a successful type of gun control that he's defending. That leaves me in a strange place because, on the one hand, Pro's arguments do not all apply to every form of gun control, but on the other hand, I'm not sure what Con's case is so I don't know which ones apply to him. The best I can do is glean some stance from Con's advantages, which suggest that any gun control measure has to be nationwide and strongly enforced. What that means in terms of who can legally get guns, how much of a reduction that yields in the amount of legal guns in peoples' hands, and how effective that is at reducing the number of guns going into the hands of criminals/the suicidal is unclear.

What's missing from this debate is policies. You're both talking in the abstract without engaging with what a gun control policy would actually look like and how effective it would be. The debate starts in the abstract and stays there, with Pro claiming that poorly designed gun control policies stand in for any possible gun control policy (and focusing in on a few possible policies that his opponent never directly supports), and Con just saying that good gun control policies can happen without really getting down into what a good gun control policy looks like. And neither of you do yourselves any favors in terms of how you decided to address one another. Pro starts out with a generalized analysis with some statistics that may or may not apply to Con's case, then engages with Con's arguments largely via either cross-applying points he already made or giving short blurb answers that largely let the link do all the talking, demanding that Con and voters read a whole list of links that he never even quotes. Con begins with a pretty generalized and loose set of statements about Pro's argument that he outright tells us won't be supported, then comes out with a longer argument that's largely just a single source pruned down to some core points, followed by a third round that just expands on those points. There's surprisingly little meat to this debate.

There's a lot I could say about whether certain arguments apply or don't apply to specific sources, but that's pretty irrelevant to my decision on this. Though neither side talked about it, the burden in this debate is on Pro. He had to prove that gun control is bad, and since Con made the argument that he's just not engaging with whatever "good gun control" is in his estimation, I honestly can't tell if he affirmed the resolution. Even if the reason for that has more to do with Con's unwillingness to take a clear position, I need something from Pro that engages with that problem and tells me why he affirms the resolution anyway. Instead, I get a lot of reasons why the case for guns being beneficial as a deterrent is muddled (Pro focuses on Wyoming, Utah and Idaho while ignoring every other state in the final round and focuses on England while ignoring Australia), and a lot of alternate causality arguments that nonetheless acknowledge some benefit for gun control (even if other measures would be more effective, that doesn't erase these points). Even if I don't like his tactics in this debate, that leaves me defaulting to Con.

Tried to keep this short, but it still ended up being bigger than the space could accommodate, so Google Doc time.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dPCK1oXZx1rkLbJaKFnbGCgfhbEhgHQ0o9DVvSie3IM/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VJRwWVvI2gqclp4w7AmIK8QJR9YkUG7yj_5H9IuUl7E/edit?usp=sharing

Open to questions from either debater (PM or comments are both fine). Long story short: Con's impacts were clearer and stronger despite the lack of a final round, so I ended up voting his way.

I believe that Pro could have won this debate if he'd had more than one round to argue it. His points defending the terms used in the resolution against Con's Kritik initially made sense, and I think his arguments on energy largely hold up well even after Con's rebuttals.

That being said, he set up the debate to include both the terms "time" and "energy," and Pro had to win both. Much as I think there are reasons why Con's analysis of what time is and our capacity to individually sacrifice it, I don't see enough of a response from Pro to justify its use in the resolution as is. Defining the terms up front would definitely have helped, as would finding a better justification for his particular use of the term, which Con is correct is colloquial. There's a case to be made for why the colloquial definition is the best one for this debate given the context of the resolution, and while Pro starts that argument, I don't think it's possible to win it without addressing the issues that Con brings up in his final round, which was also his first opportunity to address Pro's view of the definitions.

All of that leads me to vote for Con.

I'll just award arguments here. Any new arguments brought up in the final round are not counted.

