Instigator / Pro
8
1737
rating
172
debates
73.26%
won
Topic
#2208

THBT: Present-day style motorsports will not go extinct even if more advanced forms of transportation replace the car/motorcycle industry

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
6
Better sources
4
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
2
0

After 2 votes and with 4 points ahead, the winner is...

oromagi
Tags
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
12
1922
rating
117
debates
97.44%
won
Description

Motorsports: Sports that involve driver-operated land vehicles

Extinct: Disappear, to be replaced

Car/motorcycle industry: Industries that could, while not necessarily includes the production of cars and motorcycles, and generally refers to industries that fuels the medium of the present-day vehicles and motorsports(Including tuners, internal-combustion engine suppliers, etc) and generally does not partake in the planned wave of new forms of transportation(Such as flying cars, hyperloop, etc) that will replace the present forms of transportations, especially ones eligible to be used in general motorsports.

Advanced forms of transportation: Transportation that are more advanced than the forms used in the present, and is hypothetically/planned to be used in the future and has a very high tendency of replacing the present-day forms of transportation.

Present-day style: Forms of a spanned subject that is currently being utilized by the world

B_O_P(PRO): Present-day style motorsports will not go extinct even if more advanced forms of transportation replace the car/motorcycle industry

CON: PRO did not sufficiently prove his case

Round 1
Pro
#1
Thanks, Oromagi

Pre-argument 0: Introduction

In this section, issues that have not been resolved or defined in the description will be solved here, and plans for this round will be created allegedly here.

  • The term "If" determines that the scenario is not realistic and has not happened, and thus everything here is speculated to be hypothetical.
  • Definition for "Replaced": Being taken its place(whether geographical, utility-wise or any form else) by another person, place or thing(Include concepts)
  • I will, in this round, argue my position in these fronts:
    • Previous examples and its implications on motorsports as a recreational activity
      • (That is it, I will not fire all my guns at once).
Argument 1: Previous examples and its implications on motorsports as a recreational activity

  • As bullet point 0.2 has defined, any mode of transportation that has something else taking its place will be defined as "replaced". If a mode of transportation's only use at this point is recreational fun and event tradition, then it is already being replaced, because if it is not mainly utilized as a point-a-to-b machine, then something else already did, and that replaced the former form of transportation aforementioned used for recreation and tradition knowing it is no longer a mainstream method of transportation anymore.
  • As the point above has mentioned, if a very inefficient mode of transportation is invented recently but fails to get anyone on it, it is already been replaced the moment it is built due to some other form of transportation already stealing its potential customer, thus leaving said inefficient mode of transportation marginalized and rendered it useless.
  • (Trivia alert: Intelligence_06 once tried to invent a mode of transportation before going to DART, but deemed it too inefficient to attract anyone at the end. The plan never went out of paper. The point above is of personal experience.)

