“ Instead, you want to try and get me banned.”
I came into this comment section with no opinion on the matter and have never opined on this question before. I couldn’t care less what happens, but after a skim of the first few rounds the part that jumps out at me the most are Kohai’s description of the multiple mitigation attempts the mods have made and how you continue the same behavior regardless. I find that argument very persuasive, and ironically that’s the very trait you’ve demonstrated all throughout this comment section.
I’m still undecided on how I will vote, will be interesting to read through how Whiteflame deals with it if he hasn’t already and I just skimmed over it, but I suspect that is the point that will decide my vote more than anything else.
“All political opinions are Rage Bait to those who disagree”
This is just a plain stupid.
The tactic is a tired one. You don’t want to accept the implications of what rage bait actually means, so you just conflate it with something else and pretend it’s all the same. At that point the term itself is completely meaningless, so anyone accusing you of it is accusing you of nothing.
Taxation is theft. Abortion is murder. Words are violence. Political speech is rage bait. It’s all the same mindless garbage, except the latter is particularly absurd.
“Double R, your opinions are equally as offensive to me as mine are to you and liberal opinions are equally as offensive to conservative opinions as vice versa. BUT conservatives don't get you banned for them.”
You’re incapable of understanding this message, but I’ll just leave it here in case you ever are.
You’re trying to argue that we’re equivalent by stripping away every way in which we are different.
You’re also trying to equivocate people being offended over political views expressed that they disagree with, with deliberate rage bait posts that frequently target identity groups which attack, unprovoked, large swaths of people. They’re not the same.
Being offended over someone’s views and being offended over the way in which one delivers their views are totally different things.
The former is an effect, the latter is the means. The effect is often unavoidable and controlled by the reader. The means is entirely avoidable and controlled by the author.
These are not the same thing.
And your “you too” arguments are just silly. Scale matters. Yes I think Lucy posts too much, and yes I think it brings down the quality of the site. I wouldn’t however entertain as reasonable their removal because that’s not enough. You on the other hand violate every area of concern for a site like this, and you do so in the extreme. That’s why you’re in this boat, alone.
I mean my god dude, you’ve even managed to unite me and Fauxlaw against you. I went from seeing his name in the comment section and thinking “oh lord, what he going to bring” to “good, here comes Fauxlaw, maybe he’ll talk some sense into him”. That’s how insane this is.
I’ll end with the point I started with. I don’t know how old you are, but you either certainly have a long list of job terminations or you will, because you’re incapable of self reflection. Everything is everyone else’s fault. You’re always the victim. Every time someone is pissed off because of what you said it’s proof that they’re both snowflakes and fascists trying to silence you, and they’re doing it because you’re conservative. Till you learn to look in the mirror that will always be your reality.
“You should go to political sections on TikTok, you will find whites using the N word (even hard er which the blacks don't use). I'm very tame by comparison.”
Social media thrives on flame wars. The purpose of a site like this is to maintain a higher level of dialog.
“ And you piss off people too. Doing it in a different way doesn't change the fact that you are pissing people off.”
And merely pissing people off isn’t why Remy is on trial. The entire point of this debate and our discussion here has flown way over your head.
“I am losing brain cells by just being part of this conversation.”
Oh no, they’ve been lost, that’s why you think this conversation is about something totally different than the words written below actually amount to.
“Trial is proof of guilt?”
No, never claimed that. Pay attention.
The trial is proof of how different Remy and I are, supported by the fact that no person on this site would think it appropriate to advocate for my permanent removal while Remy’s conduct has sparked a debate trial to determine exactly that.
The reason this is relevant is because you tried to argue that I’m being hypocritical by using the fact that Remy pisses people off as a sign of poor conduct while seeing my own effects as a positive sign of mine. I’m pointing out why your argument is bullshit; because you didn’t bother to ask yourself what that conduct is in the first place, which is kind of the whole point.
Remy pisses people off by spamming the website with offensive click bait threads.