Rather than going through each individual point, I'm just going to focus on the resolution, which unfortunately feels like it takes a backseat throughout much of this debate. Initially, I thought it was rather obvious that this would be a debate about whether either Minecraft or Roblox are the better sandbox game, but it seems as though much of this debate focuses on elements that have nothing to do with their sandbox nature, which makes me think that the topic should have been changed to accommodate the type of argument that Pro is making (particularly the accessibility point).

In any case, I'll evaluate the debate that was argued and not what I feel that the definitions implied.

I think Pro gets lost in the weeds here, aiming to respond to Con's points without building his own offense. He starts with a few decent points, but all of them are complicated by the end of the debate and, more importantly, I'm not given an objective measure that tells me why any of these are among the most important factors when it comes to evaluating these games. By contrast, Pro spends more time laying out a case for why people care about the issues he presents. They might not be as stark as he claims, but they don't have to be, and much of Con's responses to Pro's points come off as mitigation rather than effective counters or turns. I think customizability is the point that's coming through clearest from Con's side, and while there's a lot to love about the customizability of Minecraft, I think what's missing is a statement about why those distinct customizable aspects are more valued than the ones Con presents. Con just gives me more to weigh in the debate, and while I would have liked to see more about why those things are valued by sandbox players in general, he still does more than Pro and that gives him the win in my book.

I can't say I know enough on this subject to speak knowledgably about it, and it feels a bit awkward to provide a vote on it when I still feel as though there are elements of the main argument from Pro that I don't fully understand.

As I see it, what most of Pro's opening round aims to do is establish that a universal moral law is one derived from reason and is inherently a priori. In a theoretical sense, that makes sense to me as a basis for believing that it's possible that there is a universal moral law. I don't see Con challenge this point. However, I'll note that use of the word "possible" and how it is distinct from the topic at hand. It can't just be possible. It must be that there is such a universal moral law. Pro proposes that one exists, namely "Always treat persons as ends in themselves, and never solely as a means" but it's unclear why this specific moral perspective is a moral law.

Much of Con's responses detail reasons why individuals might perceive it as non-universal and might even disagree with it entirely, which doesn't start out as a strong response for me. If your definition of universal is that everyone must accept this (including inanimate objects and theoretical aliens for some reason), then I'd say that that is both an impossible standard and doesn't comport with the implicit definition ascribed to by Pro (later made explicit) that it must be universally binding as rational thought. It is, however, in response to that position that I think Con hits at an important point: that the actual process of figuring out whether this specific moral law is universal requires more than just a priori reasoning. In this sense, it's not a matter of whether there are those who disagree with it, but rather whether there is a mechanism to test it. Pro argues that this is a priori and therefore doesn't require a mechanism, but I'm struggling to find a place where he clearly reasoned that this specific moral law is universal without ascribing some kind of example to support that perspective. Saying that we should respect the dignity of persons because we are all rational beings just generally invites questions that the logic base that you could employ a priori is ill-equipped to handle.

I think much of Con's responses are more superficial than this, but they still hit at the basic point that more must be done to establish this specific rule as universal moral law, and that ends up being enough for me to vote his way.

In the comments.

This one's pretty straightforward. Pro's arguments largely lean on what I would call probable harms, i.e. these things could happen and there may even be logical reasons why they would happen, but none of Pro's arguments function based on actual harm done as a result of online teaching. And this problem pervades his argument, which relies on only anecdotal instances where some unknown individual's experience is presumably harmed, a circumstance that I as a judge can never verify or validate.

Meanwhile, Con's case is built on the actual benefits of online learning. Particularly his points about how this leads to better transitions to the working world via a greater degree of independence in learning and his points about better capacities for absorbing information stand out to me, especially as the latter was wholly dropped by Pro. Con also presents a lot of sources including studies, and while Pro does argue that these are too narrow, he offers no other studies that demonstrate broader effects that contrast with Con's sources. You can't beat Con's sources without offering both a competing narrative and compelling evidence that your narrative is correct.

