Savant

Con doesn't argue until the final round, which puts an undue burden on Pro if they are expected to respond to all of that in the final round. In addition, Con drops the framing of the debate and pretty much all of Pro's contentions, which basically hands this to Pro since deciding the resolution requires knowing how to interpret it.

Con forfeits after R1 and thus drops all of Pro's responses to their case, this means Pro's arguments are basically unrefuted. I think Pro's conclusion basically summarizes this: "My opponent attempts two lines of attacks on the MOA: The first is that the first premise and the conclusion premise contradict one another. This is refuted as the S5 logic reveals that they are equivalent. The second line of attack is that it is also possible that an MGB does not exist. This fails because to mirror this argument my opponent is forced to argue that an MGB is impossible - a burden my opponent fails to meet." Given that this is enough to nullify Pro's arguments, if true, the debate is basically decided by them not coming back to challenge these conclusions.

Con is able to provide some counterexamples to P1, such as Fatima and the golden plates, which can't both be true. Pro argues that if these were hallucinations or lies, then they aren't responsive to P1, but I think Cons point is that even with compelling evidence for sincerity (which they provide in R2), the conclusion does not follow. Cause if compelling evidence wasn't enough, it calls the case for P2 into question as well. Pro forfeits the final round, which means they never address this.

I think it would have served Pro better to research similar miracle claims and make P1 less broad. I mean it's always possible to overfit and make a P1 like "if people in the middle east claim they saw a guy called jesus rise from the dead..." But overfit ting aside, it's probably better to be aware of obvious comparisons and argue why this particular miracle claim is stronger than others rather than ignoring others.

Full forfeit

Con forfeited 2/3 of the debate and thus never addressed Pro's murder trial analogy (or Pro's other rebuttals), which argued that Con's framing of the case was faulty. Thus, I vote Pro.

Full forfeit

Since this isn’t a traditional debate with traditional voting rules, my approach here will be a bit different than usual. I’ll give an analysis of the arguments from each side, though a more brief one than I would in a traditional debate, and conclude with my own decision, which is influenced a bit by factors not mentioned in the debate. Much like the debaters themselves mentioned, I’m glad that the decision is being put in the hands of the community and that arguments for both sides have been laid out, even if it’s impossible to cover all possible concerns here.

I think the prosecution does a very good job drawing a line, and (ignoring my own view of whether I agree with that line) shows how Remy crosses it repeatedly. There’s a good amount of satire in Remy’s posts, as the defense points out, but also a fair amount of rage baiting and posts that are clearly meant primarily to get a rise out of people. Additionally, he makes a lot of people uncomfortable. The defense shows a lot of engagement brought forth from Remy’s posting, but the prosecution shows that a lot of this engagement is coming from the same people. This mitigates the benefit, though it’s not clear how the benefit of some engagement is to be weighed against the CoC. Both sides seem to agree that the CoC and the duties of moderators are important, so I feel like duties in the CoC are implied to take precedence. I think the CoC’s note that repeated borderline behavior is enough to justify a ban does a good deal to back up the points the prosecution is making and lend some credibility to the line he’s drawing. With the repeated pattern of posts and admissions of rage baiting, I think the conclusion the prosecution draws is reasonable about Remy operating “chiefly to provoke through identity‑based rhetoric.”

That said, the protection on satire does give a plausible line of defense to Remy’s actions that I’m not sure how to weigh, but it does leave the posts a little ambiguous. And the defense makes a strong point about a permaban being a pretty extreme response. Despite a permanent ban being the subject of the debate, only the defense is really addressing the harsh nature of such a ban. If the temporary ban prevented calls for sexual violence, then why would a temporary ban for offensiveness not have a shot at reducing that? Ignoring my personal opinions on whether such a ban is warranted, the defense makes a pretty good point that more gradual steps might be effective. So were I judging this debate purely on flow, I’d probably give it to the defense just because their argument about a permanent ban being an overreaction doesn’t get addressed enough by the prosecution to effectively refute it. The defense also made arguments about punishing patterns of conduct setting a bad precedent, which I agree with personally, but it’s fleshed out a bit late, and the earlier emphasis on the CoC makes me look at that when grading the flow. The CoC looks vague enough that “repeated engagement in borderline conduct” still warrants punishment if I take it at face value. Had the resolution been about some sort of punishment less than a permaban and had the arguments otherwise been the same, and if I was voting on this as a debate, then I may have given it to the prosecution just on flow.

But this is a trial, which brings me to my own personal view of the circumstances. One big thing that I never saw mentioned were the apparent discrepancies between the frequent referendums the community has held and the more loosely-worded code of conduct. In the results of all three surveys, the community has repeatedly voted for the “mark as offensive” option for the kind of content Remy posts, as opposed to action akin to banning. It was voted in Survey #2 that an account that existed solely to make rage bait posts should be banned, but as has been pointed out, Remy’s account does not solely make rage bait posts even if he does rage bait significantly. He does engage with responses and offer substantive arguments even if they lead to erroneous conclusions. And with the way offensive content has been moderated in the past, the offensive marking is not treated as a “warning” for an actual ban unless a user steps significantly beyond that, toward action that the user base has voted should result in a ban. Until now, these survey results have in effect been treated as the “law of the land,” even if there was some discussion about potentially overriding them later. I remain opposed to overriding them even in cases like this, but that is my personal view and not the view of every mod.