I piss people off by arguing views some people here don’t like and either can’t refute or just give up on because they no longer wish to continue.
Those are totally different things, so I’m perfectly justified in seeing them totally differently.
Now go on. Can’t wait to hear how you strawman me next.
“So you blame Remy for pissing people off, yet when you do it, it's some imaginary honor.
Lmao”
I don’t need to use inflammatory rhetoric like attacking Jews or arguing that women deserve to be rapped to make my points. This trial itself is proof enough of how different we are, no one here or on any of the previous sites would have ever even suggested that a similar trail be held in whether I should be banned. The fact that you disregard all of that to equivocate us goes to show how deeply unserious of an individual you are to talk too.
“all socially conservative views (to you) are ALWAYS in bad faith”
I would ask you to back up that claim but we all know you’re just flailing so you resort to pulling claims out of your arse.
I have had plenty of respectful and even productive dialogs with conservatives here and elsewhere over the years. Much less so with people like yourself, for reasons you will never self reflect upon.
No expectations on my end coming in to disappoint. I wasn’t really planning on voting, didn’t have much of an opinion but you two did a great job so the effort itself I think is worthy. To this point I’ve only skimmed but once it’s all said and done I’ll go through it in detail.
“You piss off a lot of people too. You would be amazed.”
Given the names of the people on that list, I consider it a badge of honor. It’s like telling me Trump was trashing me on truth social.
“How can someone be socially conservative (by X/TikTok standards) while not pissing you off?”
By arguing in good faith. I don’t give a damn what your views are, only that you represent them seriously. And if you’re going to be a clown, be a clown upfront, don’t pretend you’re serious if you’re not because now you’re just wasting my time and energy. That’s how.
“You don't talk politics at work; so your manager experience is irrelevant here.”
Exactly. I just gave you real life advice that if taken by many people I’ve worked with would have saved their jobs, and your response is to tell me take it somewhere else.
Life moves in predictable directions. Yours is obvious.
“Are you going to be curious as to why I believe that”
I read the thread, commented within it if I’m not mistaken. I know what you were doing, I’m pointing out why your inability to look in the mirror is remarkable. You created threads non stop that pissed off many members here and continued even after the moderators intervened. The problem was never your conservatism, it was your conduct. For you to not see that and instead see persecution for your political ideology demonstrates a remarkable inability to read the room.
I am a manager by profession, one of my basic responsibilities is to determine what level of discipline our employees receive and prepare their file for arbitration in the eventuality that they are terminated. I have always said that the best predictor of someone who will soon be losing their job is when they are coached or written up and place the blame on everything other than themselves. That kind of person is either unwilling or incapable of making the kind of adjustments necessary to protect their own status. You’d be much better served to learn that lesson.
“A debate website with mods eventually leads to the liberals remaining after all the conservatives have been banned.”
That train is never late.
It never ceases to amaze me how people will post things like “Why rape is better than DUI” and then pretend it’s their conservatism that landed them in hot water. The victim complex is striking.
You know debating is more than just a side thing you do when you when you find yourself debating debating.
"If your goal is truth-seeking, then devil's advocate debates are probably a decent way to achieve that."
Eh. I don't disagree, it's certainly a test of how well each side understands the alternative's position, but to take a DA position in debate is to defend something I don't believe. If you care about truth then you care about intellectual honesty, so signing up to uphold a position via intellectual dishonesty, even if it is in essence just for the exercise, I just don't find appealing.
I think the difference between us is clear; you're seeing this through the lens of competitions, tournaments, etc., whereas I'm seeing this as a medium between sides that disagree to come together and address their differences.
What I do find odd is the way you seem to limit your conception of debate to what it "is" and don't seem interested in speaking on what you think it should be. I've pointed out numerous times to both you and Savant that in a tournament style set up or where debaters are for example given sides to defend, that a shared BoP is probably preferable, it's the set up itself that I'm rejecting because there's no need for us to stick to that here. So in the end it just comes down to what you prefer. On that note I've made my views clear I think, and while I still don't see it your way I understand much better why you see it that way. So there's some progress.