This all leads me to vote Con. Much as I do think his sources were better, I'll abstain from awarding those points as well, since Pro did provide relevant sources, even if they were fewer and not very compelling (largely restricting his quotes to more elucidation on probable harms rather than actual harms).

Trying my best to separate this from my own debate with FT.

A lot of this really comes down to what's left on the table. Pro has a lot of arguments that Con just doesn't address about fundamental rights, potential and actual harms of vaccination, and the potential gains of getting the virus. Pro doesn't do a whole lot to amp these points up in later rounds, instead just referring back to them and saying they were dropped, but Con just doesn't give me any meaningful responses to any of these points beyond statements regarding the efficacy of these vaccines and the relatively mild side effects they cause on the whole. However, even these responses are undercut by a lack of direct refutation. Pro makes the point that efficacy actually functions against Con since it provides adequate protection for those who choose to get vaccinated and those who choose not to have, essentially, made their own bed. It doesn't mean you can't save lives, but it does mean that those who get infected are choosing to remain vulnerable, which forces me to question the value of saving those lives vs. preserving their fundamental rights. I don't really get a means to weigh that preservation against lost lives from either side, but that just leaves me seeing these largely as a wash. As for side effects, I'm getting a lot of support for other important effects from Pro, all of which are summarized neatly and none of which Con addresses directly. Con's own arguments regarding side effects are a list of sources with barely any analysis, which leads me to favor Pro's more incisive approach.

That just leaves Con's points. His analysis of the resolution leaves a lot on the table, focusing on the definition of vaccine and asserting that it implies effectiveness that was largely granted anyway, only to turn around in R2 and argue that this kind of proof is necessary to establish effectiveness via clinical trials. As Pro points out, though, the notion that this requires proof of vaccination is a mischaracterization of how clinical trials work. As Pro puts it, they're randomized studies where the participants almost universally do not know if they received the vaccine until they are unblinded. Participants present ID, but only those running the study (unless they're double-blinded, in which case even they don't know for the duration of the study) are the only ones with information regarding who was vaccinated and who wasn't. Proof of vaccination during a study is likely to lead to more problems, actually, since it can alter behaviors among those who received the vaccine and those who received the placebo. It's a valid point that that information must be somewhere, but it is not presented by the individuals being vaccinated. And then there's the hospital point, which, in a vacuum, would probably be enough to net a vote for Con. It's an example of where things could go wrong in the absence of more vaccination. Con's case supports more vaccination. Simple enough, right? Trouble is that Con doesn't do nearly as much as he should to explain why this matters. He talks about reinfection as a problem, but provides minimal impact to it apart from saying that people can get sick again. He provides statistics on the harm caused by the virus, but not the harms caused by reinfection, specifically. There's a point in there about the ability to spread more broadly than this within a hospital, which could have been interesting if it had been fleshed out and impacted more, but as it stands, this argument is pretty weak.

And this is where all those dropped points from Pro come back in. There's simply too much here, and while each of these points could use more impact analysis and direct comparison with Con's arguments, even if I'm being extremely charitable to Con, these simply overwhelm his points. There's too much here about effects of the vaccine and virus to ignore, and so much of it either mitigates Con's case or outright turns his impacts that I can't really do much else but award the debate to Pro.

I'm still not quite sure I get most of this debate, at least when it gets down into what the actual scriptures say, so I will try to keep this decision to the one discussion that I think ends up being most important, but doesn't get a lot of attention in this debate: burdens. Especially in later rounds, this does get some attention, but it seems to largely vanish from Pro's responses by the final round and doesn't get as much attention as it should from Con, though the latter does produce quite a bit about what fairness is and the issues that get in the way of being truly fair.

