It's up to them how they respond. They stopped using woke as a badge of honor or saying "stay woke." They gave up as soon as they were challenged. They also made little effort to turn words like "based" into an insult and instead tried to appropriate it, which was just giving the right a head start.
the political right did what it does so well - ignore what it actually meant and use it as a stand in for “any viewpoint about race that makes me feel uncomfortable”.
It’s not the left’s usage of the word liberals are reacting to
Yeah that's my point. The left allowed the right's usage of the term to dictate its connotation. They don't brag about being woke anymore. They even use "safe space" as an insult against conservatives, as if they don't still have actual safe spaces.
I know you don't want to dig into the sociology here
What gave you that impression? My whole post is pop sociology.
This string might just as easily have been titled: "It's embarrassing the way social conservatives allow social liberals to frame every social issue," for much the same reasons given by Savant.
Why though? How do these examples show conservatives allowing liberals to frame social issues? If anything, they show the opposite.
One thing I've noticed in American politics is that social liberals will invent terms to describe themselves and then react very angrily when conservatives describe them with those terms. The term "woke" is probably the most obvious example, where it arose in social liberal circles as a badge of honor, and then as soon as conservatives started using it as an insult, the people describing themselves as "woke" allowed it to become an insult and started complaining that so many things were being called woke. Same thing with "DEI," "safe space," and "diversity hire" becoming pejoratives. Let's not forget that "the tolerant left" quickly became a sarcastic jab, and the left soon gave up on painting themselves as tolerant and pivoted to using the paradox of tolerance to justify being intolerant. Which forced them to dig themselves out of a deep hole, because "the party of love and tolerance" is how social liberals would have described themselves up to the point that it became a political jab. The rule seems to be that social liberals decide on the terms for things, and then conservatives decide on the connotations of those terms, forcing the social liberals to pivot. Today's liberal slogan is tomorrow's far-right dog whistle. Social liberals could start calling themselves "smart and kind," and within a few years, "smart and kind" would become a pejorative, and social liberals would be trying to distance themselves from the phrase.
To some extent, this applies to the broader political spectrum too. Communism and capitalism were both terms popularized by critics of capitalism, and yet capitalism has a slightly more positive connotation today. I think the difference is that the left dedicates a disproportionate amount of time arguing about how terms should be perceived, but the conservatives just use the words the way they want until the social liberals give up.
The left is not as good at reframing terms when the shoe is on the other foot. "Chad" and "based" were popularized in political discourse by the far right, and instead of mocking them for it, the left had to play catch up and say that they were the based ones, implicitly agreeing that being "based" was a good thing. Abortion opponents framed themselves as pro-life, and the left has generally failed to challenge this framing. They spend a good deal of time complaining that the term is a misrepresentation and saying that abortion opponents aren't actually pro-life, but then the abortion opponents just kept calling themselves pro-life. The term "pro-life" has been used sarcastically to some extent, but when it is, the pro-choice person always has to make it clear that they are using the term sarcastically, as it doesn't have the same baggage as "woke." On the other hand, "my body my choice" was very quickly reframed by vaccine opponents, to the extent that if the term was used in 2020 or 2021, most people's minds probably would have gone to vaccines, at least in America.
There are some exceptions, where liberals were able to popularize terms with the connotations they wanted. "Trickle-down economics," "bootlicker," "gender-affirming care" and "oligarch" come to mind. This is generally easier when the term starts out as an insult (with the exception of "gender-affirming care"), because people prefer using insults to using compliments. But these terms don't seem to bother the right as much, so I don't think that they have had as big of an effect.
I think the next step should logically be including section for BoP, putting suggestions, warning against not defining specific terms, etc. Just to prevent a lot of the issues we've seen with semantic abuse.
And unless im mistaken the topic rubric preceded the ultra debates?
Topic rubric was specifically created for ultrarated. If we enforced this on everything it would kill 90% of site activity. Plus it would require making every other debate go through an approval process before it can even begin, which is just not practical.
Do you lose more rating if you lose to someone with very low rating?
Yes. You also win less by beating them.
But you should ask every time, just as you would for anything that's a deal breaker to you.
I mean you should, but some things are on the person to reveal. Like AIDS for example.
It's decent, although I would probably draw it differently.
I'd probably move 5 and 11 to rape category. 5 it kind of depends because if you know the other person wouldn't mind, than not revealing it isn't really rape by deception. But otherwise that's a pretty significant thing not to reveal.
And yeah rape by deception is a hard line to draw because you can lie about some things and it's not rape, but I think AFAB/AMAB is a big enough thing it would count. But a cis woman implying they are a cis man or vice versa before doing sexual acts crosses the line imo, and I think a trans man/woman implying they are cis or vice versa also crosses it.
It's decent, although I would probably draw it differently.
6 foot 9 inches.
Those are two separate measurements btw.
Just because consent is a spectrum doesn't mean we shouldn't draw a line somewhere. Then that line would determine which acts are rape and which aren't.