"It is, first and foremost, a competition"
Yes, it is a competition. That's what happens when you make something... A competition.
The question is... *What* are we making a competition out of?
If we're making a competition out of who has the best rhetorical and communication skills... Then your conception of competitive debate holds because that's what your conception of debate emulates.
If we're making a competition out of getting it right... That's what my conception is more geared towards.
Both are competitions, which makes them both games to some extent, but I prefer mine because my game more closely aligns with what I care about. This is why I don't do devil's advocate debates or debate topics I don't have a strong position on. It's also why I have absolutely no problem accepting full BoP, in fact I often prefer it.
It's also why I reject your notion that having the BoP is a disadvantage. The biggest advantage one could possibly have is to be on the side of the resolution that's right. If I didn't think I was, I wouldn't accept the challenge. And if I'm wrong, the greatest thing you could do for me is to show me by beating me (not the judges votes always determine who's actually right, but proving your position to them is the game).
"Real world discussions do not have winners and losers. Competitive debate is something that is extremely game-ified and to look at it as a way to persuade and help others better understand the world is incredibly wholesome, but incredibly misguided."
The fact that competitive debate has been game-ified doesn't mean we need to game-ify it further.
It doesn't matter whether the competitors or even the audience are on a good faith truth seeking venture. What we're talking about is how the contest itself should be structured, which is determined by that which best resembles the endeavor we are on.
My endeavor is finding the truth first and foremost, mutual understanding second if the truth cannot be mutually reached. Good faith debate is how that happens, and in so doing we are best served by addressing one proposition at a time. This is how it works in real life, so those is how I believe the contest we call debate should be structured.
Within that structure there will be games for sure, and that's ok. When game tactics violate or threaten the spirit of the venture, we make adjustments. These come in the form of rules like "unaddressed arguments are concessions", "no new arguments in the last round", etc. It'll never be perfect, but it doesn't need to be.
"- Always giving Pro the BoP gives Con an unfair advantage"
No, it doesn't. Con still has to successfully refute Pro's case, he doesn't get to just say "nu uh" and claim victory.
As I said to Savant, under my construct, if Pro provides 4 arguments that each favor the resolution, then in the absence of argument affirming the opposite, Con must go 4/4 to win. Pro meanwhile, only has to go 1/4.
Perhaps one of the issues here is that you think Pro must convince the judges of the resolution. They don't. The question at the end of the debate isn't whether the judges agree, is whether the arguments withstood the scrutiny that was offered in the debate.
"- BoP =/= side selection"
BoP = clarification. If the resolution is X, then Pro is X and Con is not X.
"What is a weighing argument?"
Weighing arguments is about determining which argument is stronger, which is incredibly subjective, which is why I think it's a terrible metric to have to judge a debate by.
The central rule of judging a debate fairly is to limit your reasoning as much as possible to only what was offered in the debate. Weighing arguments against each other is inherently subjective and inevitably will require the judges to base their decisions on arguments not made in the debate.
Again, if Pro makes an argument that Con barely address, because Con didn't find the argument meaningful enough to warrant the time and attention it would have taken to adequately refute it, a judge could may very well hand Pro the debate right there. The issue isn't that Con didn't have a refutation, it's that there were 7 other arguments in the debate he found more worth focusing on.
You might say that's the point, knowing what to respond to, but that's nonsense. Everyone has their own opinions, you never know which point a judge will find meaningful and/or convincing. So this effectively turns the debate into a guessing game, dependant not on who presented a valid case but far more so on who decided to read the debate.
"- Always giving Pro the BoP skews debating from who is the better debater to who is the better res writer."
I think this is the root of our disagreement. You see debating as a game, I see it as a means to adjudicate disagreements. I don't care who is better skilled, I care who is right.