That being said, the response from Pro that garners most of my attention throughout the debate is the issue of whether humans can judge whether God is truly fair. The larger point from Pro appears to be that God has to actually judge in order to be assessed for whether or not God is fair, which is an intriguing argument and one I had hoped Con would hit harder (it's kind of like arguing that keeping someone in jail for way too long isn't a problem so long as justice is done in the end - the various harms visited on someone before they are subject to a trial can themselves be unfair punishments that cannot be undone nor fully reversed. Con kind of talks about this with Job, but it's never as clear as it should be nor is it applied more broadly). However, it also introduces a problem, one Con mentions: if we cannot judge God, then how can we determine that God is fair? If I buy that God's judgments are too far in the future to assess and that humans are fallible enough that we can never provide such an assessment without our own bias and, thus, unfair assessments of those actions, then it's functionally impossible to prove the resolution true. The only other means Pro provides reference the Bible stating that God is (by way of near synonyms) fair, but like Con, I find this lacking. It doesn't state that specific actions are fair, just that God is fair, which might apply to those actions, but we are not in a position to assess how well that applies. It's also unclear that those individuals who stated that God is fair are, themselves, not tainted by the fallibility of humanity. Just because it exists in the Bible doesn't mean it is absolute and all-encompassing.

On the other hand, if I allow that humans can judge God's fairness by the actions described in the Bible, then it's mainly a factor of interpretation, as while Con does challenge Con's examples, he does not challenge that, within the known span of time where individuals were harmed, there was a lack of fairness at play, whether that resulted from bias or collateral (in some case intended) damage to family or whole nations. If I buy that what I interpret from the Bible is solidly accurate, then at minimum, these outcomes clash with the claims of perfect fairness that exist elsewhere, leading to some dissonance that makes it difficult to accept Pro's claims of fairness at face value.

In an effort to defeat Con's arguments, Pro removed too many tools to prove the resolution true. So, I do end up giving the debate to Con, though I will point out that this bit of burdens analysis from Con in the final round made me second guess that decision:

"PRO: Prove that the resolution is true.
CON: Prove that the resolution is false."

This suggests an equal burden. If I had seen something like it in the opening round, this debate would most likely have ended in a tie. Hell, Con basically tells me as much in the final round, saying that Pro's reasoning "is at best a reason not to vote at all", which I seriously considered doing. If anything could have shot you in the foot for this debate, Con, it was this. I might still have voted for you on the basis that there are clear examples of unfairness within a given span of time (that, again, Pro claims would be eventually remedied in some way, shape or form), but I'm honestly not sure. I'd have to go through a lot of the scripture analysis by Con with a much finer comb than I'm qualified to handle here, and it would have been a very frustrating decision to make. Recognize that Con doesn't have a stated burden in the debate and use that to your advantage. Don't give your opponent a way to end this in a null decision by virtue of being unnecessarily fair yourself.

The burden is pretty clearly on Pro in this debate: demonstrate harms that come from failing to censor these video games. He even buys into the utilitarian framework, which is probably his biggest mistake because utility generally focuses on outcomes, yet Pro actively states that those outcomes aren’t evident because of existing censorship (ignoring the fact that many of the games on his extensive list from R2 are legal to play as is in more than a few countries). So, much of Pro’s case is reliant on pushing a narrative of what would happen should existing censorship be removed, and almost every point is speculative. Pro asserts that people will be harmed, but provides only a source about the effects of dreaming to support this, a source that has tenuous application at best given that it doesn’t discuss the events of video games playing out in dreams, nor provides a clear impact to that occurring. That means Pro’s case is reliant on evocative imagery and a logical story about how this would affect people, though I have similarly logical statements from Con, and the imagery doesn’t do much to set him apart. I might have been willing to go for an argument about specific censorship of certain depictions of violence and gore, but to do that, I needed a response to the slippery slope argument from Pro’s R1 and I need evidence that those specific scenes are damaging in unique ways, not just reasons why they might be. I’m left wanting by Pro’s points in the end.

