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@Greyparrot
Hey man. Don't assume I actually agree with everything they say. I don't even like their solutions for fixing truth decay. I just thought that was a great summary of what is going on.
Personally, I think the COVID-19 vaccine is not safe for everyone. This is apparent from the long rap sheet of side effects for it.
I also know that this form of vaccine is still experimental. So the people who took it are test subjects.
I also know that there has been rampant censorship of COVID-19 information. I am against it. We need herd immunity of ideas just as much as herd immunity from sicknesses. Censorship can contribute to stupidity because it causes people not to engage in things they disagree with.
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@3RU7AL
I fail to see the connection between a syllogism and Hume's Guillotine. My statements were saying that if something is real, then it can be defined, and therefore there are objective facts about it.
Logic is a science like any other. It relies on experimentation and hypotheses and facts and data.
Hume's Guillotine simply says we shouldn't "fill in the blanks" with our own opinions when there is no cause for it. But Aristotle's term logic makes it plain that there is a system where we are not deriving subjective opinions but rather true extensions of objects to each other.
In other words, Hume was pointing out that people substitute indictive logic for deductive logic and that, unless one says "probably" before their inductive conclusion, they are committing a fallacy.
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I, for one, would LOVE to see that debate. I love reading debates between great debaters.
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About Truth Decay
By: RAND Corporation, 2022
The line between fact and fiction in American public life is becoming blurred. RAND calls this phenomenon "Truth Decay," and our researchers are studying its causes, consequences, and how to counter it.
The Causes
America's current era of Truth Decay is defined in part by an increasing disagreement about objective facts that exists on scale not observed in previous periods. For example, despite having more evidence than ever before about vaccines being safe and effective at preventing disease, vaccine skepticism in the United States is on the rise.
This is just one example of how public attitudes can diverge from facts and data in debates and discourse. So what's behind the decline?
RAND researchers have identified four main drivers:
- cognitive biases
- changes to the information ecosystem, including the rise of social media and changes in the economics of news
- demands on the educational system that slow its ability to adapt to changes in the information ecosystem
- political and social polarization
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@Shila
🤣 touché.
Though, to be fair, we have no idea if there is Monkeypox on another planet out there.
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I opened this thinking it was going to be a spirited discussion about the facts of Monkeypox and the current science. I was wondering if I was going to learn a thing or two.
Then the posts reminded me I'm on planet earth.
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@zedvictor4
No it isn't. Words have meanings. Meanings convey particulars. Particulars convey syllogisms. Syllogisms convey logic. Logic conveys consistency, and consistency conveys truth.
So if we agree that things can be defined, then we must ultimately agree that truth can be conveyed.
This was the whole point of Socrates debating Meno. If certain things hold inherent definitions by nature of their existence, then there is objective truth. And that objective truth can be quantified, qualified, and explained.
If A = B, and B = C, then A is ALWAYS C. Likewise to the contrapositive of that statement.
If things hold inherent descriptors about themselves, then they hold inherent definitions. And if they hold inherent definitions, then it is possible to know objective truth.
Now, people will regularly bias their understanding of the truth with subjective inferences, but those inferences do not change the inherency of reality.
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@sadolite
I thought that it was established that there are no objective facts. There are only beliefs and perspectives.
Let's just break down what that means.
The statement "there are no objective facts" would be an objective fact, which renders the statement itself false. So this means there are objective facts.
Now, you could counter with "there are no objective facts but this one." But once again, the statement would be an objective fact that limits objective facts to that statement, which would once again render itself false, since that one objective fact would be an objective fact which makes "there are no objective facts" false once again.
So it is logically impossible that there are no objective facts.
Even additionally to this one, the concept of reality is simply "what exists." Even if we are living in a hallucination or a computer program, for instance, the computer program and hallucination exist, therefore they are real. And if it is real, then it can be quantified, qualified, and explained. A hallucination is a form of existence, so it is reality. The reality of that hallucination may simply be contained to that hallucination, but it is still reality in that it exists. The same is true for the computer program analogy. Even if we are living in a computer program, that is still an existence, so therefore it is a reality. And it therefore can be quantified, qualified, and explained.
Therefore, there are objective facts about any sort of existence.
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@TWS1405
But I'll even do one better and cite Oxford's glossary of statistical terms on "compilation of vital data," which is likely a sister term:
Compilation of vital data is a process of condensing information by classifying and tabulating vital statistical data into various categories or groups with the object of producing vital statistics according to a determined tabulation programme.[1]
So, once again, all the FBI did was take data as-is and put it somewhere else. There was no analysis of the data, just a rearrangement of it. Even according to a handbook that was written specifically for data science.
The source they cite, mind you, is:
Handbook of Vital Statistics Systems and Methods, Volume 1: Legal, Organisational and Technical Aspects, United Nations Studies in Methods, Glossary, Series F, No. 35, United Nations, New York 1991.
So it isn't some fringe organization or crackpot one-off definition.