I would have responded to the rest but am out of time so I'll come back to the rest later. This is what happens in debate when we're trying to address 14 different issues at the same time, no matter how much space we have, it's still not enough. Don't think I left any of your points before on the table cause I didn't have anything to say, I just don't have all day to sit here typing them out.
"if something is a true dichotomy and I say one side is wrong, then I am, in fact, saying that the other side is right. That is how things that are mutually exclusive work"
Correct. But you're referring to the truth value of the proposition. Belief options are not limited to 'I believe X is true' or 'I believe X is false'. Neutral is not only a legitimate position, in many cases it's the only defensible position.
Trying to mandate that your opponent affirm the opposite position and cannot simply refute your case, is a tell of remarkable intellectual insecurity. If you believe something then stand up and defend it. If it cannot withstand rational scrutiny then perhaps you should rethink your position.
"I can spend 100% of the time not addressing the topic and simply just deconstructing my opponent's arguments, and win the debate without having to actually address the topic."
Well first of all, refuting your opponent's arguments is not off topic, that's literally what the debate is. But that aside, that's not insane, that's how logic works.
I instigate a debate; "The defendant is guilty". I present the evidence. You challenge me and successfully show that all of my evidence is false or invalid. What is the outcome?
At the end of this debate, you are still in your position that the evidence does not justify an assertion of guilt. I meanwhile, am forced to move from my position to yours because my case has no rational support. That's a clear victory, nothing insane about that.
"Big word make me sound smart so I am smart. Wait why do big word no talk about what I talk about?"
True dichotomy is a fairly basic term for someone who has been on debate sites for 10 years. Sorry if you considered that such a big word that someone else using it came off to you as an attempt to sound smart.
"in my view, giving one side a higher burden makes the competition unbalanced."
I guess this is where we differ. I don't see it as a higher burden. Con still has to refute the case, and in the absence of a positive case of his own, he would basically have to be perfect. If Pro offers 4 different arguments that could each support the resolution, Con would have to go 4 for 4 in knocking them down or Pro wins (depending on what the resolution is of course and what would be required to affirm it).
I do agree with you though in cases of competitive debate where topics are chosen for the debaters, in those cases I would say shared BoP is fair.
I think for me what I think about is what is, what is the purpose of all of this in the first place? If we're debating for sport it's a different approach, but my thinking is that I'm always in favor of the most productive conversation. I've instigated debates before where Con comes along and ignores my whole case only to come up with his own. That truly annoys me, I wanted to see how well my case and reason for my beliefs would stack up against scrutiny and instead find myself refuting someone else's points which didn't address them at all.
"Oh no! The horror! Anything but having to defend your own side!"
This is just getting stupid. No one is arguing that anyone not have to defend "their side". The question the BoP addresses is; what is each person's side?
Having the BoP means the burden is on you to argue for the affirmative. Not having the BoP means you need to argue the negation. No one gets a pass here the way you seem hell bent on portraying it as.
And throughout this chat, you've totally ignored the fact that in many if not most cases, being neutral on a proposition is the only reasonable position. A perfect example of this is in a criminal trial where even though the defendant is in fact either guilty or innocent, if there isn't enough evidence either way then the only rational position is to not presume either. According to you, if this were a debate then when one side asserts guilt the other must assert innocence, but that isn't how logic works. Not accepting one side of a true dichotomy doesn't require one to accept the opposite. This is why we address propositions one at a time.
"depth is not an issue, specifically on websites like here where character limits allow us to go as deep into literally every point as we could ever want to"
The issue isn't space, it's focus. It doesn't matter how much space you have, resolving a fundamental difference requires both sides to stay focused on the issue at hand, which is far less likely when each side is dealing with 7 or 8 different points at the same time. In that format, arguments get lost, which happens all the time. This happens in verbal exchanges all the time as well, this is where hour long discussions end with "so what were we arguing about?". It's a far less productive means of discussion.
"There's also a pretty crucial difference that I don't think you're grasping in that there's a difference between completely dropping an opponent's argument and making weighing arguments that..."