Con’s case is far more focused on defense than offense, spending most of his time tackling issues of video games translating into violence and arguing that they either don’t cause those harms or, in a few cases, that they can actually decrease violent tendencies (these are rather limited and don’t get much extension, nor do I get much reason to prefer this framing given the lack of data to support any shift in either direction resulting from VVGs). But I have quite a bit on loss of freedom of expression (Pro actively concedes this) and some of the more minor benefits to coordination and cooperation, even if I’m not quite clear on their impacts.

Since I can’t reach a clear conclusion on the effects of the specific VVGs Pro derides, but I can at least get some minor benefits from preventing censorship in terms of providing a broader range of video games with more creativity (I might not like that particular creativity, but that doesn’t mean it’s value-less), I vote Con. I’ll also award him sources, as Pro’s sources do little to nothing to assist his case, whereas Con’s effectively support his argument, even if most of them are defensive in nature.

This is a frustrating one because neither side does a particularly good job spelling out what should be the standard for determining whether the UN Security Council should bring on another member. That should underpin this whole debate, but both sides just kind of assume that and move onto discussing whether or not India should be that country. Hell, neither side even bothers to mention that India has been a non-permanent member of the Security Council for 8 terms, meaning that there's a decent track record to suggest what India would do if it got permanent status. Trouble is that without it, neither side establishes a particularly objective reason to support their position. Pro wants it to be based on total GDP, representative population, and generally just being better than other countries on the Security Council. Con wants it to be based on GDP per capita, income disparities, its potential for military conflict and its willingness to act in the face of various abuses worldwide. No one ever gives me a solid reason to pick one or more of these. I can go through them and tell you who is winning each, but the practice seems pointless because I'm not sure which I'd pick in the end.

And it really doesn't help that both sides seem to shift strategies as the debate goes on. Most of Pro's R3 is focused on other members of the Security Council, with the aim being to show how they are all bad actors in their own ways. Con's R4 introduced several new arguments far too late, especially this point about just disbanding the permanent membership on the Security Council (might have been interesting to bring this up sooner).

Still, I'll work with what I've got. The only explanation I get for what the Security Council should be comes from Con's framework. Pro challenges it a couple of times, asking why certain elements should matter to a country going on the Security Council, but he misses what I see as crucial elements that Con keeps quoting. I say that Con quotes it, though honestly, there's little actual discussion of why the framework matters or what makes those particular sections more important. Despite that missing element, I have a hard time dismissing India's willingness to get involved fighting major human rights abuses worldwide, since that was a point that Pro kept leaving on the table. I'm told straight up at the start of the framework: "The Security Council's main purpose has been to establish peace, and security." Later, I'm told by Con that "India has also long pursued a policy of silence on most of the other burning issues in international security which UNSC permanent members are often concerned with, from nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, to human rights violations in Syria." That's never addressed, and none of Pro's points demonstrate that India would be committed to policies seeking the aims of the Security Council. That would have been enough by itself, since it has nothing to do with military or economic capabilities and everything to do with political will. I think this possibility of increasing or collapsing the size of the permanent Security Council could have been interesting to explore as well, particularly since each of these countries has veto power (really frustrating that that barely got mentioned), though while that also appears in the framework, there's little expanded discussion of it and I can't do anything with what I'm given.

Nonetheless, much as there are other arguments on the table that I think each side is winning, this is the only argument that appears to take any kind of precedence and it's cold dropped by Pro. I wish Con had pushed it more, but it's on the flow, and it stands out, so Con wins arguments. I also give him conduct due to Pro's forfeit.

What ends up making this debate relatively simple for me is pretty straightforward: one side is doing resolution and burdens analysis, and the other isn't. That's pretty important when I'm looking at a topic like this because there are some very important terms in here that could have been debated if both sides had fully considered them. Simply saying that "Burden of proof is shared", as it does in the description, doesn't accomplish anything because I don't know where the burden splits, yet Con goes into great detail explaining precisely where Pro's burdens lie and I don't get much pushback on that analysis.