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@TWS1405
And just so you think I am not cherry-picking data, here is an entry on the ethics of data collection from the Encyclopedia of Population that uses Statistical Compilation in a sentence:
"Norms relating to confidentiality and the protection of human research subjects include the succinct statement in the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics: 'individual data collected by [sic] statistical agencies for statistical compilation…are to be strictly confidential and used exclusively for statistical purposes.'" [1]
So all a compilation is, as according to multiple dictionaries and an encyclopedia entry on the subject, is just taking data and putting it together. There is no analysis of the data whatsoever. There is no fact-checking it or anything. It is just taking something as-is and putting it somewhere else.
As a person with a supposed degree in criminal justice, I figured you would have known this. But obviously not.
The internet, I guess, is a better usage of time than college.
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@TWS1405
Definition of compile from five reputable dictionaries:
To put together or compose from materials gathered from several sources [1]to make or compose from other materials or sources [1]to make (a book, writing, or the like) of materials from various sources [1]to compose out of materials from other documents [2]to collect information from different places and arrange it in a book, report, or list: [3]
Either the whole world misunderstands what compile means, or you are wrong. As I have stated from the beginning, a compilation is not analysis. It is simply taking a groupf if sources and placing it somewhere else. This is all the FBI does. They do not check the data for accuracy, remove duplicates, norm it for different definitions of crimes and racial make up, or anything else.
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@TWS1405
And my initial claim of the UCR being more than 75% complete is still accurate.
If by "complete" you mean "contains all reported crimes from police departments," then I will agree with you.
The FBI themselves stated they received more than 75% of the police departments' reported data.
The FBI is not “republishing” the “raw data.”
Yes they are. Hence the phrase "statistical compilation":
This publication is a statistical compilation of offense, arrest, and police employee data reported by law enforcement agencies voluntarily participating in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. [1]
They did not analyze, fact check, or scrutinize the data. They simply compiled it.
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@TWS1405
I edited my previous comment.
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@TWS1405
If you had a degree in the field then I would have hoped you could have spotted methodological problems. But I guess not.
Anywho, according to the FBI THEMSELVES for the 2019 UCR, which is the most recent:
Of the 18,667 federal, state, county, city, university and college, and tribal agencies eligible to participate in the UCR Program, 16,554 agencies submitted data in 2019. [1]
Let's run some numbers here... 16554/18667 = 88.6%. This means that, for 2019, the FBI WAS MISSING MORE THAN 1 OUT OF EVERY 10 POLICE DEPARTMENTS.
So, AT BEST, you can claim that we have 88% of all reported police department arrest statistics. However, this would be wrong:
These and additional data are presented in the 2019 edition of the FBI’s annual report Crime in the United States. This publication is a statistical compilation of offense, arrest, and police employee data reported by law enforcement agencies voluntarily participating in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. [1]
In other words, the FBI is simply just republishing raw data. There are undoubtedly mistakes in the data. Furthermore, every police department has different classifications for race and, in many cases, race isn't even reported. So for many crimes we have no idea if the race was even properly attributed.
This is what leads them to state:
Caution Against Ranking—Each year when Crime in the United States is published, some entities use the figures to compile rankings of cities and counties. These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, tribal area, or region. Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents. Valid assessments are possible only with careful study and analysis of the range of unique conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction. The data user is, therefore, cautioned against comparing crime data of individual reporting units from cities, metropolitan areas, states, or colleges or universities solely on the basis of their population coverage or student enrollment.
If the people COLLECTING THE DATA say it is not complete enough to infer any real statistics about crime rates, then who are you to suggest any different?
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@TWS1405
Do you have a source proving it is "75%+ complete"? Not even the FBI claims that. In fact, the FBI doesn't even fact check the data. It is just raw reporting based on police department numbers that are self reported. So we don't even know if it is correct data. We also don't know what each police department counts as white or black. Mixed-race people often get misclassified in these things as well.
Additionally, those 60 million interactions are not all arrest situations. Many of them are casual encounters.
Furthermore, you keep claiming black males commit half of all violent crimes, but you are ignoring that the UCR is not a conviction database. Nor it is even a complete database of all arrests. Arrests =/= convictions. Anyone can be arrested, even without any actual evidence being there, just ask the hundreds of people who were. But not everyone can be convicted for crimes through an impartial trial. The justice system is so messed up that an innocent man can get life in prison for a murder he never committed based on evidence that didn't exist. And you want to use statistics from the people who do this very thing as proof of a claim?
So you can't just pull statistics out of your ass because you want to believe them negroes are all out to get whitey. Ok billy-bob?
The fact is that your claim is unproven due to lack of evidence. And maybe the reason you keep getting banned is because these social media companies realized they didn't want an anti-black cuckservative spreading disinformation.
You make the rest of us normal people on the Right look like racist, confederate-flag-waving, jack-offs who have a grudge against black people because they lost the Civil War and didn't want to move on with the rest of the world and become enlightened human beings instead of owning people as property, like a couch or a coffee cup.
It's hard enough being on the right as it is without people going around claiming they're "conservative" blaming black people for society's troubles.
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@PREZ-HILTON
Welp. According to his profile he is a Liberal Catholic.