Meanwhile, if I take the Code of Conduct at face value (which I believe grandfathered over some of the rules from DebateArt since it’s the same wiki, but I may be wrong), then moderators are seemingly given broad discretion to crack down on repeated “borderline” conduct, with borderline not being super strictly defined. I get the desire to avoid loopholes, but from the repeated votes by the community in favor of a more laissez-faire moderation style, I think that using the CoC as a justification here without looking at those votes would kind of be overriding them. Which, to be fair, I think the mods (or in this case, the community), can technically do. The way I would read this is that the mods have a wide array of actions they CAN do, but I don’t think they or even the community as a whole SHOULD use all the enforcement actions available. As an old phrase goes, “not everything that is permitted is beneficial.” This applies both to Remy’s posts and to the enforcement actions we might take against them, since the CoC is written by maybe 1-2 people but the referendums are voted on by the community as a whole. Since mods have never gone against the referendums before to my knowledge, and sense the community seems to generally agree that people should not be retroactively punished for actions that were not bannable at the time they were committed, I am pretty strongly opposed to banning Remy for actions that he (at the time) had every reason to believe would not result in a ban. Additionally, I don’t think that repeated borderline infractions or a “holistic” view of content requires going beyond what’s addressed in the code of conduct polls, as we can and have polled people on whether certain types of posts like ragebait should be limited in quantity, particularly on the most recent survey. Even then, the community has taken a more laissez-faire approach. I’d be fine setting up these kinds of limits going forward or even setting more broad and discretion-based rules if necessary, but there’s a big difference between that and ex-post-facto penalties, particularly one as harsh as a permanent ban.

I believe that the community is within its rights to set a new standard and prohibit rage-baiting, but I think that whatever standard it is, whatever line in the sand is not to be crossed, should be drawn in advance and with fair warning before a user is banned for violating it. If we use the broad wording of the CoC to ban Remy now, then the user base has a justification to ban many users without a fair warning, simply by arguing their content is borderline. Even if overriding the community vote were necessary, then I’d rather the mods just come out and say “this is the new law of the land that’s going to be enforced going forward, if you cross it here are the penalties.” Then we’re not taking people by surprise. I also think that there are productive arguments that could be had on controversial subjects, and I would not want users to avoid engaging in them in fear that the content might one day be considered “borderline” and they could be retroactively punished for it. And if this trial is used as precedent, then next time there may not even be a trial. It may be argued, if Remy is banned, that the community has given assent for the mods to ban users in similar murky cases, and that’s not a precedent I would like to set. I don’t think the current mods have given me any reason to distrust them personally, but I expect that the community will grow, leadership may change, and the burden of concentrated power over a large community may lead even the most well-intentioned mods to make decisions that end up backfiring against the community.

For these reasons, it is my view that Remy ought not to be banned. However, I concur with both debaters that it is best to let the community make this decision. If anything, one precedent I’m more than happy to set is to leave the median voter in charge of enforcement, which I think is the least bad option in cases like this. Much as I think banning Remy for these specific charges would be a mistake, if that mistake were to be made I’d rather it happen by a transparent community vote than be a decision by mods behind closed doors.

The only person to provide a framework labeled as such is Pro, and it’s the protection of public health. I’m a bit torn on whether Con saying that “this debate shall revolve around American values” should count as a framework, since a framework needs to be labeled as one in some way per the voting rubric. Even if I count that as being a framework, Pro makes an analogy to speed limits that Con never addresses, so I buy that if vaccine mandates help public health by preventing people from spreading diseases, that will be enough to meet Pro’s burden.

Con maybe had a path here to frame freedom around constitutionality, but their points are mainly responsive to Pro’s, and they never really make an offensive case for mandates being unconstitutional, beyond saying that the constitution values freedom and personal autonomy. Fine, but that doesn’t push back on the speeding analogy, so I’m still giving the framework to Pro.

There’s some back and forth on whether vaccines are safe and effective or not, and I Pro shows that at the very least, vaccines are safe and effective for some diseases like smallpox, measles, covid, and MMR. Con shows some exceptions, but Pro argues they only need to show mandates being justified in some cases, and Con doesn’t challenge that. Pro’s numbers about loss of life are also bigger and more significant, so if it’s just a cost benefit analysis, I think Pro is winning on the effects of vaccines overall. Pro also shows some studies that don’t get disputed showing that vaccine mandates increase vaccination rates and that high vaccination rates help with herd immunity. A lot of Con’s responses here come down to mitigation, such as arguing people could still homeschool or that herd immunity could possibly be reached without mandates. There’s some weight to bringing up these considerations, but it’s just not enough to dispute the empirical studies that Pro is bringing to the table, which Con never addresses head-on. If Con says “people will just ignore mandates,” but Pro provides a study showing that “strictly enforcing states had measles rates 50 percent lower than nonenforcers,” then I think the empirical evidence discredits a lot of Con’s speculation, especially when Con isn’t responding to the findings head on.

Meanwhile, Pro is responding to and mitigating a lot of Con’s responses, which works quite a bit in their favor here, as it means even Con’s speculative points face somewhat of an uphill battle. Restricting school enrollment isn’t the only tool available, and it’s an incentive even if not as strict as it’s possible for a policy to be. Pro also calls out Con a bit for not citing specific text from the constitution or rulings to show mandates are unconstitutional (and if anything, I think constitutional ambiguity helps Pro here anyway).

For those reasons, I’m voting Pro. For a chance to win this, I think Con needed to either beef up their evidence with empirical findings or defend their framework more strongly, and at least address the evidence Pro was bringing to the table.

The framework proposed by Pro is judicial legitimacy, defined as “the public’s acceptance of courts as rightful arbiters whose authority and decisions merit deference.” Con’s proposed framework is “autonomy and freedoms,” which he leaves pretty vaguely defined. Pro argues that Con’s framework is difficult to measure and gives a syllogism to support judicial legitimacy. The syllogism isn’t challenged, but Con says the words autonomy and freedom have commonly understood definitions. At the end of this, Pro’s framework seems more specific and thus easier to measure, and he’s giving more support for it as opposed to assuming it’s self-evident. Con accuses Pro of not using deductive reasoning, but Pro did use a syllogism, and I don’t see Con using a syllogism for every single part of his case, so overall they seem on equal footing there. Pro defines or at least addresses the implications of “ought,” and Con claims that “defining one [should/ought] defines [the other],” which contradicts Con’s accusation that Pro never defined “should.” So I’m using judicial legitimacy to grade this debate.