  • Let's take a look at some forms of transportation that are deemed replaced by the very definition, but remain recreational competitive sports around the world.
    • For one example, take a look at horse-drawn carriages. Horse-drawn carriages are invented before Jesus was even born(circa 1900 BC), and it was popular until the cars were invented in the late 19th century. Horse-drawn coaches still exist, but remain recreational, such as tourist tradition in some European states and sports around the world. Horse-drawn carriages are shown inferior to modern-day cars and other mainstream modes of transportation that haven't been replaced yet in terms of total speed, control, and performance(C'mon, you really putting 4 horses against 200 Hrsprs engines?), and as a result, they were being replaced by first steam-powered vehicles, then gasoline, petrol, and electricity-powered vehicles. Most people who have the wealth to buy both a car and a horse-drawn carriage would choose a car if he really wants good-quality transportation, and if he is retired and wants a more natural and wooden feel, well, that is another story.
      • Horse-drawn carriages, however, remains a sport even if it is 2020 when electric vehicles are roaming the streets. This demonstrates the availability of horse-drawn vehicle races, and although it has been replaced for over a century as a sole form of transportation, it is thriving as a competition/recreation kind of activity. 
    • The older models of bicycles created more than 100 years ago is called Penny Farthings. They are fashionable in the good old days but are considered unsafe and outdated today. We can see that most bikes on the sidewalk have two wheels of roughly the same size, such as this, instead of penny-farthings which has the bigger wheel in the front and the smaller wheel on the back. Penny farthings are being replaced by modern bicycles with roughly the same size wheels.
      • However, Penny farthings are still being raced by the people as a recreational activity or even competitive sport. Even though penny farthings are being replaced by modern bikes, it still fails to disappear fundamentally as the rest it could do is activities that aren't solely transportation. PF racing still exists despite it is being replaced.
    • Old cars are being replaced by newer cars. One kind of old car was sportscars. One model of such class of cars is Jaguar D-type, and it is out of production for several decades, with this "restart" of "Production" just having those 25 handmade sports classics being collection-purposed cars and classic racing competitors that are not in complete production(Not mass-produced like the Corolla and the Tesla Model 3) and are instead limited.
      • Despite its model is outdated and being replaced by newer models, they are still in racing. Simply old car racing.
    • Horseback riding is being replaced by automobiles. They are mostly recreational and used in activities and events instead of a serious mode of transportation.
      • However, equestrianism still exists in competitions.
  • Due to tradition and recreation, people would find fun and thrill even competing in outdated machines.

  • With the definitions and the topic themselves, it became clear that this hypothetical scenario is in a setting where traditional land vehicles that we use now would be outdated. However, due to these examples are given above, I would say that motorsports will still exist with newer-variants of transportation using as the sole method of transportation. No one would ride a Penny-farthing to the shopping mall nor a Jaguar D-type to the piano center, but they are used competitively and that would mean automotive racings will most likely NOT go extinct even after their road-legal variants are being replaced.
  • (Speaking of which, motorsports are not a mode of transportation whatsoever, Most types of motorsports just make them drive in circles and nothing is being transported. It is the quality of the vehicles intrinsically instead of transporting any people, information, or goods).
  • Racing is a hobby fundamentally, and an occupation. All kinds of hobbies and occupations exist, including outdated forms of job. For example, this occupation can be replaced by camera surveillance, but to be true to and to keep the tradition, this "outdated" occupation has become a tourist attraction. 
I drop the mic on the floor, waiting for Oromagi to use it.

Con
#2
Thx, Intelligence_06

THBT: PRESENT-DAY STYLE MOTORSPORTS WILL not go EXTINCT EVEN if MORE ADVANCED FORMS of TRANSPORTATION REPLACE the CAR/MOTORCYCLE INDUSTRY

DEFINITIONS:

  • CON objects to PRO's use of customized definitions rather than the standardized definitions of professional editors found in popularly available dictionaries and encyclopedias. Standardized definitions offer a more objective interpretation of any word's meaning than a definition tailored by PRO.
    • CON will work within PRO's terms on a provisional basis, reserving the right to contest any definition with an excerpt from Wiktionary or Wikipedia should any semantic impasse hinder the clarity of our conversation.
BURDEN of PROOF:

  • CON agrees that the burden of proof is PRO's to show that motorsports will not go extinct.
    • VOTERS will note that PRO has not provided a time frame for this claim, meaning that the claim is valid for all time.
      • That is, PRO must show that motorsports will never go extinct whatever doom befall the Earth or her inhabitants in future.
    • VOTERS will note that PRO has not allowed for the obsolescence of any motorsport competition.  Major categories include:
      • Formula One
      • Formula Two
      • FIA Formula 2
      • Formula Three
      • FIA Formula 3
      • Formula Four
      • Formula BMW
      • Formula Ford
      • Formula GM Lotus
      • Formula Renault
      • Formula Junior
      • Formula Palmer Audi
      • Formula E
      • IndyCar
      • Supermodified
      • Speedway
      • Hillclimb
      • Kart
      • Off-road
      • Rally car
      • Rallycross
      • Sports car
      • Stock car
        • NASCAR
      • Touring car
      • Drag racing
      • Drifting
      • Car jumping
      • One-make manufacturer
      • Time Trial
      • Banger racing
      • Motorcycles
        • Road
        • Motocross
        • Supercross
        • Freestyle motocross
        • Supermoto
        • Arenacross
        • Motorcycle speedway
      • Truck racing
      • Lawn mower
      • Snowmobile
    • CON interprets PRO's thesis to mean that PRO will demonstrate that some variation of all the above sports will still be enjoyed even thousands of years into the future.
PRO0R1: INTRODUCTION