I would say that is accurate from the posts I've read by him.
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MEMO:
Today, the U.S. Department of Education (Department) announced a final extension of the pause on student loan repayment, interest, and collections through December 31, 2022. Borrowers should plan to resume payments in January 2023. While the economy continues to improve, COVID cases remain at an elevated level, and the President has made clear that pandemic-related relief should be phased out responsibly so that people do not suffer unnecessary financial harm.
To address the financial harms of the pandemic by smoothing the transition back to repayment and helping borrowers at highest risk of delinquencies or default once payments resume, the Department will provide targeted student debt cancellation to borrowers with loans held by the Department of Education. Borrowers with annual income during the pandemic of under $125,000 (for individuals) or under $250,000 (for married couples or heads of households) who received a Pell Grant in college will be eligible for up to $20,000 in debt cancellation. Borrowers who met those income standards but did not receive a Pell Grant will be eligible for up to $10,000 in relief. The Department will be announcing further details on how borrowers can claim this relief in the weeks ahead. The application will be available no later than when the pause on federal student loan repayments terminates at the end of the year. Nearly 8 million borrowers may be eligible to receive relief automatically because relevant income data is already available to the Department. The Department is also making available a legal memorandum regarding its authority for these discharges.
The Department is also proposing a rule to create a new income-driven repayment plan that will substantially reduce future monthly payments for lower- and middle-income borrowers. The proposed rule would protect more income from loan payments. It would cut in half—from 10% to 5% of discretionary income—the amount that borrowers have to pay each month on their undergraduate loans, while borrowers with both undergraduate and graduate loans will pay a weighted average rate. It would also raise the amount of income that is considered nondiscretionary income and therefore protected from repayment. The rule would also forgive loan balances after 10 years of payments, instead of the current 20 years under many income-driven repayment plans, for borrowers with original loan balances of $12,000 or less. Additionally, the proposed rule would fully cover the borrower’s unpaid monthly interest, so that—unlike with current income-driven repayment plans—a borrower’s loan balance will not grow so long as they are making their required monthly payments. The plan would also simplify borrowers’ choices among loan repayment plans. The proposed regulations will be published in the coming days on the Federal Register and the public is invited to comment on the draft rule for 30 days.
"Earning a college degree or certificate should give every person in America a leg up in securing a bright future. But for too many people, student loan debt has hindered their ability to achieve their dreams—including buying a home, starting a business, or providing for their family. Getting an education should set us free; not strap us down! That’s why, since Day One, the Biden-Harris administration has worked to fix broken federal student aid programs and deliver unprecedented relief to borrowers, " said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. "Today, we’re delivering targeted relief that will help ensure borrowers are not placed in a worse position financially because of the pandemic, and restore trust in a system that should be creating opportunity, not a debt trap."
To address the financial harms of the pandemic by smoothing the transition back to repayment and helping borrowers at highest risk of delinquencies or default once payments resume, the Department will provide targeted student debt cancellation to borrowers with loans held by the Department of Education. Borrowers with annual income during the pandemic of under $125,000 (for individuals) or under $250,000 (for married couples or heads of households) who received a Pell Grant in college will be eligible for up to $20,000 in debt cancellation. Borrowers who met those income standards but did not receive a Pell Grant will be eligible for up to $10,000 in relief. The Department will be announcing further details on how borrowers can claim this relief in the weeks ahead. The application will be available no later than when the pause on federal student loan repayments terminates at the end of the year. Nearly 8 million borrowers may be eligible to receive relief automatically because relevant income data is already available to the Department. The Department is also making available a legal memorandum regarding its authority for these discharges.
The Department is also proposing a rule to create a new income-driven repayment plan that will substantially reduce future monthly payments for lower- and middle-income borrowers. The proposed rule would protect more income from loan payments. It would cut in half—from 10% to 5% of discretionary income—the amount that borrowers have to pay each month on their undergraduate loans, while borrowers with both undergraduate and graduate loans will pay a weighted average rate. It would also raise the amount of income that is considered nondiscretionary income and therefore protected from repayment. The rule would also forgive loan balances after 10 years of payments, instead of the current 20 years under many income-driven repayment plans, for borrowers with original loan balances of $12,000 or less. Additionally, the proposed rule would fully cover the borrower’s unpaid monthly interest, so that—unlike with current income-driven repayment plans—a borrower’s loan balance will not grow so long as they are making their required monthly payments. The plan would also simplify borrowers’ choices among loan repayment plans. The proposed regulations will be published in the coming days on the Federal Register and the public is invited to comment on the draft rule for 30 days.
"Earning a college degree or certificate should give every person in America a leg up in securing a bright future. But for too many people, student loan debt has hindered their ability to achieve their dreams—including buying a home, starting a business, or providing for their family. Getting an education should set us free; not strap us down! That’s why, since Day One, the Biden-Harris administration has worked to fix broken federal student aid programs and deliver unprecedented relief to borrowers, " said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. "Today, we’re delivering targeted relief that will help ensure borrowers are not placed in a worse position financially because of the pandemic, and restore trust in a system that should be creating opportunity, not a debt trap."