Pro gives a lot of sources on the status quo which imply a lack of trust likely caused by the lack of term limits (not representative of current generations, use of the shadow docket, animosity). There’s empirical evidence here that Con never responds to, so much of Pro’s solvency remains, even with Con working to mitigate it in very broad strokes.

With Con’s offensive case, the points relevant to judicial legitimacy are experience, accountability via impeachment, and impartiality, which Pro has said are part of his framework. Pro shows empirical evidence that the current pool of justices lacks certain kinds of experience that they could get off the SC, and he points out that impeachment is both non-unique to Con’s case and ineffectual. Presidential appointments to the court is a non-unique issue as Pro points out, and even if Con’s plan leads to less frequent appointments, they persist longer, and the court can be more unbalanced. And more frequent appointments modernizes representation, which can improve accountability. Con doesn’t respond to these points from Pro specifically in a way that ties to judicial legitimacy, which means Pro is the only one gaining offense on the judicial legitimacy framework. Many of Con’s attacks on democracy end up not holding much weight once the judicial legitimacy framework wins out. Once I’m using Pro’s framework, perception of the populace in general is really all that matters, so Con portraying his own plan as undemocratic is only really working to hurt his case. Of course Con didn’t know ahead of time what framework would win, but I think with his case being the way it is it would have been wise to go more in depth attacking Pro’s framework and addressing every point on that front. Protecting minorities is great, except I don’t see Con linking it to judicial legitimacy, and perception of the majority ends up weighing more than autonomy due to the winning framework. There’s room for an argument that in hindsight these rulings make the court look more impartial and help it to earn long-term trust, but I don’t see Con making that argument explicitly enough to gain offense on that front.

That leaves the uncertainty principle, which Pro points out is nonunique to his case. Con brings up the burden of proof, but given that Pro has provided a lot of evidence to support his offense, and Con doesn’t gain any significant offense on the judicial legitimacy framework, I think Pro’s case is more than enough to meet his burden. Also, with nothing from Con to impact out the specific BoP threshold, I’m inclined not to put too heavy of a burden on Pro. Typically BoP just means Pro has to take the initiative to make a case that Con doesn’t effectively refute, and that’s what happens here.

To put this in Bayesian terms, Pro doesn't have to prove macro evolution with 100% certainty, he just needs to give enough evidence for us to believe in it (i.e. p > 0.5). I think Pro is providing enough evidence in terms of similarities to other animals, observed speciation, and tracking the history of species through gene similarities, that all significantly increases the probability of macro evolution. Con's response to all of this seems to be claiming that it doesn't meet his threshold of proof (i.e. it doesn't demonstrate "a non human person became a human person") But he's not very clear about what his demanded standard of evidence even is or what specifically about Pro's argument is not logically sound. Basically, his responses are just too vague. For example, the comparison to stardust isn't really addressing the context of Pro's points about DNA similarity and species ancestry; just pulling lines out of context doesn't really address the points Pro is making.

Unfortunately the Con side failed to carry this debate to term.

Neither side proposes a framework, meaning I will have to weigh this at the contention level.

To start, it’s not totally clear what Pro is advocating. (They recommend a few contradictory things, including “bunker[ing] down our nations for the inevitable,” though it’s not clear how that supports the resolution, specifically geoengineering being too big of a risk. However, since neither side defines “risk,” I’m willing to give leeway to Pro to list basically any downsides of geoengineering that could lead to risks further down the road, specifically since the description includes “investing time and resources into [geoengineering]” as a type of risk. Pro’s main point (well, the only one I see that really ties to the resolution), is that geoengineering isn’t super effective and the resources could be better used elsewhere. Pro also links to a source indicating genoengineering could cause some risk from inconsistent cooling. Not a ton of elaboration there, but it at least alludes to a cost-benefit analysis.

Con’s main point is that there are some things that only geoengineering could achieve, like reversing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. On the one hand, I think this point is more elaborated on than Pro’s. On the other hand, Pro’s analysis at least made a mention of cost-benefit analysis (i.e. resources being spent here are better spent elsewhere). So even if geoengineering could hypothetically do something well, Con isn’t telling me what I should realistically expect from geoengineering beyond potential. Pro also points out that plants could remove some CO2 from the atmosphere, so geoengineering might not be necessary for this.

After the opening, Con doesn’t really meaningfully respond to Pro’s main points. He asks “How can you have a method that is both unlikely to have much of an effect, and one is unsafe to boot?” but I think Pro’s point was that geoengineering could have certain risks as well as being expensive to even get to the point of being effective. Like, it’s ineffective and even if it was effective it might be detrimental. Pro doesn’t reiterate/defend this in the final round, so it does mitigate his points, but it’s not elaborated on enough from Con to address the risks being brought up by Pro as well as the sources Pro references to.

In the final round, Pro is defending enough of his points that went unaddressed by Con (e.g. “waste of resources”) to make this debate decisive in favor of Pro, and even without that, I think Pro was the only one providing a cost-benefit analysis with enough backing to defend his side.

I think Con’s strongest point was that geoengineering could mean very broad things, and Pro’s source on net-zero isn’t necessarily rebutting that geoengineering contributes to that. But Con isn’t giving the kind of cost-benefit analysis and in-depth response to Pro’s points that would be needed to take advantage of this. Pro also says “I argue the debate is about what immediate action we should take for global warming” which goes dropped by Con due to the forfeit and severely mitigates Con’s case. Hence, I vote Pro.

Neither side proposes a framework, which means I’m going to have to weigh arguments on a case by case basis.

Pro’s first argument is that it’s unfair to treat migrants and citizens differently. Con says the government should care about citizens because they belonged to the country from the start. Pro says this is the result of luck, so it is unfair. This point ends up being kind of a wash with each side not really responding to each other’s arguments, so I end up not sure how much I should care about the rights of immigrants. The analogy to the serial killer shows Pro’s principles don’t apply absolutely, but it’s defensive against Pro’s case, not an argument for why we should prioritize natives.

