Coliseum discussion thread

[Ender]

Didn't see one, so I made it. Used to be when we had 1v1s like this we had a separate thread for commentary. So here it is.

Up until this last post by BB I would have said that AD is losing on the simple grounds of not having argued. Opening posts are supposed to put forth your argument - a fact Bean made in the rules. AD went straight into the attack mode, which shows a curious lack of understanding with regards to debating. It doesn't matter if you are arguing whether water is wet or not, your side is not the default correct one, you need to argue for it. He is yet to do this. Right now he is aping the traditional creationist tactics. "If I find any flaws with your argument, it means I'm automatically right". AD needs to put forth an actual argument, or BB wins by default. Do keep in mind it is entirely possible to win a debate while still being wrong if your opponent doesn't present a coherent argument for the actual facts.


That said, BB's use of "look at this picture, the two are the same if you squint, clearly I am right" is down right retarded.

[ray245]

Didn't see one, so I made it. Used to be when we had 1v1s like this we had a separate thread for commentary. So here it is.

Up until this last post by BB I would have said that AD is losing on the simple grounds of not having argued. Opening posts are supposed to put forth your argument - a fact Bean made in the rules. AD went straight into the attack mode, which shows a curious lack of understanding with regards to debating. It doesn't matter if you are arguing whether water is wet or not, your side is not the default correct one, you need to argue for it. He is yet to do this. Right now he is aping the traditional creationist tactics. "If I find any flaws with your argument, it means I'm automatically right". AD needs to put forth an actual argument, or BB wins by default. Do keep in mind it is entirely possible to win a debate while still being wrong if your opponent doesn't present a coherent argument for the actual facts.


That said, BB's use of "look at this picture, the two are the same if you squint, clearly I am right" is down right retarded.

Ender, I thought we are not allowed to have Commentary threads after what happened in the past?

Although you have to give BB credit, for arguing against his personal stance.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Issues Ender

1) Arguing in the affirmative for ID, the burden of proof is on him to prove his position correct. I would have to defend evolution had he not done 2)
2) He conceded common descent, and natural selection.
3) Because he conceded 2, I am justified in merely pointing out that his position that a designer exists, is not supported by his argument. It also frees me to incorporate the arguments I would have initially made as to why ID is false into an attack.

[Ender]

Ender, I thought we are not allowed to have Commentary threads after what happened in the past?

What happened in the past? AFAIK these discussion threads have always been good fun.

Although you have to give BB credit, for arguing against his personal stance.

Not really, I'd expect a better job than "pretty picture!"

Issues Ender

1) Arguing in the affirmative for ID, the burden of proof is on him to prove his position correct. I would have to defend evolution had he not done
2) He conceded common descent, and natural selection.
3) Because he conceded 2, I am justified in merely pointing out that his position that a designer exists, is not supported by his argument. It also frees me to incorporate the arguments I would have initially made as to why ID is false into an attack.

I was under the impression that this was an evolution vs ID debate, not the validity of ID. Was this mistaken? In either case, you still need to provide statements as to the falsehood of ID rather than just attacking his argument. You are correct that the burden of proof applies to his statements, but it applies to yours as well. You made a positive position on it, that it was "untestable, unfalsifiable, and all arguments for its satisfactory nature either rely on logical fallacies, hubris, or both." which is well and good, but then proceeded to show that these errors lay within his argument rather than the theory itself. Where in do you intend to argue against ID? That is the topic at hand, not the sturdiness of BB's argument.

[ray245]

Well, the purpose of a coliseum is to allow two person to duel it out without other people jumping into the pool and start to flood one person with arguments.

[Rye]

Didn't see one, so I made it. Used to be when we had 1v1s like this we had a separate thread for commentary. So here it is.

Up until this last post by BB I would have said that AD is losing on the simple grounds of not having argued. Opening posts are supposed to put forth your argument - a fact Bean made in the rules. AD went straight into the attack mode, which shows a curious lack of understanding with regards to debating. It doesn't matter if you are arguing whether water is wet or not, your side is not the default correct one, you need to argue for it. He is yet to do this. Right now he is aping the traditional creationist tactics. "If I find any flaws with your argument, it means I'm automatically right". AD needs to put forth an actual argument, or BB wins by default. Do keep in mind it is entirely possible to win a debate while still being wrong if your opponent doesn't present a coherent argument for the actual facts.

I'm not sure if that is the case, since BB is arguing against the status quo as far as scientific consensus goes. Both BB and AD and most readers hopefully grasp the idea of unguided, naturalistic abiogenesis events. Still, his use of mass-italics is decidedly informal (you're meant to cite sources using italics, [and I suppose adding emphasis with them would be allowable] rather than write everything with them) and horrible to read.