Additionally, the Department is proposing long-term changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program that will make it easier for borrowers working in public service to gain loan forgiveness. Specifically, the Department proposed allowing more payments to qualify for PSLF including partial, lump sum, and late payments, and allowing certain kinds of deferments and forbearances – such as those for Peace Corps and AmeriCorps service, National Guard duty, and military service – to count toward PSLF. These proposed regulatory changes build on the progress made with the temporary changes announced last year by the Department that expire on October 31, 2022. Since the start of the temporary changes, the Department has approved more than $10 billion in loan discharges for 175,000 public servants. To apply for forgiveness or payments to count toward forgiveness under the temporary changes, visit the PSLF Help Tool.
The Department is also taking steps to reduce the cost of college for students and their families and hold colleges accountable for raising costs, especially when failing to deliver good outcomes to students. The Department has already re-established the enforcement unit in the Office of Federal Student Aid and recently withdrew authorization for the accreditor that oversaw schools responsible for some of the worst for-profit scandals. The agency will also propose to reinstate and improve a rule to hold career programs accountable for leaving their graduates with unaffordable debt. And the Department is announcing new steps to take action against colleges that have contributed to the student debt crisis. These include publishing an annual watch list of the programs with the worst debt levels in the country and requesting institutional improvement plans from colleges with the most concerning debt outcomes that outline how the college intends to bring down debt levels.
The Biden-Harris Administration will keep fighting to reduce the cost of higher education by working to make community college free and doubling the maximum size of the Pell Grant.
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Student Loan Forgiveness and the Shifting Standards of the Department of Education
Adam Kissel – August 29, 2022, AIER.ORG:
On August 24, 2022, the U.S. Department of Education (DoEd) announced arbitrary amounts of student debt cancellation and arbitrary income cutoffs for eligibility for the cancellation. Borrowers who earn at least $125,000 per year ($250,000 if married or head of household) are completely ineligible for debt cancellation. Among those who are eligible, borrowers who received a Pell Grant at any time in the past qualify for up to $20,000 in cancellation, while those who never had a Pell Grant qualify for no more than $10,000. These arbitrary decisions undermine the legal basis on which the DoEd is relying for mass debt cancellation in the first place.
The DoEd is relying on an August 23 memo from the Department of Justice, which argues that mass debt cancellation is authorized under the HEROES Act of 2003. This law, representing some of the federal grab of emergency powers following the 2001 terrorist attacks, appeared again during the pandemic “emergency.” It was invoked to justify, for example, the pause on student loan repayment (at a cost of $5 billion per month). Now, this law is being used as emergency aid for people with student loans.
Emergency powers under the HEROES Act kick in when the President declares a national emergency. Of course, the Department of Education is delighted to observe that the United States is still in a pandemic “emergency.” That means the Secretary of Education is authorized to waive or modify rules that, for instance, help ensure against waste, fraud, and abuse in the repayment of federal student aid. More than two years into the “emergency,” several rules remain waived, including the rules pertaining to paying one’s debts and accruing interest when not paying one’s debts.
The previous administration considered whether the HEROES Act could justify mass debt cancellation and, fortunately, determined that it cannot. Most importantly, the waiver is limited to “affected individuals” who “suffered direct economic hardship as a direct result” of the “national emergency.” Moreover, the previous administration noted several laws and regulations directing agencies to collect debts, not cancel them.
But the current administration has been thrilled to discover the needed emergency authority in the HEROES Act after all. The administration sees no meaningful difference between delaying the requirement to pay one’s debts, such as already exists in forbearances, and waiving or modifying the requirement to pay one’s debts at all, ever. If mass delays in repayment are allowed because nearly every American with a student loan has been directly affected with economic hardship as a direct result of the pandemic, the argument goes, mass cancellation is allowed because nearly all of the Americans being helped today are still directly affected with economic hardship.
The biggest problem with this argument is that large numbers of these borrowers have no economic hardship due to the pandemic, and many of them never did. Vast numbers of white-collar workers continued to get their paychecks while working from home, and a substantial portion of these workers had student loans. They did not need the repayment pause in the first place, and they need debt cancellation even less today.
The other key problem involves the arbitrary cutoffs in the cancellation plan. On the current (but flawed) reading of the HEROES Act, the Secretary of Education has extremely wide discretion to determine what is “necessary” to provide relief such that those who were harmed by the emergency will not be in a worse financial situation, after all, because of their student loans. Even such wide discretion, however, cannot include such arbitrary decisions. The Justice Department’s memo insists, “the Secretary can use the HEROES Act only to offset that portion of the harm that has a ‘relation to’ the borrower’s title IV assistance.” Yet, without any written discussion, analysis, or notice and comment from the public, the Secretary has declared which borrowers will get what, and which borrowers will get nothing.
In particular:
- There is no reasonable ground to imagine that borrowers who at some time in the past were Pell Grant recipients have financially suffered twice as much from the pandemic compared to borrowers who never received a Pell Grant. It is true that Pell Grant recipients, by and large, more often drop out of college and more often attend two-year colleges, so their lifetime income trajectories are lower. But these differences appear entirely irrelevant to harm related to the pandemic.