  • The term "If" determines that the scenario is not realistic and has not happened, and thus everything here is speculated to be hypothetical
    • Agreed.  Doesn't such an admission make PRO's case almost impossible to prove?
      • Since PRO and CON agree that PRO's evidence is not likely to be more reliable than informed speculation and hypothesis, PRO seems to concede that his burden to prove that no motorsports will ever go extinct is untenable.
PRO1R1: PREVIOUS EXAMPLES and its IMPLICATIONS on MOTORSPORTS as a RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY

  • Due to tradition and recreation, people would find fun and thrill even competing in outdated machines
    • PRO offers 4 examples of racing using obsolete modes of transportation
      • Horse racing
        • Let's note that the dynamic that kept horse racing alive in the 20th century was gambling.  In the US, there are almost no examples of professional horse racing absent wagers
          • Even so, the expansion of American gambling alternatives has led to a steep decline in horse racing in the 21st century
            • "Horse racing in America today, on the other hand, is marked by decline. Decline in the number of tracks, total attendance, number of horses bred and racing, owners, purses paid to those owners, wagers placed by the bettors and the number of people employed by the horse racing industry....  And unlike the other low-popularity sports, horse racing has been beset in recent years with negative publicity. As animal-welfare consciousness has grown in the United States, horse racing has been continually challenged to justify its existence. Scandals within the industry involving the improper drugging of horses, and public spectacles of stakes-level horses being injured or dying on the track have further eroded the public’s interest and enthusiasm for the sport.  The lifeblood of racing has always been the wagering dollars pumped into the sport by both committed horseplayers and everyday gamblers. Those dollars keep going down... Figures published by the Jockey Club show that from 1990–2016, pari-mutuel handle for United States horse racing peaked at around $15 billion in 2004, and has steadily fallen to less than $11 billion by 2016"
            • "The downfall of horse racing first became apparent in 2011. A census conducted by The Jockey Club showed that without any type of intervention, betting on horse racing would see a major decline. They estimated that by 2021, horse race betting would see a total decline of up to 25 per cent. They noted that the sport had failed to keep up with other, more modern types of gambling, and that the competition was starting to outpace many of the attempts of horse race betting companies to make the sport more popular"
      • Horse-drawn carriages
        • Same as horse racing but much, much smaller in popularity and we should add additional negative publicity because the jockey uses a whip
      • Penny farthings
        • CON questions whether penny farthings can actually be used as a  predictor for the motor vehicle industry since these bicycles were  never really popularly adopted by the masses
          • "bicycling remained the province of the urban well-to-do, and mainly men, until the 1890s, and was a salient example of conspicuous consumption"
          • The first penny farthings were built in 1869 and commerical production largely ended by 1893
          • Today, only 140 years after the height of penny farthing's popularity, continued of the vehicle has dwindled to a few thousand.
            • For example, the largest penny farthing event in the world has been held in Tasmania at the annual Evandale Village Fair since 1983.  The total number of racers is small enough to count- 472 over the event's 37 years amounting to an average of fewer than 13 unique participants per year.
            • PRO points to this level of participation as evidence of "not dead yet" but CON argues that this evidence of extreme rarity should be seen as a forewarning of likely future extinction.
      • old cars
        • Likewise, PRO offers a limited reproduction of 25 Jaguar D-Types as a example of "not dead yet."  Only 87 were built between 1955-57 and only 18 were ever built for actual racing.  None of these were ever road worthy or enjoyed market popularity beyond an exclusive subset of very wealthy men (none of these cars cost less than a million dollars to produce).  A 3 year production life followed by a 60 year gap in production should be seen as a decline in popularity even as increased rarity improved the model's price at auction.