That said, BB's use of "look at this picture, the two are the same if you squint, clearly I am right" is down right retarded.

It is. This is what I would hammer home in my response, if I were doing it (if this isn't allowed for sake of cheating or whatever, I apologise):

4) One needs to establish a mechanism by which an Intelligent Designer would create life, and this mechanism must be testable or at least capable of being disproven.

This challenge seems hardly worth the effort!

That alone makes me want to dickslap him. I'll put my actual argument in spoilers so it will have to be purposely viewed to spoil the debate on Alyrium's behalf.
Spoiler

Physics and the universe at large seem to quite provable, and are clearly the mechanism our Intelligent Designer is employing to create us. Once physics and the universe as we understand it is in place, all that is required is the tiniest effort to begin Intelligent Design.

This is absurd and anti-parsimonious. If the universe at large is the mechanism for intelligent design, how is it distinguishable from purely natural, unintelligent forces? It's like saying the universe intends for rivers to form in the places they do because the universe saw fit to hollow out large areas through the weather, gravity etc. Intelligent design obviously includes some sort of intelligence, and intelligence only occurs in material organisms that had some evolutionary benefit to evolving it. The universe itself does not have a detectable vast material brain, nor has BB actually pointed out any signs that would distinguish a natural universe from an intelligently designed (or designing) one.

There's no justification for the "tiniest effort" in assuming that either intelligence is NOT a property of material arrangement or that it can be (as all examples of intelligence are contrary to this). There's similarly no reason to assume evolutionary requirements for intelligence to evolve on some sort of "universal entity" scale without evidence for it, and if it had, there's no real connection to the origin of life. The idea that an intelligent "universe brain" would create life is just a nonsequitur, and it only exists because we are ignorant of how life came to be. There's no reason to assume or posit that the process was historically intentional. We have no distinct mechanism to distinguish a natural abiogenesis event from an artificial one, and we have no justification for positing intent or ruling it "likely" because we happen to be ignorant about early Earth aeon-spanning cumulative carbon chemistry.

Also, as an aside, I would also point out that BB's analogies about designed and natural things are wrong. The difference between artificial things and natural things are only identifiable when you know the mechanism of production. The cargo cults had no idea the planes weren't natural (or gods, for that matter) because they were so alien and out of their frame of reference with no idea of how to produce them. To claim all life is artificial is incredulity and cargo cultism from our perspective. That's all.

[Ender]

Well, the purpose of a coliseum is to allow two person to duel it out without other people jumping into the pool and start to flood one person with arguments.

Yes, hence the separate thread. I never really thought of myself as part of the "Old Boys Club" but if I'm one of the few to remember how we used to do things like this maybe I am.

[Ender]

That said, BB's use of "look at this picture, the two are the same if you squint, clearly I am right" is down right retarded.

It is. This is what I would hammer home in my response, if I were doing it (if this isn't allowed for sake of cheating or whatever, I apologise):
[/quote]
Nobody is making them read the thread.

[ray245]

Well, the purpose of a coliseum is to allow two person to duel it out without other people jumping into the pool and start to flood one person with arguments.

Yes, hence the separate thread. I never really thought of myself as part of the "Old Boys Club" but if I'm one of the few to remember how we used to do things like this maybe I am.

Ahem, the last debate in the coliseum is at the start of the year.

The last guy end up being dogpiled by everyone in the discussion thread, and end up trying to debate against people in the discussion thread.

Any BB did said that he is acting as a creationist to a certain extend in this debate.

[CaptainChewbacca]

People who are in the coliseum match are not allowed to participate in the discussion threads, but spectators are permitted to do so.

[Coyote]

The last guy end up being dogpiled by everyone in the discussion thread, and end up trying to debate against people in the discussion thread.

That was his fault, trying to take on more than he could handle. He should have stuck to the Coliseum.

[Formless]

The last guy end up being dogpiled by everyone in the discussion thread, and end up trying to debate against people in the discussion thread.

That was his fault, trying to take on more than he could handle. He should have stuck to the Coliseum.

But the issue is still people making arguments against said person that they cannot respond too due to the sheer masses of people, hence dogpilling by proxy. The other is of loading the gun for the other debater, giving him arguments that are not his own because he can go in and steal them from the discussion thread. I'm not sure if that is happening in this thread, but these are valid concerns about threads like this one, IMO.