- Even if the plan survives that challenge, the $10,000 and $20,000 cancellation figures are drawn out of thin air. The decision was clearly political. The amounts needed to be enough to count as “loan forgiveness” without reaching the politically infeasible $50,000 per borrower or full forgiveness insisted upon by progressive advocates. The amounts are entirely disconnected from the actual economic harms of those who hold student loans. No attempt whatsoever was made to estimate harms.
- Again, Americans’ economic situations are very extremely diverse. Accordingly, there is no justification at all for creating three classes of borrowers. None of the purported classes has anything relevant in common that reflects harm from the pandemic related to federal student aid. The department does not even attempt to explain its division of borrowers into meaningfully separate classes.
- In particular, what magically happens at the $125,000 annual income level such that those borrowers have zero harm from the pandemic? Of course, this decision is also political. It helps avoid the charge that debt forgiveness is regressive, making less educated, less wealthy people pay for the college educations of the more educated, more wealthy, while still providing a perk to the richer among us. (The poorest four states have a median family income around $60,000, just one fourth of the family-income cutoff of $250,000.)
- Furthermore, why are both the Pell and non-Pell classes distinguished from a third class, those with an income of at least $125,000 per year, whether Pell or non-Pell? Does the Pell vs. non-Pell distinction simply disappear at this income level?
- Finally, to justify a continued repayment pause for all borrowers, the current administration must rely on the HEROES Act and show that all borrowers are still being directly harmed by the pandemic “emergency.” If that’s true, the Department of Education must argue and acknowledge that even the wealthier borrowers, those with annual income above $125,000, are being harmed, such that a repayment pause for them remains “necessary.” Well, are they being harmed, or aren’t they? Are they being harmed for the purpose of a repayment pause, but not harmed for the purpose of debt cancellation? That would be absurd, much like the other arbitrary decisions described here.
In sum, the HEROES Act provides no shelter for the arbitrary, capricious, political decisions announced by the Department of Education.
The Department’s full announcement, unfortunately, is even worse. It also proposes major changes to income-driven repayment plans. These are plans that are affordable by definition because they are based on ability to pay. But now they may get even more affordable: After just 10 years of paying only 5 percent of one’s disposable income (redefined so as to exclude even more income), one’s debt will be forgiven. There’s no need to be shy about calling the Department’s plans a new socialism of higher education: pay only what you can, the minimum amount vanishes toward zero, and the taxpayer will cover the rest.
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@Wylted
Remember that the absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.
It could have been too much reading. It could have been they all agree with these specific points but disagree on others not brought up in the sources. Or it could be as you say, that they have no argument so they decided not to try.
I know Oromagi is busy with 4 or 5 other forum posts and at least one debate. He is the main poster in the forums, at least from my anecdotal observances.
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@TWS1405
oi vey.
The planting evidence spurious claim are exceptions, not the rule.
List of times police planted evidence:
Story of a police officer who planted drugs on 12 victims:
100 cases under review due to body camera footage:
263 cases under review in 2018 over planting evidence, 48 cases were dropped, 8 people freed from prison:
NYPD detectives allegedly planted drugs in Queens Apartment:
And this is just WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT.
Point being, the UCR is an atrocious tool for estimating ANYTHING about crime UNLESS it is used alongside other datasets to create a more complete picture. This also would technically hold true for the BOP statistics, as these people count as exonerated. Some were released from jail after their convictions. This is why the Federal Exoneration rate exists. Because people are locked up unjustly in our system.
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I find it funny that God literally walked the earth 2,000 years ago, performing miracles, raising the dead, calming stormy seas, walking on water, coming back from the dead, and ascending into heaven, and people didn't believe their own eyes and ears back then.
But today people ask for the same thing God already did 2,000 years ago and say they will believe in Him.
People believe what they want to believe, not what the facts show, when it comes to religion.
Just because God doesn't agree with their tiny little box for what God should be, they claim he doesn't exist.
Can you see how anything can be any more stupid than that? Imagine telling people Abraham Lincoln never existed because he threw people into prison and had people executed while claiming everyone had rights. Would anyone take you seriously?
Imagine saying Julius Caesar never existed because the Roman Empire had pedophilic government officials in it. Would anyone take you seriously?
But, suddenly, it all changes when someone says "God." Then we can completely throw out historical evidence, eyewitness testimonies, empirical analysis of the star patterns, and more because of pedophiles and bad things happening to people.
How stupid. Nobody in North Korea says Kim Jong Un doesn't exist because there is suffering in North Korea. It's because even the brainwashed members of the populace in North Korea, most of whom have never actually seen Kim Jong Un in person, knows better than to think that.
But with God suddenly the standards of evidence and goalposts completely shift. Secular historical accounts now become fabrications. The gospel accounts become people, who largely died broke, hated, and in some cases were tortured, "doing it for money and fame," and any miracle that happens today is instantly discredited because "muh science."