The benefit to American citizens also ends up kind of a wash. It seems agreed that immigrants contribute some things, but Americans do as well. I’m not sure how that negates the benefits of immigrants contributing things though; Con never really explains that, and Pro is giving a significant case that a bigger population means you get more things. Con says there are other ways to solve these problems in the last round, but doesn’t explain why other solutions mean we shouldn't allow immigrants in as well. However, this point also ends up not being super decisive, because migrants taking jobs and houses and might lower wages, and neither debater tries to weigh these impacts against each other despite a lot of impacts being listed. But I’m seeing Pro list and quantifying a lot more of them, while Con is mostly focused on mitigation, not on giving strong evidence that migrants make the country worse off overall.

What makes this more decisive in favor of Pro is the uncertainty principle basically, which Pro points out directly (i.e. if migrants might deserve certain rights, that should carry some weight). And even if Pro hadn’t stated that directly, Con simply argues that we should prioritize citizens, not that we shouldn’t care about the interests of migrants at all. Con fails to establish that immigrants will harm natives overall, just that it’s a temporary solution (which might even be conceding they are a net positive). So even if we are prioritizing natives, that’s not a reason to keep immigrants out. Meanwhile, letting immigrants in helps them directly, and they might deserve moral consideration. So that pushes the needle toward increasing immigration, and Pro gets my vote.

Pro’s proposed framework is the grievability of life. Pro’s first justification for her framework is a quote from Magsino. Basically, the authority of the state doesn’t justify itself. This ends up not really mattering, because Con’s argument is a moral framework and not just “might makes right.” Con isn’t using the exact terms “utilitarianism” or “deontology,” but it’s pretty clear he’s not merely invoking authority. Next is the quote from White. The self is constantly in relation to social others and is vulnerable. This doesn’t really contradict Con’s case on its own and is mainly here to set up Butler.

Following Magsino and White, Pro provides a slew of quotes from Butler to justify their framework. This comes down to a few points:
We celebrate life, so it must be grievable
Framing related to the self precedes other framing justifications
Our relation to the other has to do with the self
Vulnerability precedes the formation of the “I” and thus precedes other frameworks.

That concludes Pro’s framing.

At the contention level, Pro argues that their framing implies a prohibition on all violence because of the relation to the other that preempts other framing and rejects shared vulnerability. Con immediately challenges this, citing self-defense, life imprisonment (and later rehabilitation itself) as forms of violence, arguing that a prohibition on all of it is impractical. And Butler admits self-defense is justified apparently, so we can’t accept Pro’s framing and arguments without falling into a contradiction. Pro’s response is that Butler supports self-defense but only in cases where it’s nonviolent. I think there was room for Con to argue that “aggressive forms of nonviolence” aren’t actually nonviolent, but he never responds to that point directly, so I’m left with enough of a distinction between violence and nonviolent self-defense (in theory, at least), that Pro’s case doesn’t seem self-contradictory. Pro basically just bit the bullet by saying you can’t kill to save your own life, and I don’t think Con did enough with that biting of the bullet to tear down Pro’s framing.

Con asks “what makes Butler the final authority?” but Pro is citing arguments, not just appealing to Butler’s opinion, so I don’t think this is enough to challenge Pro’s framing. Additionally, Pro is making a case that their framing preempts all other framing because it’s “grounded in how we ought to construct the individual,” and I don’t see Con responding to that point directly. So if Con can’t win under Pro’s framing, I have to vote Pro. And right from the start, Pro is giving me Butler quotes on why I should apply this framing in a deontological way because of the ethical demand of the Other. Basically, a Batman no-kill rule.

Ultimately, Con’s arguments aren’t connected enough to the vulnerability of the self and the connection with the other to win under Butler’s specific framing. Even if I accept that the punishment is proportionate and prevents future victims, killing still disrupts the connection with the other, and that precedes everything else, so apparently it’s unjustified.

Meanwhile, Con’s framework is trying to do a few things (protect potential victims, punish the criminal, and be proportionate) which is all packaged as “justice.” Pro points out that this is not proportionate for mass murderers, and that Con seems to be contradicting his source on proportionality by not actually supporting the death penalty for those people. This mitigates Con’s impacts a lot (doesn’t destroy them though cause I can buy that death is more proportionate than life in prison even if not equivalent.) I think Con’s impact from killers escaping and killing more people still stands, since deterring killings is different from physically preventing a killer from killing more people like Sinwar and Kennedy, which Pro doesn’t directly address. I think Pro could have argued that current US maximum-security prisons would prevent this, but they do not. So Con gets some impact.

In the end, this really comes down to Pro’s argument that the relation to the other and shared vulnerability pre-empts alternative framings. Con mainly argues against Butler indirectly, and Pro shows the charge of self-contradiction aren’t really true with regard to Butler’s case. Pro’s case is deontological, not a utilitarian, and so Pro winning impacts on her framework pre-empts the impact Con wins on his. Hence, my vote goes to Pro.

I think Con’s biggest opportunity here would have been to really dig more into the Butler quotes from the start. Butler had a long chain of reasoning, and I think attacking one or two of the weakest links would have made the framing more winnable for Con and perhaps allowed their impacts to carry the day. I think Pro did fine here overall, but with character space being limited it may have helped to make framing more concise and not rely as much on a long chain of reasoning. I wasn’t giving much weight to Butler just on account of her being a famous philosopher; if Pro had made much the same case in her own words, it would have carried the same weight for me. I also don’t think the White and Magsino quotes ended up mattering here, as they were mainly there to set up Butler, and Butler’s case really said all it needed to.

So first off, the framework. Pro proposes the preservation of the rule of law; Con proposes security and argues the rule of law exists solely to uphold security, so we should just value security directly. Pro doesn’t really challenge that but argues his impacts also fall under security. The term isn’t really defined rigorously beyond the concept that both sides’ impacts are included. (This continues the very common debate trend of the framework effectively being utilitarianism by another name.)