[Rye]

That's why I spoilerised my response. When I see something that wrong on here I feel compelled to comment. On the other hand, I didn't want to give Alyrium an advantage he couldn't think up on his own anyway, (and I presume he wouldn't either), so yeah. I would think each person would want to keep their participation economical anyway, so dogpiling by proxy ought to be avoided by the arguers themselves out of a desire to not see a million shotgun arguments instead of one or two core ones.

[RogueIce]

The last guy end up being dogpiled by everyone in the discussion thread, and end up trying to debate against people in the discussion thread.

That was his fault, trying to take on more than he could handle. He should have stuck to the Coliseum.

But then it's basically giving everyone else a free pass to argue against him (including the usual point by point responses), call him a retard, whatever, and the person in question can't answer back (without defeating the entire purpose of the Coliseum, anyway). Dogpiling-by-proxy, which was mentioned before.

This is, to me at least, about on the level of those "sig flames" of old and whatnot, the making a statement that can't be answered to type of thing that was, eventually, made against the rules.

[Darth Yoshi]

If he's ignoring the thread, though, can it really be called dogpiling?

[Surlethe]

If he's ignoring the thread, though, can it really be called dogpiling?

Yes, because Alyrium can pull arguments out of this thread. It's not particularly fair and if the debate is one-sided it will turn into a me-too fest.

[Singular Intellect]

I've finished my side of the debate, thus I assume it's safe for me to now post in this thread, although I'd say I still have to remain neutral until Alyrium has made his final post as well.

Anyow, I'd definitely agree dog piling is a serious issue for someone arguing a position they genuinely supported and then stupidly trying to defend it in a commentry thread rather than the Coliseum where it belongs. A particular issue I've noticed on SDN more than once is where users will make replies for other people on top of those people replying themselves. This is both taxing on the defendent since they have to reply to the same material twice (or risk being accused of 'ha ha he couldn't address my points') and furthermore it's lazy by the guilty party who rides another person's post (usually from a well established or strong position).

However, given the nature of the debate between Alyrium and myself, that really couldn't have been an issue.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Just got home. Coffee turned into dinner and dinner turned into talking about hybrid toads. So after I meet with my advisor and see a dissertation defense, I will write up my proper last response. Should have it in sometime tomorrow.

In any case, you can rest assured that there was no pulling arguments from this thread because I am cool and honest like that

[X-Ray Blues]

If he's ignoring the thread, though, can it really be called dogpiling?

Yes, it can. A bunch of people are jumping on his arguments; they're just doing it in a different thread, hence "dogpiling-by-proxy". It's no different from a thread where two people are arguing, and then five or six other people jump in on one side. If he responds, he gets bogged down, if he doesn't, those other people score cheap hits with no fear of retaliation. That's without his opponent taking arguments from the commentary thread; if he is, then it's even more unfair and totally violates the spirit of the Coliseum. In fact, if (more likely, "when") I end up in a Coliseum match, I won't want a commentary thread, because if my arguments start sounding like arguments being made in the commentary thread, it's going to look like I'm copying them, even if it's just a coincidence.

Bottom line, the way I see it, there shouldn't be commentary threads unless both sides agree. It taints the debate, it adds very little, and frankly, I fucking hate the idea of Me-Toos sitting around scoring "points" against someone who can't fight back. If they wanted to be in the debate so badly, they should have volunteered for the Coliseum in the first place.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Update:

I am about 2/3rds of the way done with my closing. Will have it finished tomorrow afternoon, considering my sleep schedule.

[Singular Intellect]

*tips hat* I yield to your superior position and logic, Alyrium.

But seriously, come on, how logical could I have been given the argued position anyhow?

As for your complaint about me not manuvering the conversation into the realm of contradicting Evolution...fuck, that would've killed me even faster. I only have a layperson's grasp of Evolution and little bit more of an understanding of logic. I had to try and twist what I know best in order to try and make it as subtle as I possibly could.

[ray245]

I hate to bring this up again, but who is the judges responsible for deciding the outcome?

Also, questions like how was Bubble Boy's performance in that debate, given that he has to defend a weaker side so to speak.

[Formless]

In this case, there was no need for a judge because Bubble Boy conceded (we all knew he would). The mod would be judge probably, but I think the board can generally figure it out on their own. Which would actually be a point to after action debate discussion threads, IMO.

[ray245]

In this case, there was no need for a judge because Bubble Boy conceded (we all knew he would). The mod would be judge probably, but I think the board can generally figure it out on their own. Which would actually be a point to after action debate discussion threads, IMO.

Do we need to create another thread for that topic then?

I think it is better to go into the specifics in regards to why BB lost, and how strong his arguments was.