Science can't even answer if we have a soul or not but you think it is conclusive on whether a person raised from the dead?
Even moreso, whenever you isolate one of thse anti-God thinkers and give them a bona fide, science-defying, miracle, they claim it HAS to be ANYTHING else. Even if it is unexplainable. They assert science will magically figure out why it can't possibly be an answered prayer. Why? Why can't it be an answered prayer? He was dead before the prayer. Now he's alive after the prayer. He was in a wheelchair before the prayer, now he can walk perfectly fine after the prayer. The doctor scans show this. Why can't it be a miracle? It seems pretty simple to me. Prayer --> miracle. SOMETHING HAD TO DO THE MIRACLE. People don't just magically regain the ability to walk after being in a wheelchair for years through sheer willpower. Therefore God.
But you'll never get one of these people to admit they're doing this. They'll fight you on everything. They'll claim "it's different. My sources are objective. Historians don't lie." Even though historians in the Roman Empire were literally working night and day to revise history just like our historians do today. And even though the people literally worshipped the Roman Emperor as a god, and even though the people writing the gospel accounts had NOTHING AT ALL PHYSICAL TO GAIN from it. You know, "only my source is true." Yours must be rejected for whatever insane, illogical reason I make up today. Certainly not because of any actual evidence of any kind.
So, when they realize they have nothing left, they use "evolution." A theory invented by a man with a grudge against the Catholic Church that has yet to have been replicated successfully in any lab test and, in fact, faces the problem of numerous experiments being unable to falsify it. But, you know, it just HAS to be a better explanation than God. It HAS to be. Evolution is FACT. Even though we can't prove it. Even though no lab test has successfully replicated it. Even though 99% of scientists can't even agree on how it works. That HAS to be the truth. It can't POSSIBLY be something so straightforward, logical, and easy to grasp as God.
Why? Because of circular reasoning. Their whole argument boils down to "God doesn't exist because God doesn't exist."
Any and all credible evidence to the contrary is immediately thrown out because it doesn't fit into their circular logic.
They suddenly become the judge, executioner, and jury. They get to define who God is, what evidence is allowed to be put forward, and whether it is believable enough based arbitrarily on their feelings.
Even though, for LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE ON THE PLANET, this isn't how logic or reason works. It magically works for debating the existence of God.
And then these people have the gall to say they are too "rational" for religion.
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@TWS1405
The FBI themselves, the people compiling the data you are inaccurately using, state the UCR is an incomplete set of data. So to make any definitive conclusions from it is bad data science.
The same is true for basic statistics like the BOP and other data. Prisoner statistics ignore WHERE and WHO prosecuted the case and HOW the conviction came about. This is important information as, for example, Kamala Harris had a known history of planting evidence on black people just to get convictions.
As I stated earlier, and as the FBI stated earlier, you can't use the absence of data as an argument for something. The fact is the BOP data and FBI crime stats simply state an incomplete picture of the entire situation. There is known news reports about white supremacy being pervasive in out police departments. It white supremacists are the police, which race do you think is going to be affected most? Certainly not whites.
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Man I wish the OP came back. I would have loved to hear what type of Catholic he was.
I have debated and discussed Catholicism with A LOT of Catholics and one thing I learned was the religion is completely indistinguishable from a cult if you are talking to a Romanist Catholic or a Jesuit or any Catholic that largely agrees with the Latin Rite.
But not every Catholic is a Romanist, and many Catholics are not even Latin Rite catholics. So it would have been interesting to hear his answers as a new Catholic convert.
For every Catholic there's also a different idea of Catholicism, regardless of the Christian Church's actual tradition.
Oh well.
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@Athias
Thanks. I agree with your sentiment that appeals to authority are horrible substitutes for actual facts and logical atguments.
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@thett3
Your cited article states the following:
"while poor youth of all races were more likely than wealthy kids to go to prison, the likelihood of incarceration was higher for African Americans at every level of wealth compared to white youth." [1]
This is methodologically flawed for one obvious reason. The study authors did not compare incarceration rates between all races' total arrests and incarcerations. They simply compared incarceration numbers with the total population.
Additionally, the study authors reportedly did not look into the police procedures, backgrounds of the police departments, or any raw data about these police precincts' arrest statistics to determine if there is racism in the police force or not. [2]
This is not methodologically sound at all. It excludes key information that would interpret the data outside of the three options presented in the report. For instance, what if black people were arrested far more often than other races, but were convicted less than other races? This could mean that overpolicing of black people is responsible for the elevated incarcerations, not criminal activity. Or what if black people were convicted nearly 100% of the time, while every other race was convicted 50% of the time? This could indicate that, either black people almost always commit the crime they are arrested for, or there is a rigged system going on. These sets of data are just as important for studies claiming to investigate racial policing.
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Welp... I'd have to state that, to boot, criminological studies and data has also asserted the FBI crime stats are subject to racial bias.