Pro makes a lot of preemptive rebuttals that don’t end up mattering since Con makes different arguments than he was anticipating. Pro’s case is that the police obtain evidence through warrants anyway, so we may as well do the same for digital security. However, this is mitigated as both sides acknowledge that criminals can switch platforms. This doesn’t totally destroy Pro’s evidence, but it reduces the impact. Pro argues that a tool does not need to solve every problem to be worthwhile and that laws are not all 100% effective (e.g. banks being robbed). That’s true, but even if the same mitigation occurs in other cases, it’s not disputing that the mitigation occurs in this case. And Pro already conceded some things specifically about this case, like “criminals can already easily switch phones.” That makes a pure argument by analogy fraught, and the analogy doesn’t really tie into an impact calculus, so I can’t give it much weight. I think Pro did a good chunk of work for Con here that they didn’t have to just by mentioning tactics criminals could use.

On the topic of backdoors, I think Con wins on the point that they have to exist to make Pro’s proposals feasible. Especially since Pro seems to oppose “a private technology company [making] compliance impossible through technical design” and proposes “a controlled mechanism through which authorized access can occur.” Pro argues that every investigative power creates risk, but that’s not denying the impact, just saying it also occurs in other places. And I think Con has done a decent enough job in R1 pointing out that there are some significant differences between cyber spaces and physical searches. In the second round, Con expands heavily on the implications of this, listing all the sensitive information a breach would expose. Since there’s no final round, Con’s impacts here go unchallenged.

Both sides are listing significant impacts. Pro talks about trafficking victims, kidnapping cases, organized crime, etc. Con brings up authentication information, personal photos, stalking, blackmail and extortion, etc. Neither side really weighs the impacts against each other or tries to give a precise quantitative measure. Both of them seem significant in their own way. What ends up breaking the tie for me is that Pro’s impacts are conceded to be largely mitigated, and his only defense is that something is better than nothing. True, but that doesn’t give me confidence it’s a very significant impact. Meanwhile, Con uses R2 to really defend the point of backdoors being inevitable and emphasize the risks of a central point of failure. So I’m seeing much more justification that Con’s impacts are likely to be realized and a lot of mitigation of Pro’s impacts. Hence, I vote Con.

Pro proposes the framework of democratic legitimacy, and argues that by definition, a healthy democracy is inherently more healthy and legitimate. Specifically, “the government of any democracy is, by definition, meant to represent the interests of the entire population, not just the most outspoken and invested.” Con does not provide an alternative framework, which means that out the gate, per the voting rubric, I’m forced to use democratic legitimacy to judge the arguments. There is slightly more leeway with regards to arguing what determines legitimacy, but Con doesn’t strongly counter this argument until the final round. Anything not seeded by Con in the first round I can’t consider, as Pro basically gets no chance to respond to it. This is a big problem for Con’s case, because if I define democratic legitimacy the way Pro wants me to, then this is pretty much an automatic win for Pro, whose proposed system automatically gets votes from more people (basically agreed on by Con).

Now, in the first round, Con only connects his case to democratic legitimacy twice. First, he states that “a mandatory voting system that disallowed non-votes…would…legitimize either one of two (or more) absolutely terrible choices and would undermine Pro’s point about mandatory voting strengthening democratic representation.” But this is not the system Pro is proposing, so it doesn’t gain Con any offense.

Second, he states that “Some will vote for a candidate just because their parents support that candidate, some for the opposite reason (as a rebellion sort of thing). This undermines democratic legitimacy because a vote will be cast which will be based on nothing but someone’s whims…I assume my opponent also holds this position so I won’t go any further into proving this.” This ends up not being a true assumption, because Pro argues “I’ll argue that none are objectively “wrong.” More legal participation in the democratic process is what makes that process healthy and legitimate, full stop.” Pro also basically stated this up front in R1 when he said that “the government of any democracy is, by definition, meant to represent the interests of the entire population, not just the most outspoken and invested.”

The way this ends up playing out is that Con’s main standing offense on the only standing framework is an assertion that voting on a whim is “objectively the wrong vote.” Their only defense for this is that they assume Pro agrees with it; however Pro has already argued against it when they framed democratic legitimacy at the beginning of the debate. In comparison, Pro goes into more depth about the importance of representativeness to legitimacy and claims it’s the primary goal of the government in the first place, which doesn’t really get challenged by Con in the first round.

Pro attacks the vagueness of Con’s view of legitimacy (“More legal participation in the democratic process is what makes that process healthy and legitimate, full stop. It is up to Con to demonstrate what “wrongness” is in this context, distinguish it from what is “right” or “correct,” and explain how it negatively impacts democratic legitimacy.”) Based on Pro being the only person to frame the debate up front, this seems like a fair request at this point in the debate. In the final round, Con doesn’t really explain how “wrong” votes impact legitimacy. Dan Quayle spelling potato wrong might mean he votes for a less qualified candidate, but candidates being qualified and democratic legitimacy aren’t the same thing, and Con fails to tie them together.

Con argues “this basically slightly undermines legitimacy since some people are making a choice they would otherwise not be making at all,” but I don’t see them seeding a connection between this and legitimacy in the first round, and Con also isn’t fleshing out enough of a consistent competing interpretation of legitimacy to justify this claim.

There’s another more indirect way that Con might be trying to tie their case to democratic legitimacy in that they argue lower turnout forces parties to become more representative in order to earn the loyalty of voters. This more directly clashes with some of Pro’s assumptions and can gain Con some offense even if I accept Pro’s framing entirely. Pro strongly challenges this in the second round (“If anything, the voluntary voting system ensures the dominance of these parties, as evidenced by the fact that those who volunteer continue to elect them. It is only through a seismic shift in the voting base (see: mandatory voting) that these parties could have to face meaningful competition.”) He also cites some sources to argue that protest votes send a stronger message than just not voting.