I agree that would be helpful. Hopefully we will get to it soon.
there should be a guideline on what makes the debate to win or lose
There's gonna be way more backlash to any guideline we pick than to not having it. People have different debating styles, and there are more possible ways a debate can go than any guideline could anticipate. Victory is up to voters, basically, but they have to weigh arguments. Optimal system in my view is to force voters to be impartial and leave it up to them beyond that. Although whiteflame has a pretty consistent school of thought, and he will probably be very willing to explain how he decides who to vote for.
If you cheat at the game: No legal penalty.
If you cheat at strip poker by taking someone's clothes off without their consent, there are legal penalties.
So what happens if the instigator gives an argument so strong that it scares the other side into forfeiting? Or the other side thinks "a forfeit won't count as a win for them, so at least I can deny them a win."
Thank you to everyone who signed up! As a first order of business, you'll all need to have 3 topic credits and 4 vote credits. To get those, go to your profile > badges, and click earn vote credit/topic credit. Since there are no ultrarated debates needing votes right now, you'll just get 4 free temporary vote credits. To earn topic credits, you'll have to propose a topic (but it doesn't matter if it's accepted or not).
You may need to take quizzes before you can earn credits, but they should be pretty easy. All the answers are basically on the rubric.
One more participant needed!
How is it possible that you don't know that is "Best Korea"?
He said DDO, not DART.
I am ardently against the idea of credit system on precept. You get people being activist for (debates in this case) clauses that they may have no intrest in.
These are two different things, so I'm not sure I understand? The credit system requires voting/contributing topic proposals in order to debate. You don't have to defend positions at all to earn credits, in fact debating costs credits.
Frankly its just a form of gate keeping.
Other debate formats will still exist.
So a few of the issues you're bringing up are partly what the ultrarated system was intended to address. I'll preface my response by saying that this is all theoretical at the moment, and it will be easier to judge once we see ultrarated debates in practice.
The concept of ultra debating is as flawed as the former DART version of it, you segregate people based on effort instead of ideas, you create a vaccum and gate keeping effect that spirals towards echo chamberism
Ultrarated debates are effectively what competitive debate tournaments do. Those don't prevent people from having informal debates, but I think the formal debates tend to be more productive anyway and more focused on arguments instead of personal attacks. You talk about effort as being a negative, but do we not want to reward effort?
With regard to echo chamberism, I think ordinary debates are more susceptible to it since people can choose what to vote on, and there are fewer guidelines to ensure the votes are unbiased. Non-ultrarated debates tended to reward noob sniping or semantic abuse. And in ultrarated, people can be forced to argue against their actual view, which should reduce the echo chamber effect somewhat.
Further, the concept insist upon its self and build egoism, "look at me, im great cause of my rating or debate wins!" When on any given day someone smarter or more eloquent can come along and win in a debate against you by bringing better arguements. The ratings, the rankings are meaningless.
Could this not effectively be said about chess or other skill-based competitions? I think your thesis is that debates shouldn't be competitive in this regard, but then why have voters or ELO in the first place?
You need x number of credits for each one. For example, to get four vote credits, you ask it to assign you a debate to vote on four times. And if there's nothing in the queue, you get a free credit.
Glad to have you!
3 days, though the format for Ultrarated debates is open to changing in the future.
Also, voters! I will vote on those debates I can find time for even as a participant, and we’re going to need others to step up and cast votes as well.
That's the beauty of ultrarated debates. You have to judge 4 ultrarated debates to start a new ultrarated debate (or less if there are less than 3 debates in voting phase). And each debate gets 3 votes.
It's the same with submitting topics, people will have to submit 5 topics before they can do an ultrarated debate. That's how the credits system works.
Fixed
All participants welcome!
To promote the site and the Ultrarated debate feature (pairing debaters with random opponents on random topics), DebateCraft will be hosting an Ultrarated tournament. This is your chance to test your skills against debaters on the top of the Rated leaderboard and see your name go down in DC history. We're hoping to get at least 8 participants, but more is great.
To join, just comment below, and you'll be put in the participants list. You can see current topics here. To suggest a new topic, go to your profile > badges, and take the quiz to qualify for earning topic badges. Once you've passed the quiz, you can propose new topics. This is also a chance to ensure the functionality works and that it's understandable, so if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
Participants so far:
Also, if you were to contact YouTubers (@InspiringPhilosophy for example) and offer them opponents to debate topics that they are interested in, as well as an approved moderator, that could be an easy way to boost the site’s popularity as the viewers will all see the site.
That's been a hope of ours for a while. We did get a few AMAs a while back on the old site, but no one high-profile willing to debate on the site.
You could also add something like skill based matchmaking so that as the site grows it isn’t super cluttered
We do have a feature for that called "Ultrarated debates," but no one has used it yet. (It requires taking quizzes on voting and then voting on other debates to get credits, so a bit complicated at the moment). But hopefully as we grow that will eventually take off.