For instance, black people make up more than 50% of all exonerated persons. 54.21% to be more exact. [1] Additionally, according to the FBI, their official crime statistics are not actually complete. They often lack data and also do not take into account other factors. They state:
"Some factors that are known to affect the volume and type of crime occurring fromplace to place are:• Population density and degree of urbanization.• Variations in composition of the population, particularly youth concentration.• Stability of the population with respect to residents; mobility, commuting patterns, andtransient factors.• Economic conditions, including median income, poverty level, and job availability.• Modes of transportation and highway systems.• Cultural factors and educational, recreational, and religious characteristics.• Family conditions with respect to divorce and family cohesiveness.• Climate.• Effective strength of law enforcement agencies.• Administrative and investigative emphases on law enforcement.• Policies of other components of the criminal justice system (i.e., prosecutorial, judicial,correctional, and probational).• Citizens’ attitudes toward crime.• Crime reporting practices of the citizenry." [2]
They also go on to state that using the UCR to quantify crimes is ill-advised because the UCR does not include convictions and also there could be other arrests (they call them clearances) that were not considered because they were considered "Part II offenses." They also state that the UCR does not take into account the policing policies and staffing availability of all the police precincts nationwide:
"Ranking agencies based solely on UCR data has serious implications. For example, if a user wants to measure the effectiveness of a law enforcement agency, these measurements are not available. As a substitute, a user might list UCR clearance rates, rank them by agency, and attempt to infer the effectiveness of individual law enforcement agencies. This inference is flawed because all the other measures of police effectiveness were ignored. The nature of the offenses that were cleared must be considered as those cleared may not have been the most serious, like murder or rape. The agency’s clearances may or may not result in conviction, the ultimate goal. The agency may make many arrests for Part II offenses, like drug abuse violations, which demonstrate police activity but are not considered in the clearance rate. The agency’s available resources are also critical to successful operation, so its rate of officers to population and budget should be considered. The UCR clearance rate was simply not designed to provide a complete assessment of law enforcement effectiveness. In order to obtain a valid picture of an agency’s effectiveness, data users must consider an agency’s emphases and resources; and its crime, clearance, and arrest rates; along with other appropriate factors." [2]
So, in other words, stop using the FBI crime statistics as a reason black people supposedly commit more crimes. It is extremely incomplete data for such an assertion. For instance, the FBI has spent years secretly investigating the presence of White Supremacy in police agencies across the country. [3] The investigations were started because of startling reports like a 1991 Neo-Nazi gang of police officers who targeted Black Americans [4] and a 2008 report of a police detective who was fired after a report found he tortured 108 Black Americans over the course of his career. [5] As per The Intercept's extremely thorough article:
"Burge notoriously referred to an electric shock device he used during interrogations as the 'nigger box.' In Cleveland, officials found that a number of police officers had scrawled 'racist or Nazi graffiti' throughout their department’s locker rooms. In Texas, two police officers were fired when it was discovered they were Klansmen. One of them said he had tried to boost the organization’s membership by giving an application to a fellow officer he thought shared his 'white, Christian, heterosexual values.'" [3]
So it is apparent there is a number of white supremacist police officers in our police departments around the country, and their racist policing has contributed to unusually high arrest rates for Black Americans, as indicated by the exoneration rates by race.
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Gun Control
By ProCon.org last updated: 6/27/22
The United States has 120.5 guns per 100 people, or about 393,347,000 guns, which is the highest total and per capita number in the world. 22% of Americans own one or more guns (35% of men and 12% of women). America’s pervasive gun culture stems in part from its colonial history, revolutionary roots, frontier expansion, and the Second Amendment, which states: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Proponents of more gun control laws state that the Second Amendment was intended for militias; that gun violence would be reduced; that gun restrictions have always existed; and that a majority of Americans, including gun owners, support new gun restrictions.
Opponents say that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns; that guns are needed for self-defense from threats ranging from local criminals to foreign invaders; and that gun ownership deters crime rather than causes more crime.
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Public Mass Shootings in the United States: Selected Implications for Federal Public Health and Safety Policy
Congressional Research Service
March 18, 2013 – April 16, 2013
March 18, 2013 – April 16, 2013
Selected section:
Intelligence-Led Policing and Fusion Centers
Gunmen involved in public mass shootings may not be targets easily preempted from wrongdoing by intelligence-led policing. However, there still may be roles that fusion centers55 can play in countering this threat. (Such centers have been highlighted as tools to enhance intelligence-led policing.) Fusion centers may be able to help contextualize this issue. For instance, the Commonwealth Fusion Center based in Massachusetts launched the "Targeting Violent Crime Initiative," sponsored by DOJ, to examine firearms offenses in Massachusetts. This effort has focused on issues such as determining the source of firearms used in gun crimes in Massachusetts; understanding potential links between the illegal gun markets; and delving into gun crime trends throughout the state.56 As such, policy makers may be interested in whether fusion centers have anything to offer in the way of intelligence-led policing to address mass shootings.