The topic is about systemic racism, meaning that Pro had to prove that systemic racism "definitely" exists within the US as a starting point. He then had to demonstrate who it affects. Finally, he had to establish that its existence was a substantial problem to those populations. That's a lot to manage, and while Pro presents a lot of sources, I think in his efforts to just present more, he's missing opportunities to break down where he's being successful along this path and wield any such successes as a voting issue. What Pro does here just doesn't really accomplish that. Pointing out that you have many sources that show a thing is just one small point along this scale, and unfortunately for Pro, it comes towards the end of this, with almost all of Pro's sources focused on establishing a degree of harm. That might be enough to satisfy the last of those 3 burdens, but Pro needs to do the work to explain why, and essential to that is establishing what makes a problem substantial. Even setting aside the lack of support for the existence of systemic racism and the somewhat late designation of blacks and Hispanics as targets thereof, Con is giving me an awful lot of alternative explanations for the various outcomes that Pro cites. If your only response to that is that each of those causes may not be complete, then you need to tell me why systemic racism is the only explanation to fill some portion of the causation and, more importantly, why any portion of a problem being caused by systemic racism makes systemic racism significant. If Con successfully convinces me that many if not all of these issues are complicated by the presence of multiple causative factors, then why should I designate systemic racism, specifically, as a significant contributor? A wall of sources, no matter how big, doesn't do much if you don't put them in a context that allows you to gain full advantage of them. It doesn't help that there's very limited effort to establish that Pro's stronger sources demonstrate the harms of systemic racism rather than individual racism, a point that Con hammers repeatedly.

Also, that Hail Mary at the end where you tried to simply claim that all those sources validate the existence of systemic racism doesn't help you, either; all it does is tell me that your sources all try to attribute their established outcomes to a cause they don't endeavor to prove. That isn't proof of its existence, just proof of a commonly held belief in its importance. Speaking as someone who has read a lot of research papers, source agreement on an assumption doesn't validate the assumption. Nor does stating that your opponent's argument is racist, indistinct "from a cruel murderer" and "the most immoral people who think that black people deserve to be poor" assist your point, though it does get you dangerously close to me giving out my first conduct point in a long while.

Ultimately, in a debate with "definitely" in the topic, Pro's argument falls short. There's demonstrable evidence that black and Hispanic minorities suffer from a variety of harms, but there are simply too many complicating factors to attribute them to systemic racism and establish the significance of that attribution. The lack of support for the existence of systemic racism in a way that distinguishes it from individual racism (an issue probed more deeply in a previous debate on a similar topic, but nonetheless still present here) doesn't help. Though I generally agree with Pro, I vote Con.

This was a frustrating debate to read. There’s meat to this debate, but both sides undercut their own arguments. Just looking at the bigger picture, Pro’s first two rounds are rather weak with the first functioning as just an opportunity to list biological harms without examining the degree to which they impact individuals and a monetary harm, and the second giving only a bit more insight into both without substantively adding to either and providing tepid responses to some of Con’s points. This means that Pro sets up a rather weak case with strong support, and it doesn’t help that Pro waits until R3 to substantively counter Con’s points and to provide any weighing analysis (more on that later). Con’s first two rounds are pretty good by comparison, but he largely abdicates his final two rounds, spending much of his third being upset at Pro’s use of the word “absurd,” providing little more than weak weighing analysis (largely by way of extensions on his previous points), and entirely giving up the opportunity to say anything meaningful in his final round, as his only efforts are focused on a CP he’s already too late to respond to (it came up in R3). Missing opportunities to use these rounds just gives me the impression that you’re largely throwing away your own points. If they don’t matter to you enough to emphasize them, why should they matter to me?

