Nyxified

Read: A Parting Gift

Howdy, homies.

Given my current situation, it's become clear that I am no longer able to expend the time and energy on this site that is necessary to properly engage in it. I intend to spend the next 13-14 months working as hard as I can on content creation for Twitch and YouTube (unless something goes wrong and I have to go on hiatus again, but let's hope for the best).

I've been making crappy videos for longer than I can remember. From an early age, almost everything I did on my computer was accompanied by a YouTube video on a second monitor or device. Now that I've taken a gap year, I have all the resources, experience, and knowledge that I could reasonably hope for. I have the opportunity to seize the target of my ambition, and, no matter how cringe it may be, I intend to take it.

Trying to get into esports in both StarCraft II and Valorant has taught me the value of preparing for failure and stifling expectations. I have a backup plan and I don't expect fame to come easily. Many will tell you that aiming for success is a bad idea, and, in all honesty, they're right. People just getting into esports or content creation should do it because they enjoy it and keep success as only a pipe-dream until you have some degree of certainty that you can achieve it.

I hope that I have contributed to this community in even a fraction of the way you have all enriched my life for the time I was here. You have all helped make me a much better debater than I thought possible. DART was enjoyable in a way in-person debating could never be. DART gives an unparalleled ability to focus on the arguments instead of focusing on my speaking ability. I truly don't think my partner and I could have become the best debate team in Peel region for several tournaments without all of you tempering my reasoning and speaking skills. If I have debated against you, I owe you my thanks for helping me.

Some notes to individual users:

There have been many debates that I lost not because of any fault in my logic, but because I forfeit (a deity does not exist), was voted against by a single, biased voter (social media checks), or made some silly mistake (belt and road initiative), but none of that matters. Yes, it made me mad at the time, but I came back after my initial absence to have fun and expand my ability to argue and write. To quote Northop Frye: "There is no such thing as a bad idea waiting for the right words."

This site shouldn't be a dick measuring contest. It shouldn't be an ego boost that allows you to feel like an intellectual. This site thrives when people use it because they want to see new perspectives, learn to argue their opinions better, discover new things, and to constantly scrutinize their beliefs to make sure they can look back on life and say that the causes they fought for were righteous and worthwhile (or at least that there was no way for you to know otherwise at the time). Not that you simply did not question what you thought you knew and hoped it was correct.

I apologize if I sound condescending or like I'm trying to lecture anyone. I suppose the nature of this post means it's only natural, but I nonetheless have never seen the value of being an asshole, so I hope I don't come off that way.

I wish you all the best. Thank you for all the ways you have enriched my life and for the amazing, thought-provoking debates! I'm sure you'll all blow me away with your argumentative abilities whenever I come back.

I'll see you all in a year's time, hopefully. Don't miss me too much, haha. I might lurk or post on the forum every now and again.

Later, nerds.

Read: Goodbye... For Now

I wanted to give some of the most important debate lessons I learned before I go.

I've been involved in dozens of IRL debate tournaments, both in-person and virtual. I've been doing IRL debating for 4 years. I was the president of debate club at my highschool before I graduated. I have ranked among the best speakers in my province and several times have performed better than any other team in Peel region in tournaments. I say this not to brag, but rather to establish that I know what I'm talking about.

Howdy, homies!

It's been about half a year since I logged onto this site. I apologize to all the opponents whom I forfeit my debates with; it was not respectful of my opponent's time/effort and I accepted the debate upon the assumption that I would see the debate through barring any extenuating circumstances. Nonetheless, I hope you all have been doing well since I've last talked to you all.

I left for a few reasons, but they all contributed to a simple fact: I was mad.

It was for all of these things combined that I decided the time I was investing in DART was not being respected. And I do want to emphasize that I was being a baby and I got mad that I wasn't winning or was not being given the treatment I believed I deserved. Even if I 'should' have won, it doesn't matter. I debate for fun, and it's not like the results count for anything other than a d*ck measuring contest. Even if the time I was putting into debates was being rewarded with forfeits or non-sequitur arguments, I should have just used it as practice and been proud of making a good case regardless of my opponents. That is the philosophy I will be following moving forward.

I might not be as active anymore since I'm very busy, but I'm glad to be back, and I hope you guys are glad I'm back as well! I hope this site continues to thrive well into the future, because, without it, I wouldn't be able to have fun, well-researched debates online as I have on here.

Before I say anything, I want to say that the COVID-19 vaccines are effective, side effects from them are either mild or rare, and that, even if the Delta variant has a 20-50% breakthrough rate, vaccines still do prevent hospitalization and death most of the time. The majority of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are from the unvaccinated and you should absolutely get vaccinated.

Moving on, I think that, while we've seen that public trust in the government and medical professionals has been incredibly high during the pandemic, while I have no idea what the trust is like now, my trust has decreased if anything. While there's no conspiracy theory to try and microchip me (none of us on this site are important enough to be microchipped), the government has been h a s t y, to put it lightly.

