Savant

So who won the first one?

It's still going, it's a multi-round tournament. But some people dropped out. If you want to see who is winning right now, check the leaderboard.

See above

Please sign up here to participate in the second round of the ultrarated tournament. I'd like to have 8 participants ideally.

1. Savant

2. whiteflame

3. Kohai

4. GreatfulGoy

5. LancelotDuLac

6. Hyper

7. Thoth

8. Nyxified

you continue to conflate everyone with viewpoints on the political left as if they’re a hive mind playing the same game

I think it's clear I'm specifically talking about the political strategists in the Democratic party that are trying to win elections, as well as others on the left working to that end. The same way you are describing "the right" to describe many people on the right even though we know not everyone on the right is a hive mind.

the right excels at buzzwords because that’s what their constituency has the capacity to understand. I find that embarrassing as well, but for very different reasons.

So I actually agree with this. The issue is that the left is playing to their weaknesses by playing this game. I think that memes and slogans and mocking nicknames are a bad political strategy, but the left clearly is trying to play this game even though they aren't very good at it. For whatever reason, there's a strong desire by many on the left to "beat Trump at his own game." I'd rather they not take that route, but here they are, taking it. So I think critiquing the left's well-acknowledged messaging problem is fair game.

Which, in a way, makes it even worse.

It's a worse sign for Democratic support that two Democrats split the vote? It would indicate to me that people in New York still support Democrats a great deal. If anything, it shows that the far left is more popular than the center left, assuming Cuomo represents the center left here.

In contrast 2021's election Adams beat Silwa by almost 40 points (66% to Curtis 27%).

But that was a Democrat beating a Republican, this was a Democrat beating a Democrat.

The people who were using the term “woke” were doing so because it was a way to signal/convey their values and priorities to others

Some would call it virtue signalling, but let's suppose that it was used sincerely.

not because they thought it was a great way to get ignorant people to vote for candidates of their persuasion.

Which is something that is typically useful when you want to win elections. Also, the left absolutely does try to do this. They absolutely have talking points, those talking points just fail to stick. Drumf, weird, orange, TACO, etc. And those are just for Trump. What's embarrassing is that the right is able to use the left's own buzzwords against them. Maybe you are above this kind of thing, and that's probably a healthy mentality to have. But a lot of Dems are trying to play this game and aren't very good at it. It's like the right trying to win on celebrity endorsements, either they have to really change their strategy or give up and play to their strengths.

You keep acting like it was the job of “the left” to maintain “woke” as a positive phrase, why? It’s just a word.

The right spinning that word has been politically useful for them. Is it the job of the left to be politically strategic? Maybe not, but it would probably help them accomplish more of their goals.

The idea that they were supposed to “fight back” to preserve the word is just silly.

So once woke is in common parlance, they can't use it positively? The political machine on the left tried oh so very hard to turn "weird" into a thing, but they failed with "woke" even though they had a head start. Even small segments on the far right were able to spin terms to mean things opposite their original intent, like "modern woman" or "black fatigue." I'd much rather the far right was losing many of those fights, but for whatever reason, they are able to spin buzzwords more than you'd expect from their numbers alone.

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.