So You Wanna Fight? ATS Debate Tournament (Tournament Update)

So people sign on without even knowing what the topic will be? That's rather blind. I would like to know ahead of time if it's a subject that interests me to the point of being passionate about it. I mean, if the debate is about who has the best hot rod and cams I am not interested, ya know? I would not jump in without knowing if there is water in the pool.

reply to post by Alethea


For most of the debaters here, it is about the art of the debate. A member that can debate well is able to argue winningly for what ever topic or side is assigned to them, regardless of whether it is an issue they believe in. And a true champ is able to sway their audience without them being aware of a lack of passion for the subject.

At least, that's what I think. I'm not the best at debate, but I do like to argue!

All Debate Judgments are now posted and the next round, for both tournaments, will be posted on Monday.

I will u2u everyone involved by tomorrow evening to insure availability.

Originally posted by MemoryShock

As noted above, RisingAgainst will be moving into the next round by default in the interest of getting the next round started.

Well, admittedly, It really would have been nice to debate with the others in the last round instead of getting a free pass like this, but hey, I guess I can't complain about it.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to Monday now and I wish good luck to all the debaters..

Both Round 3 Semi Final Debates are up as well as the Championship debate...

Good Luck Fighters; u2u's have been sent and I hope that we can have a smooth transition to the end...

reply to post by MemoryShock

Debates are up

Funny....I was expecting something more like "how high is up" for the final round, not a legitimite debate topic.

Well, anyway, best of luck to me, and may my opponent be cursed with a sexy supermodel or three falling madly in love with him, whisking him off to some faraway beach resort vacation where he'll be so preoccupied sipping $100 rum coolers out of pineapples and soaking up adoration from beautiful women that it just won't seem very important to spend all the hours of grueling time required to respond to a debate topic here on ATS.

Originally posted by LordBucket
Well, anyway, best of luck to me, and may my opponent be cursed with a sexy supermodel or three falling madly in love with him, whisking him off to some faraway beach resort vacation where he'll be so preoccupied sipping $100 rum coolers out of pineapples and soaking up adoration from beautiful women that it just won't seem very important to spend all the hours of grueling time required to respond to a debate topic here on ATS.

That actually isn't too far odd from what happened with me...though she isn't a supermodel, she certainly rivals them any day of the week...

And then there was rum but not poolside as the weather was too cold...but I think Sushi and Saki counts...

I just want to say, sorry guys (and ladies). I had an accident/emergency in the middle of my debate with KrazyJethro and I haven't been able to sign back on until today (months later). If you can believe it, what bothered me more than the accident itself, was leaving things unfinished, and not just the debate either.

--airspoon

reply to post by airspoon


glad you are back
and glad that you are ok again

very sorry to hear about that accident
a lot of people have been worrying about you

so welcome back home

Welcome back, airspoon...you were missed.

Heads up on the latest round...two are off to the judges and we are awaiting completion on one more...judgments should be available soon after the completion of the last debate...

Originally posted by airspoon
I just want to say, sorry guys (and ladies). I had an accident/emergency in the middle of my debate with KrazyJethro and I haven't been able to sign back on until today (months later). If you can believe it, what bothered me more than the accident itself, was leaving things unfinished, and not just the debate either.

--airspoon

Welcome back.. Hope that all goes well now..

reply to post by airspoon


Happy to see you back! Looking forward to your next debate.

Mahree

I know many are impatient here for some results but I am trying to coincide the judgements of all debates at the same time.

Due to the nature of the tournament, I am inclined to let the current unfinished debate conclude as the Fighters involved have their own arrangement. Future tournaments will not allow this type of 'dragging' on though.

For the record, I am letting all involved know that attention is being payed and there will be continuation soon.

reply to post by MemoryShock

I am trying to coincide the judgements of all debates at the same time.

Why?

The championship debate concluded three weeks ago. The junior tournament is only in round three. Are we really planning on witholding results on the main tournament for another month while the junior tournament goes through round four?

If not, what benefit is there to announcing main tournament results at the same time as junior tournament results for round three?

reply to post by LordBucket

There is a legitimate reason.