Con doesn’t strongly attack this argument in the final round, though. They claim an unnamed party in Australia benefited from mandatory voting, but they don’t give a reason why that party was more or less authoritarian than the other parties. (Maybe the argument is that they were illegitimate because they were elected due to mandatory voting, but that’s assuming the thing Con is trying to prove.) This means Pro basically gets the last word on higher turnout affecting representativeness. Con also argues that political parties have gotten worse and less representative, but this is just arguing that lower representativeness means less voting. As Pro points out, Con isn’t defending how less voting leads to higher representativeness.

Overall, I think Pro tied his arguments more strongly to the framework and remained more consistent in the arguments he was making. This means Pro gains a lot of offense through bringing up points Con didn’t fully address, while the main arguments of Con’s that Pro failed to address were brought up in the last round and hence Pro just never got a chance to respond to them. I think Con would have done a better job either picking an alternative framework or being more clear upfront exactly how I should be measuring democratic legitimacy in their view. Alas, that’s not the way this played out. Hence, my vote goes to Pro.

Both sides provided a framework for their argument, but only Pro's framework gives me a way to judge whether something is a best friend. This is an is debate, not an ought debate. Con makes a strong argument that Pro ought to quit smoking but falls short of arguing that the cigarette is not Pro's best friend. There could be a connection between these things depending on how best friend is defined, but Con never defines it.

Meanwhile, Pro gives a specific set of criteria for being a best friend (happy, enjoying company) and claims that cigarettes meet the criteria, which isn't really challenged by Con. Con claims judgments should be objective but doesn't give alternate criteria, and as written, "cigarettes make Pro happy" might be objectively true. Pro also pre rebuts much of Con's case by saying that best friends "sometimes hurt each other, but they dont stop being best friends."

Con asking "Can you quit this "best friend" of yours?" doesn't help their case also. It almost implies they are just accepting that cigarettes are Pro's best friend and saying that is a bad thing, instead of arguing the resolution.

Neither side proposes a framework, although that’s not too big a deal in this debate, since at face value the resolution seems to be implying something along the lines of utilitarianism with weighing harms against benefits. And there’s no real philosophical or value quibbling about what counts as a harm vs what doesn’t. Both sides are pretty much focusing on the same areas.

Where it does get to be an issue is weighing each of these areas against each other, since debaters never really make clear how much the economy matters vs. health. So I kind of have to look at the numbers and guess how big a deal each impact is based on what’s being implied by each debater. There is some overlap with recurring themes between the sections, which does tie things together a bit.

I’ll look at this one category at a time. (“Everything is/is not a GMO” isn’t really impacted out and is a bit tangential/semantic, so I’m not really counting it as an argument.) Pro says GMOs are safe and improve health and nutritional value, then backs it up with a few pretty good sources. Con’s response doesn’t really address Pro’s sources and the impacts seem not directly related to GMOs. Glyphosate isn’t even a GMO as Pro points out, and even if it were, Pro is winning on source credibility and relevance in this section. The negative effects of glyphosate get attacked as exaggerated, which is significant mitigation, and Con’s source being unreliable in other ways doesn’t help them. Golden rice, by comparison, gets pretty much entirely dropped by Con. Organic foods and non organic foods having no measurable difference in Con’s study doesn’t really help either side. So I’m giving Pro the point on health.

Economic benefits get largely conceded, which is a benefit to someone even though Con argues it’s an uneven one. If a large portion of wealth is going to corporations, that seems like at most mitigation. Decreased suicide rates also gets dropped by Con (although it seems like this should go under the heath section). But it also seems like significant evidence that farmers are getting some benefit and not just corporations. There are some vague criticisms of corporations, but this has a pretty tenuous connection to harm from GMOs. If I’m steelmanning Con’s argument, then I think it might be that GMOs are good for corporations, and corporations are immoral, so anything that helps them is bad. But this really needs to be impacted out more for me to give it significant weight. (And suicide rates are even going down, which seems like a measurable positive effect!) And also, as Pro points out, the fact that corporations own most of the wealth doesn’t really relate to GMOs and might increase Pro’s benefits. The links here for Con’s case are also severely weakened by Pro pointing out the justification for the lawsuit regarding Monsanto’s IP. Overall, I think Pro has a stronger case here.

That leaves ecological effects. Pro’s sources on higher diversity, crop yields, and saving land, all basically get dropped (which happens a lot in this debate). Con’s sources get largely mitigated, since Pro shows they acknowledge benefits of GMOs and that the negative ecological effects he’s discussing are caused by things other than GMOs, such as chemicals used in both GMOs and non-GMOs, or problems that started well before GMOs. While both sides have some potential impacts, the big asymmetry here is that Con’s links are being hit with a lot of uncertainty and mitigation, which means I’m weighing tangible benefits against harms that might not even exist. Once again, Pro comes out ahead.

I think Con’s responses in the last round could have had more weight if they were seeded more and impacted out more, but it comes across as too little too late; they largely reiterate the impacts they’ve stated that Pro has already mitigated. It’s not enough that a potential impact exists when Pro has given multiple strong impacts, almost all of which went dropped by Con. If the topic had been tied more to corporations or technology in general, Con’s arguments might have had more relevance, but overall Pro does a better job of sticking to the resolution.

Pro is right that most of Con’s criticisms are not really unique to GMOs. I think that was the biggest deciding factor in this debate, as well as Con not really attacking Pro’s sources. If a source is reliable I get not wanting to attack its credibility necessarily, but I think Con could have at least pushed back on or tried to mitigate some of Pro’s claims, or at least tried to find some pretty big potential harms that were more clearly tied to GMOs. Attacking something tangential like corporations or pesticides can easily be pointed out as nontopical, or in some cases even flipped.