Uh, yeah I addressed this already. Again, you can strategically decide which arguments to address and which not to, but when you do not respond to an argument presented you leave the judges with no real choice to accept it. Obviously your opponent thought it was relevant or they wouldn't have made it, so in the end we end up with both sides arguing past each other.
Also just a side thought here... If you're instigating a debate then on principal alone I think you should have the BoP. As the instigator you get to write the resolution and you get to clarify it. If you can't uphold your own BoP then why start the debate in the first place? To me insisting on a shared BoP is a cop out. If you believe something rationally you should be able to defend it.
I thought Thanos got you. Welcome back.
You can strategically choose not to respond to your opponent's arguments because you think your case outweighs it or renders them moot, but in debate that choice does leave them on the table and forces any unbiased judge to accept them for the sake of judging. So that's a risk you take, and one I've been bitten by before. You never know what someone will find convincing, even if on a technicality.
This is exactly why I reject the notion that each side should have a BoP - because then each side has to not only make their own case but refute their opponent's case at the same time, which can get very impractical. The result is that neither side gets into any depth on their points, effectively creating a talking point battle.
The alternative is that each side sticks to what they think will win them the debate while ignoring the rest, which means not only talking past each other but also leaving the judges to have to decide what arguments are most important on their own. That is incredibly subjective and I think ultimately pointless. In that debate the only decider of who wins are the opinions the judges had coming into it.
Refuting arguments made by your opponent is a burden, and certainly exists in debate.
"What if the resolution had been "fear is at least as strong as love"? Would Con have the BoP then?"
No. Again, regardless of whether we're talking about a formal debate, a criminal trial, or informal conversation the rule is always the same; the BoP is on the person who makes the claim.
Instigators love to play games with this, like posting the resolution then making themselves the Con, but the principal is one I subscribe to in any scenario because what I care about is productive rational conversation. That's what the BoP is all about.
"I just don't think Con should be arguing the neutral position"
Why? There's nothing wrong with that.
The neutral position is in many cases perfectly legitimate, and in some cases it's the only legitimate position.
If you read a debate where you start off in the pro/affirmative position on the subject, and by the end of the debate Con manages to make you switch to being neutral purely by knocking down every argument Pro gave, wouldn't you agree that's an unequivocal victory for Con?
"Well usually it's not a matter of one side lacking arguments, but about arguments outweighing each other."
I just find that messy and less productive, not to mention far more subjective. Instead of focusing on the validity of each case through to the end, both sides end up trying to make whatever case will capture more attention. I just don't see how that makes for a better discussion.
It's nonsensical because you're treating the BoP as if it's the only burden that exists in debate. No one is claiming that. Of course Con has to refute the case, and this btw is also the reason for another standard rule; unaddressed arguments = concessions. Doesn't matter whether you agree with the case offered, if you're judging properly then you're setting that aside and only asking yourself whether it was properly refuted. That's the burden on the negative side.
Forgot to tag you
vvv
The only thing one needs to accept the proposition that love is not stronger than fear, is a lack of reason to assert that love is stronger than fear. In this example you're trying to frame a negation of a claim as a positive claim, that's logically contradictory.
The law of excluded middle states that there are only two options for any given proposition; X or not X. That is true, but that addresses the actual fact, not the proper belief position on it. With regards to belief there are 3 options; affirmative belief, belief in the/an alternative, or neutral.
Neutral is not a lack of thought, it's the result of recognizing that the currently available facts do not favor either possibility. So if a case is made and that case is negated, then neutrality at the very least is what rationally follows (without injecting a further case). So requiring Con in this example to make his own case for "fear is not greater than love" is not aligned with how rational thinking works.
At the end of the day, debate rules are just a matter of preference, but I will say that I hate shared BoP debates because they get messy and unclear. In your fear/love example; love is greater... Is one proposition. Fear is greater... Is a separate proposition. So asking each side to make a positive case means they're debating two different propositions simultaneously. I find that unproductive. We can resolve our differences much more easily if we address them one at a time.