But it’s not just the big picture. Much as all of Con’s responses to it are off the table, I don’t know what to do with Pro’s CP. It comes in R3, which is extremely late to be presenting a CP (you can argue that it’s not a CP, just an extant possibility for companies to use, though it’s unclear that any companies would do this, when they would, which companies would do it, etc.); it functions largely as a way to avoid some of the harms coming from Con’s arguments rather than achieving anything beneficial; and it invites questions as to whether Pro’s case really solves anything (if companies can just do this whenever, why should it matter whether a country abolishes it? At best, that just means you’re removing it from some industries and for the unemployed). If anything, I felt this undercut your case. By that same token, I don’t know what Con is trying to achieve with a “common sense” argument as a means to address Pro’s biological points. I get that your angle is just to show how ridiculous-sounding it is for anyone to attribute substantial health harms to an hour of lost sleep and the resulting shift in circadian rhythms, but there are actual studies on the table in this debate, including analysis of several studies in your R1. Why don’t I see you digging back into those points later, especially when they are the only place where I see some actual impact analysis (10% increase/decrease in heart attacks). When you’re straight up admitting in R2 that the degree of lost sleep required to achieve sleep deprivation is unclear, and you admit that an hour lost every night can have these effects (honestly, that just leaves me questioning how many nights before it becomes harmful) I’m honestly just unsure why Pro didn’t treat that as a tacit admission that no amount of “common sense” can adequately portray these effects.

But where both sides are lacking the most is in actual weighing analysis, though this hurts Pro the most. Without clear numbers to establish the degree to which people are affected, even by a day or two of reduced sleep, I’m not clear how much weight I can give your points. Sure, they’re well-supported, but they just sort of sit there every round, and I don’t know why or how they outweigh Con’s points. Maybe if I got some indication of the actual death toll from heart attacks and traffic incidents, I would be able to see a better case being made here. Lost productivity is about the weakest route you could have taken. Meanwhile, Con can just coast on having more points and some comparative analysis in his R1. Pro concedes the deterrent effects to robbery (surprised Con didn’t talk about other criminal activity, but it’s something), there are clearly at least weak positive health and happiness impacts to having longer daylight hours, there’s some non-zero reduction in energy costs (not sure how much, though), some plausibly positive effects to traffic incidents, and pretty decent reasons to believe that the costs of DST are actually countered by the benefits that occur when it ends. There is also a clear and conceded impact to companies losing out on that extra daylight, which is at least far less certain without DST than with it.

I might believe that certain parts of the biological effects favor Pro’s side, but I’m not given substantive reason to disregard other points and I don’t have a clear means to outweigh them. When I don’t get that information, I generally weigh the side with more arguments that cover a broader swath of impacts as superior because they all have relatively equal weight. That’s the case here: I vote Con.

Not an easy decision. Entirely based on arguments, no major differentiators in terms of other points.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NafJjvXhpolGORFYPR_nILAHY42p4qcgQgHnQEMyNnU/edit?usp=sharing

While I agree that the burden is on Pro, this debate was actually massively Pro-slanted. The “can” in the full resolution (which does specifically say that the army itself must destroy or defeat EVE) indicates that Pro only has to provide some instance where EVE loses this fight. Considering the sheer amount of tech used in the Star Wars universe, even if I fully bought that EVE would dominate this fight almost every time, I would still be forced to vote for Pro because any instance is enough. Trouble is that Con really doesn’t do the work for me. He asserts several times that there are weapons that can do the job, but doesn’t do the work of examining EVE’s feats to establish that she would be injured or harmed in any way. The numbers look big, but it’s unclear that that kind of payload could be delivered all at once and achieve the associated level of damage if it did. Simply saying that they could be accurate is not enough, either, since accuracy isn’t the problem, but rather addressing a speed and rapid response time that may even exceed that of a Jedi (though no one makes that comparison). Even if I assume they’d hit, I’m not clear that damage would be done or, if it would, how much. Is it possible that the armies would win? Yes, insofar as I can conceive of that as a possible outcome and, given all the tools Pro presents, I could find a possible set of circumstances where EVE might be destroyed or disabled. Unfortunately, Pro doesn’t give me those circumstances, and it’s his burden to paint such a scenario convincingly. Make it absolutely optimal, tell me how EVE would respond, examine how she would fail. Without that, Pro fails in his burden, leading me to vote Con.