In Canada where I live, we have had three waves and are on the way for a fourth if current trends continue. There was a time in June or July of 2020 where cases were down to as little as under a dozen a day, and it's thanks to the rush to reopen, the inability to properly ensure the virus did not begin exponentially spreading again that caused us to not only have a second wave, but a third, and maybe even a fourth. This all happens despite the fact that New Zealand seemed to be perfectly weathering the storm. Our government failed us in not ending this in July of 2020, and the blood of my countrymen is on the hands of those who prioritize the economy and their performance at the polls over the lives of their constituents.

We have constantly been told over and over and over that the vaccine is 100% safe and effective even as potential side effects were causing us to pause the usage of certain vaccines entirely at the same time. I understand the need to reassure the public, and I agree that the vaccine is safe, but the messaging around things like this reeks of failing to acknowledge genuine risks or symptoms because of the fear of vaccine hesitancy. Yes, it's necessary to combat vaccine hesitancy, but not at the cost of objectivity. Despite the fact I was 100% convinced the vaccine was safe when it came out, the response to the rare and dangerous side effects managed to make me less confident if anything. The only time I have ever been hesitant to get the vaccine was at moments where they were most insisting that it was safe. I have heart issues and I am young, which puts me at risk in some ways to some of these side effects, and it felt like the government was choosing to just ignore it because they were so desperate to reopen.

Journalists and doctors dismissed the Lab Leak Theory from the Wuhan Institute of Virology for months, saying it was naught more than a conspiracy theory and we had completely 100% for certain found that the cause was the Spillover Hypothesis beginning at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. Then, as soon as Trump leaves office, their tune changes to "Both are plausible explanations that we should explore." I understand that Trump is an aggressive liar and conspiracy theorist and his claims were promoting xenophobia, but it's the responsibility and moral obligation of science to look past its biases and to find the truth, and it absolutely failed here.

Every single damned politician who speaks about the pandemic talks about "getting life back to normal" and "reopening" and not saving human fucking lives. This is the third time that my country is reopening, and to be honest, I'm fucking sick of it. I don't care that I can't leave the house and do stuff I want to, I've always been a sedentary individual, but I am so tired of the prime minister or my premier pretending he gives a shit as he lifts restrictions and effectively sends people to die or deal with the lasting damage of COVID-19. The sheer ability for these people to disregard the very real threat to human life by failing to squash the pandemic just so they can try and reopen ASAP is not only despicable, but is also the very reason that it's taking us even longer to reopen.

There's no excuse for failing to implement contact tracing, refusing to mandate vaccinations in schools, refusing to stay in lockdown as long as it takes, etc... And, after all the months of public trust, seeing the sheer mismanagement, mixed messaging, and trying to ignore things that people don't want to hear to reopen as fast as possible, I feel as though my trust in the government and the medical establishment is at an all time low. All good will I had for the government and all belief I had that the government wouldn't dare willingly allow tens of thousands of deaths of my brothers and sisters has been squandered with the beginning of the fourth wave.

For anyone curious about how cryptocurrency actually works, I'd recommend this video from 3Blue1Brown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4 .

I was considering making a debate about this at one point, but I decided not to for whatever reason (most likely lack of confidence). When it comes to proof-of-work, there's no way for anyone to create a block that contains a transaction that didn't happen, send out that block to only one entity (if you were trying to fool them into thinking you had sent payment, for example), and always have a longer-block chain (validity is always based on the longest block-chain) unless you controlled over 50% (let's say 52%) of the computing power involved in mining the particular crypto.

If you controlled over 52%, you would, per the law of big numbers, be capable of finding the hash needed enough that your block-chain that contains the fraudulent transaction that you never broadcast to anyone but the person you're attempting to deceive faster than anyone else on average and would be able to make it seem like your block-chain is the valid one. This isn't possible with things like bitcoin (as far as I know), but what if we reached a point where a government managed to somehow, maybe by preventing mining from anyone but the government (if that's even possible), control said 52%? They would be able to have complete control over the currency and be able to buy things without even having to spend currency as long as they hold the longest block-chain for long enough.

Having immaterial currency backed by a nation-state has worrisome implications for their ability to control money as well. If the government managed to have complete control over the currency, there's nothing stopping them from declaring all their currency worthless, forcing people to spend it in a certain period of time,  taking it away from people without even needing to be near them or their assets, etc...

I am very open to the possibility of being wrong in a lot of things that I said. It's been a while since I researched it, but I'd be curious if anyone else has similar or differing thoughts on nationally-backed crypto, especially with China's creation of one.

I'm curious to hear which debates required you all to do the most research, the most thinking, revision, etc... Please feel free to upload a link to the debate if you can and if you'd like!

For me, the debate I put the most effort into was a prepared resolution for two different rounds of a debate tournament. It was something like "THBT The Chinese System is Better Equipped to Face the Challenges of the Future Than the American System", and a few weeks to prepare arguments for pro and con. So naturally, I made 35 pages worth of research and arguments, researched statistics, read articles, made my own datasets, wrote out a more in depth opinion on individualism and collectivism than I have ever read in my entire life, and it paid off.

Me and my debate partner would've went to the provincials from that tournament, but we got screwed over by a judge in the 3rd round (there were only 4 rounds) and he absolutely tanked our score. I'm still proud of how much effort I put into it, though!