The framework proposed by Pro is teleological legitimacy, which they basically summarize by saying “If Somaliland already fulfills these teleological requirements for a recognized State, refusing to recognize it as a State would be, by definition, arbirtrary.” That’s a pretty clear set of goalposts. Con doesn’t provide an alternative framework—they say they will focus on “whether or not the balkanization of an African country is beneficial in the long run for the people living in the region”—but that’s not the same thing. There’s no argument for why these should be the goalposts for how the debate is measured (Pro at least provides a single sentence), and recall from the vote rubric that to count as a framework, it must be presented as one or something synonymous (e.g. “goalposts for this debate,” etc.). Pro presents a framework; Con does not. So I defer to Pro’s framework.

That makes this debate a bit lopsided, because there’s no significant dispute from Con that Somaliland already fulfills the classical criterias of statehood. Con even states outright, “I don't really have any good arguments against any of his points.”

And even if Con had provided a framework like utilitarianism or something, and the debate were being measured under that framework, the whole discussion becomes a bit lopsided after the first round. Pro gives 7 points disputing Con’s argument about instability, and Con only responds to 1 and 5. Con promises to expand in the last round but then doesn’t, instead accusing Pro of intellectual dishonesty. Even if Pro was being intellectually dishonest in the sentence Con is referencing, Con is just dropping way too many of their points to effectively dispute their case. Hence, I vote Pro.

Forfeiture

Conceded

Con concedes the main point of the debate: "I agree. Some people will be single. That’s true in any system."

The rest of their argument isn't addressing the resolution. The debate is over whether singleness occurs in certain conditions, not about if it's unique to those conditions or if it's good.

Pro's R3 and R4 were entirely AI-generated, so I'm not counting it per site rules. This comes down to a framework debate, where Pro insists all that matters is whether Iranians were celebrating. Con provides much more elaboration with her framework, using Trump's words to justify that promoting stability was the intent of the killing. With Con citing credible sources and that many Iranians were even mourning Khameini's death, her argument just seems a lot more supported and hence I grant it more weight.

Forfeiture

So to start, Pro doesn't need to prove God exists, just that God is a better explanation than naturalism. There's a burden on both sides here, and the two don't necessarily cover all the possibilities. (It might be the case that metaphysical things exist, but that God does not.) However, that third possibility is not really relevant here.

Pro's first two arguments are the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument and the KCA, which end up collapsing into basically the same argument (the universe is dependent and began to exist, therefore it requires a cause). The way the definitions are set up, God does not require a cause due to not having a beginning/being a necessary being as defined. Con challenges the premise that most things need a cause and argues that murders are a special case, because murders usually have causes, but Pro presses the point, comparing an uncaused universe to magic and saying that it would be arbitrary for some things to require a cause and other things not to. Con's analogy of a rock "just existing" doesn't get directly addressed, but arguably the particles in the rock are part of the universe and Pro is challenging it more broadly by arguing everything needs some cause and that the cause must be necessary and not contingent. In the end Pro doesn't prove the rule so much as show it tends to be an emperical pattern, but this does get them far enough to establish the likelihood of a powerful, transcendent being existing beyond space and time. That doesn't prove the four O's, but it makes naturalism a lot less likely.

Pro's third argument is about fine tuning. They provide three explanations out the gate, and Con's response is to argue there might be a fourth explanation. Again, Pro doesn't prove there's no fourth explanation, but the fact Con can't provide a plausible explanation other than the one Pro provides does make Pro's argument significantly more likely. Basically, if the best explanation anyone in the debate can provide points to God rather than naturalism, I think that carries some weight in favor of the instigator.

Pro's fourth argument is that morality requires a "mind-independent source of morality that transcends humanity" that "can make moral judgements." I don't think this was as rigorous as it could have been, but Con simply saying that moral facts don't "logically requires god" isn't engaging with Pro's argument. Pro's argument about moral facts precludes them from being mind-dependent or based on human nature or culture, so Con attributing them to reason or human nature doesn't really engage with this. Con just isn't engaging the way they need to be to rebut this argument, so the meat of it is mostly dropped, and it's another point for Pro in favor of God and against naturalism. (Heck, Pro could have argued that morality itself is incompatible with naturalism, but they didn't.)

I take Con's argument to be that naturalism has succeeded in explaining a lot of things and that we haven't directly observed God. Overall, I think Pro pushes back on natural laws explaining everything to the point that Con only really establishes naturalism to be useful in a lot of cases or able to explain a lot of things. The specific arguments Pro brings up earlier seem like cases where naturalism seems a lot more shaky, and even if naturalism itself requires fewer explanations, Pro is bringing up things naturalism seems like it fails to explain.

As Pro's arguments here seem more solid by the end of the debate than Con's, I vote Pro.

Full forfeit plus plagiarism from Con

Full forfeit

Full forfeiture

The framework proposed by Pro is institutional legitimacy, defined as “the public belief that the Court’s power deserves compliance, even when its rulings are unpopular.” Con never provides an alternative framework, so per voting and framework rules, that is the metric I will use to judge this debate. Con does provide a summary of points they will cover (or rather, a summary of points that Pro covers?), but it doesn’t really challenge Pro’s argument that legitimacy is all that matters or that the purpose of other points are to further legitimacy; and if they don’t think legitimacy is important, then it’s not clear what other rubric the debate should be graded on. Hence, other arguments and points of dispute will only matter insofar as they show term limits to increase or decrease legitimacy.

As far as sources are concerned, if they’re not elaborated on I will treat them as “someone agreeing with Pro,” but if Pro makes an empirical claim that’s not challenged, such as a specific stat, and it gets dropped by Con, I will count that point since it’s not information from outside the debate. Con never says that stats themselves are bad, so if it comes down to a specific stat plus a source vs nothing, the stat plus the source at least tells me more than silence on the issue. As for vague opinions, a source alone doesn’t tell me much if it’s not backed up by a justification or the source is not elaborated on.