        • Look, there are still 49 Gutenberg Bibles known to exist in various states of decay 570 years after production but can it be said that any of these bibles have been used as bibles for the last few centuries?  Continuation among museum curators and wealthy collectors may be called existence but the absence of any use consistent with original design certainly proves obsolescence and even extinction.
          • After all, a volcano is said to be EXTINCT once the rupture loses its supply of magma.
          • Species are said to be EXTINCT in the wild once the only known living members are preserved beyond that species historic range.  If a motorcar is only rolled out for auctions, car shows, exhibition races, and museum displays, CON argues that motorcar should be validly considered EXTINCT even if some production remnants suggest that the model has not vanished entirely.
CON1R1:  PRO CANNOT PREDICT the FUTURE

  • PRO has offered no evidence that PRO has any means of reliably predicting the future and the future is notoriously difficult to predict, decreasing in reliability of forecasting as time from present increases.  Since PRO has offered no time limit for his prediction, PRO has to show that his forecast will prove true even thousands of years into the future when predicting market trends even a few decades hence has proved notoriously difficult.
  • PRO has suggested no capacity for excluding the possibility of catastrophic events, large or small, that might entirely disrupt the popularity of archaic motorsports in future.
    • Luisa Rodriguez at the Effective Altruism Forum estimates that the chance of thermonuclear warfare over the next 75 years at about 60%
      • "For a child born today (say 75 year life expectancy) these probabilities (.0117) suggest that the chance of a nuclear war in their lifetime is nearly 60%, (1-(1-.0117)^75). At an annualized probability of .009 which is the probability from accident analysis it’s approximately 50%."
    • According to NASA, the probability of an asteroid capable of destroying a city striking Earth is 0.1% every year.
    • Many major sporting events have been unexpectedly disrupted by the present COVID-19 Pandemic.
      • The Formula One Grand Prix of Monaco and 8 other Formula One events have been cancelled
      • Major events like the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans have been postponed for months and will be run without any live spectators.
        • The scale and multiplicity of these cancellations is unprecedented in the history of the sport.  Can PRO really pretend to know how these disruptions will impact future popularity?
CON2R1: ENTROPY

  • The second law of thermodynamics states that "the total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time, and is constant if and only if all processes are reversible."
    • Which in turn implies that universe is mortal by eventual cooling until equilibrium is reached and all physical processes cease, if not by some earlier catastrophe.
      • PRO is unlikely to prove that motorsports will continue to be popular after the universe has subsided into utter quiescence.

  • CON looks forward to PRO's R2.
CON3R1: ARGUMENTUM ad ANTIQUITATEM

  • Ultimately, PRO's entire argument fails as a fallacious appeal to tradition:
    • "an argument in which a thesis is deemed correct on the basis that it is correlated with some past or present tradition."
  • In short, PRO argues that because some modes of transportation persisted for recreational purposes, present modes will likewise always persist.
    • Examples can be provided in R2.
CON looks forward to PRO's R2.

SOURCES

  • see COMMENTS



Round 2
Pro
#3
After several drafts, I have concluded that I cannot sufficiently justify my BoP, therefore I concede.
Con
#4
Thanks, Intelligence_06, that is excellent conduct.


Round 3
Pro
#5
There is really nothing more to say. Feel free to vote my opponent. Thank you.
Con
#6


THBT: PRESENT-DAY STYLE MOTORSPORTS WILL not go EXTINCT EVEN if MORE ADVANCED FORMS of TRANSPORTATION REPLACE the CAR/MOTORCYCLE INDUSTRY

CONCESSION:

PRO has generously conceded this debate.  CON asks that VOTERS award ARGs to CON but CONDUCT to PRO.

Thanks to Intelligence_06 for an interesting topic.

Thanks to all VOTERS for their kind consideration.