Please be patient; I didn't start this process and I sure wouldn't have allowed such a lengthy process had I did. This isn't my first tournament; participation or behind the scenes organization. As said before, the reality of the tournament is the only reason the last debate is allowed to continue. It should be done in a week/less than and judgments don't take me too long to gather afterwards...

No offense to the other Mods but I am ashamed at how long this tournament has taken.

reply to post by chissler


Count me in

I have the right to end the debate right now because my opponent is way over his time limit. But i feel that i can't because my opponent cut me some slack last week when i had some work issues, and had to reschedule some family events do to that some families couldn't do their share of a agreement to drive our kids to sport events. I had to take the responsibility to drive a portion of the kids to their hockey tournament that lasted for 3 days. I am also one of four coaches so i had to do this even though this was my time of. After the tournament i had to go off shore because of some major problems on a oil rig and that took 4 days.

Things just didn't go as planed for me last week. I am sorry for that.

reply to post by spy66

I currently support your arrangement as communication has occurred throughout and there are valid real world issues involved.

Have no worries...

reply to post by MemoryShock


Thank you

Me and OnceReturned are now finished with our debate

We now await the judgment

reply to post by MemoryShock

I trust that everyone will forgive me if I vent some bitterness over my loss.

ATS now has a debate champion who advanced to the final round because all three of his previous opponents abandoned their debates. And during his debate with me, he broke three separate debate rules: he failed to eet the time requirements, he quoted beyond the allowable limit, and he failed to respond to two of my socratic questions.

That aside, reading over the judges' comments, I'm basically left with the impression that my side of this topic was unwinnable. The victor was the one the judges already agreed with, and the quality of the debate itself was not a large factor.


First Judge:

what the heck was that immune system/bacterial infection blame game about anyway?

It was a metaphor being used to attempt to establish culpability. Early on, KJ attempted to suggest...basically...that pharmaceutical companies were not to blame for the problems they create, because the regulatory environment allows them to get away with it. Like you yourself point out, this was a pretty weak argument. This was handled in the debate, by both of us, via metaphor.

LordBucket doesn't adequately develop the idea that pharmaceutical
companies are behind society's quick-fix mentality

I'm sorry. What should I have ommited to make room for that? Should I have left KJ's points about vaccines unanswered? Should I have not wasted my time pointing out when he blatantly contradicted himself? I'm not sure if you noticed, but pretty much every post was within 10 characters of the allowable limit. I was down to removing commas. In some cases my original draft was as much as 5000 characters over, and round two in particular had fourteen links in it, before I spent the hours it took to prune things down to meet the guidelines. Something that KJ didn't bother to do.

So I apologize if I didn't "adequetly develop" this one particular point you'd have liked to see more of. But try to understand that KJ was able to casually toss out "oh, AIDS." And "Oh, vaccines." And, "Oh, diabetes." Things like that couldn't just be ignored. It took a lot of hours and several thousands of characters to respond to those things, and issues of common knowledge involving the lives and deaths of millions of people seemed more important to address than trying to find a way to justify attributing the "quick fix" mentality to pharmaceutical companies.

KrazyJethro's closing was much stronger than LordBucket's

Really? Were you really that impessed when he responded to the environmental toxicity issue, which was established from the beginning as a major factor in the debate, by his casual dismisal that "This has been disputed." ? Were you really that impressed when he ignored three separate corroborative links by simply repeating his dismissal with the claim that there was no evidence, despite the fact that I had already cited a source explaining why, and despite the fact that he never responded to my socratic question asking him to justify himself?

Were you really that impressed when he dismissed the fact that the US is ranked 46th on infant mortality by writing it off as a result of premature birth, despite acknowledging that nobody seems to know why that would be and failing to provide any evidence of his position at all?

Were you really that impressed when he dismissed my cited and sourced points about vaccines, by broadly claiming that there are a lot of anti-vaccine movements?

No. You weren't. Be honest. His closing was not strong. He simply said what you expected to hear. After totally and abysmally failing up tp that point in the debate, after blatantly ignoring my points on toxicity for several posts, contradicting himself, and giving several examples that were contrary to his own points...he concluded by casually stating what you personally believe and you awarded him the win for it.