Pro’s first argument is that appointment timing is basically random, with Republicans having disproportionate control of the court. Pro draws a connection to the legitimacy framework by stating that “the disparate timeframe between regular elections and Court appointments undermines legitimacy…a single four-year term can lead to the appointment of justices who serve for over thirty years.” I think a connection is further implied when Pro states that “turnover in line with the views of the citizen populace” which gains them some offense since legitimacy includes “the public belief that the Court’s power deserves compliance.” However, Con argues that public support for rulings does not equal legitimacy, and Pro agrees, “I never claimed that the Court should do what the public wants.” Further, the framework includes the caveat that the court must have legitimacy “even when its rulings are unpopular.” With this much conceded by Pro, I’m not seeing how a more balanced court necessarily adds legitimacy. Will serving the “public good” and serving “the needs of the current populace” lead to more popular rulings? Perhaps. But avoiding unpopular rulings is not the same as making the public trust unpopular rulings. It could be argued that a consistent number of appointments per president makes people perceive the unpopular rulings as achieved through a fair process and thus more legitimate, but Pro doesn’t make that argument. Hence, I think this argument fails to advance Pro’s case.

Pro’s second argument is that the court is becoming more polarized. The connection to legitimacy is never made explicitly clear, except in the case of “using the shadow docket.” However, I think it could be seen as a reasonable assumption that polarization could make the court be seen as less legitimate in general, and Con agrees on the relevancy of polarization, so I will give this point some weight. Even if I ignore all of Pro’s sources and just look at what each side says, Pro is giving some stats, while Con is more arguing that tying elections directly to appointments means the court is not neutral. Pro argues that since justices are still appointed by elected officials, they are not neutral and are tied to one party or another. Con drops a lot of points here, including the stat that term limits reduce Court polarization by 50% through removing strategic retirements. Even if I ignore Pro’s sources, Con never says the stat is false, and as Pro says it in the debate, it’s not “information from outside the debate.” Pro’s impacts are coming through here more clearly, particularly though the shadow docket which is directly tied to legitimacy and empirical stats from Pro, both of which Con drops. Con’s argument is largely that elections of officials will be motivated by changing the court, but as Pro points out, this doesn’t directly impact the polarization of the appointments themselves even if it impacts elections, and Con never disputes that more participation from moderates are “underrepresented in elections with low turnout.” That particular statement isn’t super reliant on an appeal to authority—the point is pretty easy to understand even without the source, and it’s never challenged by Con. Con’s argument that justices drift from the president who appointed them gets dropped, but it’s not quantified and Pro is giving more sources/stats here that seem like pretty big numbers, so if I give Con’s argument weight here, I have to give Pro’s argument even more weight. Hence, Pro gains significant offense with this point.

Pro’s third argument has to do with strategic appointments and retirements. Pro says that this creates the public perception that justices are simply extensions of the political parties that appointed them, which directly ties into their definition of legitimacy. Con doesn’t challenge this point about perception, although they argue public approval does not matter for legitimacy. However, under the framework defining legitimacy as “the public belief that the Court’s power deserves compliance, even when its rulings are unpopular,” then public perception does matter, even if perception of legitimacy does not equate to approval. So Pro gains some offense on the point about strategic appointments and retirements.

Pro’s fourth argument has to do with age, and I’ll group this with Pro’s argument about young justices being less experienced. Basically, justices are too young or too old, which makes them less experienced, which makes the court look less trustworthy when it makes decisions. Con drops most of this, particularly with how it relates to the belief that justices “have the competence and knowledge to handle the most contested legal cases in the country.” Even if older justices aren’t more biased, Pro argues that being less competent means they are perceived as less legitimate. So Pro gains more offense here.

That leaves Con’s sole contention that isn’t an attempt to flip one of Pro’s points—the slippery slope issue. This basically relies on the fact that the Supreme Court has lasted a long time, so we’d better leave it alone. However, the quality of the court looks like a bit of a mixed bag over this debate, with Pro pointing out some issues with the status quo, so it’s not clear to me that the current trajectory of the court is inherently “better” than an unknown. Particularly with the point about a supermajority needed for an amendment, it’s not clear why this would be a polarized process or one that opens the door to rash changes. Current issues with the court need not be existential for a change to possibly be better, or at least, for Pro’s world to start looking preferable if they have arguments that it will be more legitimate based on certain empirical data.

As a good chunk of Pro’s points are left standing at the end of this, while Con’s are not, Pro wins my vote.

I will be voting on the basis of Pro's framework, since it was the only one provided. Basically, is God/gods more likely or unlikely to exist. This is kind of reiterating the description of the debate, so it doesn't give Pro a huge advantage in framing, but it is acceptable as a framework.

Pro's argument starts out a bit speculative—I'm reading it as, other intelligent beings could have influenced our universe and thus there is a good chance they did. I think that opens up a lot of room for Con to argue that this is actually unlikely, which he does by arguing that problems in the universe itself make the creator "unlikely to be intelligent." I can agree with much of Pro's argumentation that intelligent beings can make mistakes and that even in some cases intelligence takes an abstract form like computers, but Pro presented this as a question of what is more likely early on, and so I'm left wondering what makes that "intelligence" more likely than not? At the end of the day, Con is the only one really using observations about the universe (like diseases) to argue whether the creator was intelligent or not. I also find myself agreeing that Pro is stretching the definition of intelligence a bit to include unthinking entities, and even if those entities could be intelligent, I'm not seeing a reason to believe that's the most likely conclusion.

The arguments about deities in other religions vs. Christianity got a bit off track in my opinion. The biggest contention was the definition of "intelligent," and I think more of the focus should have been on overall likelihood of intelligence based on observations (which both debaters mentioned in the first round but later was largely dropped.) This comes down to Pro's argument that an intelligent being could possibly end up making the universe, vs. Con's argument that the universe is unlikely to be something an intelligent being would create, and so Con is arguing likelihood more directly in that regard. Pro's argument got close to saying every being is intelligent but stopped short of making that claim...since presumably some beings are unintelligent and it's not contested that the universe is "poorly designed," Con wins my vote on the basis of an unintelligent creator being more likely.