Also, conduct to Con for the forfeit.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZXF-nV96UkBxuxratWVGPjFNW6h1x5u2J6uYJeb_qJw/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ipWAQnjlW98mfyZxTjbcIDDJLkIG3m3Xz_-dSaswJYc/edit?usp=sharing

Not too much to say here. Pro's side of the debate includes a referenced argument that largely functions as pre-rebuttal for the potential educational benefits of same sex schools and a referenced point about the social benefits of co-education. Con's responses introduce a number of potential problems, but he provides no evidence to support their actuality, which means they exist largely as theory. In fact, of the 7 points Con iterates in his final round, the first 5 all have impacts that are directly contradicted by Pro's R1 argument, and the remaining two, while suggesting important benefits to security and well-being that go beyond education, lack the support to be meaningfully compared (either by degree of impact or by likelihood of occurrence) with Pro's arguments.

Sources go to Pro because he's the only one who provided them. No matter how Con tries to construe those sources by arguing that everything is individualized, he never provides a meaningful rebuttal to Pro's sources, which makes his responses only vague allusions to possible problems.

S&G also goes to Pro. I rarely award this point, but I had to read back through sentences many times in each round to understand what Con meant. It's worth doing some proofreading after you write this up, otherwise you can confuse your voters.

Well, since Puachu insisted, I'll just do this.

If the debate topic was Evolution is False, then this debate would have been over very early. Pro, if you have a different topic in mind, my suggestion is to use it and not post the wrong topic and subsequently debate something else. There's an overlap between this topic and the later-established "Any or All the Mechanisms of Neo-Darwinism are not Sufficient to Evolve Microbes into Humans" topic, but they are clearly distinct and you recognize that. Don't give your opponents or judges the opportunity to focus on something you don't wish to dwell on.

That being said, the topic still clearly places the burden on Pro. Sufficiency is not a massive burden because it implies that these mechanisms are, by themselves, entirely capable of resulting in evolutionary lineages that lead from microbes to humans. So, Pro had to establish that there are clear and present factors among these mechanisms that prevent them from being sufficient in this manner. To do this, Pro had to do one of the following:

Provide one or more reason(s) why this group of mechanisms are neither necessary nor sufficient to yield that result.
Provide one or more reason(s) why these mechanisms are necessary but insufficient to yield that result.

Pro basically concedes that the first isn't true from the get go. Clearly, even based on his own examples, some evolution occurs via these methods. They are a necessary means by which evolution occurs, even if they aren't sufficient in and of themselves.

The problem arises when we discuss what yields sufficiency because it's really hard to prove that any set of mechanisms is sufficient to yield this result. It hasn't happened yet in a lab, so we haven't been able to monitor it and determine all the mechanisms at play in the process. So it might be sufficient, but we couldn't prove it based on the available evidence. But while that could look bad for Con, it actually makes it impossible for Pro to win this. Remember, his burden is to show that these mechanisms are absolutely not sufficient. He takes the hardline stance, yet his case is built on the supposition that all he has to do is demonstrate a low degree of likelihood that this could happen. Even if I buy Pro's entire case, none of it establishes the insufficiency of these mechanisms. They just establish that they don't do a whole lot within a certain span of time or over a set number of generations. Establishing a low degree of likelihood doesn't establish insufficiency. Con also introduces more potential mechanisms of heritability (epigenetics) and examples of substantial evolutionary progress that have taken place in the lab (single- to multi-cellular life), both of which make it more difficult for Pro to summarily dismiss these mechanisms as insufficient. Maybe if the topic wasn't absolute, Pro would have been able to gain some ground with his arguments, but with it written as is, Con clearly wins this debate.