Second Judge:

LordBucket
did concede a few points to his opponent by limiting his position by not considering
that "a cure" may not always be the intent of those seeking medication.

In what way would it have benefitted my position to draw attention to that? In what way are pharmaceutical companies made to look bad by pointing out that people might genuinely want the benefits they provide?

Unlike KJ, who opened by talking about how bad these companies are, it wasn't my intent to argue in favor of my opponent's position. You say that I "concede a few points" for not acknowledging that those who seek medication may be seeking something other than a cure. Would you honestly have "awarded me those points back" if I'd drawn attention to the fact that people might genuinely want pain relief and that pharmaceuticals give them that?

I don't think you would have.

KrazyJethro
didn't concede many points to his opponent and the few that were, were later clarified

Really? He opened the debate by describing pharmaceutical companies as terrible and acknowledging that they perpetrate crimes. The only point that he "didn't concede" was when I pointed out that he contradicted his own statements between rounds one and two. So, by way of metaphor:

Joe: All apples are red.
Bob: What about granny smith apples?
Joe: There are green apples.
Bob: So, you just contradicted yourself. Do you want to retract that first statement?
Joe: No, I'll stand by what I said.

How exactly is that a strong position? Are you seriously admiring his devotion to his position, instead of acknowledging that he blatantly contradicted himself?

Third Judge:

LordBucket simply takes the standard rants about the industry

"Standard rants?" Wow. Biased much?

LB's responses get very weak during the second round and he
flounders from one accusation to the other

The only way I can reconcile that with reality is that the judge here went into this agreeing with KJ's position, and anything I could have said, any source I could have cited would have fallen on deaf ears. Fact is, I spent nine hours doing the reseach for that second round.

Here is the post. Show me the floundering. I open by pointing out the KJ is using a logical fallacy. I continue by pointing out that KJ is contradicting his own statements. I proceed to respond to his points on vaccines. I then ask socratic questions which KJ fails to ever respond to. And I close by returning to my original premise.

Where is the floundering? Oh, I'm sorry...my side was just a "standard rant" and the nine hours I spent doing research for that post were totally wasted.

LB's responses
eventually gets a little personal.

...I'm sorry. Were you confused about who was posting when KrazyJethro made the snarky comment about courtesy being dead when I didn't accomodate his failure to meet the posting deadline? Or am I to believe that you were so terribly offended by my comment that KJ was trying to distance himself from a "foolish claim" when he blatantly contradicted himself between rounds one and two?

KJ contradicts his own position, LB calls him foolish for it...and KJ is judged to be the better debator because LB got personal? Seriously? If calling someone foolish for contradicting themselves is more damning than contradicting your own statements, then I clearly misunderstood the purpose of the debate, and it was a waste of time for me to take it seriously.

LordBucket presents some damaging evidence of corporate wrongdoing and KrazyJethro's argument that much of the blame for that should rest on a lax regulatory environment is less than completely compelling. LordBucket is also more persuasive on the environmental issues, but not enough so to convince me that these problems override the benefits to the overall health of society of pharmaceuticals.

I think this pretty much summarizes KJ's win. Even if my performance was better, even if I presented damning evidence that KJ didn't respond well to, even if I was "more persuasive," the fact is that all judges went into this already agreeing with his position, and they left still agreeing with it.

LordBucket is also more persuasive
but not enough so to convince me

The purpose of this debate was not to convince you.

If you're judging the debate based on what you personally believe at the end of it, instead of on the quality of the performance by the debators, then I'm sorry...but you're doing it wrong, and this whole debate has been a toss-up of wins by who gets which side of which topic.

Was there anything I could possibly have said, that would have "convinced you" personally, one way or another on this topic?

I feel my performance was better. I did the research. I took the time. I framed the debate. I responded to KJ's points. I formatted my posts better than he did. And I didn't contradict myself, and I didn't break any rules.

But KJ was given the win.

Oh well. I guess that's just how it is.

Thank you for listening to me vent bitterness. I intended to win this. And I think I deserved the win. But I didn't. Life will go on.