Gunmen involved in public mass shootings may not be targets easily preempted from wrongdoing by intelligence-led policing. However, there still may be roles that fusion centers55 can play in countering this threat. (Such centers have been highlighted as tools to enhance intelligence-led policing.) Fusion centers may be able to help contextualize this issue. For instance, the Commonwealth Fusion Center based in Massachusetts launched the "Targeting Violent Crime Initiative," sponsored by DOJ, to examine firearms offenses in Massachusetts. This effort has focused on issues such as determining the source of firearms used in gun crimes in Massachusetts; understanding potential links between the illegal gun markets; and delving into gun crime trends throughout the state.56 As such, policy makers may be interested in whether fusion centers have anything to offer in the way of intelligence-led policing to address mass shootings.
Based in part on community policing and problem solving efforts, intelligence-led policing initiatives, originally developed in Great Britain, have emerged throughout the nation.57 After 9/11, intelligence operations were transformed at the federal level as well as at the state and local levels. More and more, intelligence-led policing is not a single methodology, but a framework that encompasses much of modern operational police activity.58 Similar to community policing, intelligence-led policing relies upon information input (as the basis for intelligence analysis), two-way communications with the public, scientific data analysis (using the basic formula that information plus analysis equals intelligence), and problem solving.59
The impact of intelligence-led policing cannot yet be fully evaluated because "long term studies of police forces that have fully implemented and adopted intelligence-led policing have yet to be conducted."60 Further, like research on community policing efforts, available information on intelligence-led policing does not address whether intelligence-led policing may be an effective approach to use in addressing mass shootings.
Using intelligence-led policing to thwart mass shooters may be especially challenging for a number of reasons.
- Mass shooters most often act alone and share few of their plans with others.61 Typically, they do not engage in ongoing conspiracies that can be infiltrated by undercover police officers or monitored by informants.62
- There may be too few public mass shooting incidents to establish detailed geographic patterns (hot spots) for law enforcement to exploit.63
Offender Profiling for Public Mass Shootings: Not a Preventive Tool
Researchers and policy makers have questioned whether law enforcement can develop a profile of a mass shooter to help identify at-risk individuals before a shooting incident occurs. No effective mass shooter profile exists for law enforcement to use to proactively identify potential suspects. One researcher has succinctly noted that "the predictors [for mass murder] are invariably far more common than the event we hope to predict, and mass murder is very rare. Although mass murderers often do exhibit bizarre behavior, most people who exhibit bizarre behavior do not commit mass murder."64 Aside from usually, but not always, being male, there are few other characteristics found across mass murderers that would be reliable or valid for creating a general profile for individuals most likely to engage in a public mass shooting. This also holds true when examining individuals who carry out mass shootings in specific settings; for instance, "[t]here is no accurate or useful profile of 'the school shooter'."65
Also of note, criminal profiling is generally utilized after a crime has been committed, and not usually as a preventive tool.66 In the course of investigating serial crimes by a repeat offender such as a serial murderer, it could be utilized as a proactive tool to narrow the pool of potential offenders before a subsequent crime is committed. However, because mass shooters generally do not have the opportunity to commit a second crime—they are most typically either killed or captured after the mass shooting—investigative analysis would most commonly be employed after the mass shooting to understand how it happened rather than as a tool to identify potential shooters before an incident occurs.
All of this does not mean that preventing public mass shootings is wholly beyond the scope of federal law enforcement. For instance, to enhance law enforcement efforts in the violent crime domain, DHS, DOJ, and the FBI have been working to "identify measures that could be taken to reduce the risk of mass casualty shootings."67
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By James D. Agresti, President of Just Facts
June 15, 2022
“For the children we can save,” declared President Biden on June 2, “we should reinstate the assault weapons ban and high-capacity magazines that we passed in 1994.” To support this claim, Biden alleged:
And in the 10 years it was law, mass shootings went down. But after Republicans let the law expire in 2004 and those weapons were allowed to be sold again, mass shootings tripled. Those are the facts.
In reality, Biden is confusing terms and distorting data to paint a picture that is opposed to the facts. Such facts include but are not limited to the following:
- The number of people killed in mass shootings didn’t decline even after the 1986 federal ban on automatic guns, which are more capable of mass murder than the guns Biden wants to ban.
- The terms “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazines” are misleading and refer to common weapons used by citizens for hunting and home defense.
- Before, during, and after the 1994 law cited by Biden, the portion of the U.S. population killed in mass shootings barely budged, and the slight changes are better explained by other factors.
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According to Trump's legal team, the former President declassified everything he took with him before it left the White House while he was still president. [1] [2]
If this is the case, then none of the information found was classified, since a sitting President can declassify whatever he wants to declassify. [3]
The question remains which side is telling the truth, and without credible documents or a host of eye-witness accounts, we will never know for sure.
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What rite of catholicism do you follow and which version of the Vatican documents do you adhere to?
Do you have a particular theologian you prefer? Is it Aquinas? Do you like a certain systematic theology textbook you prefer?
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Oh gosh. What have I done lol.
The purpose of this forum post was literally just so the arrival of the terms of the debate could be publically displayed so that people voting could have a publically available reference as to how the debate's rules were arrived at and how pro and con both refined the rules to something they both agreed to.
This being said. It perplexes me why an expert's opinion matters any more than the opinion of anyone else. An expert with a degree from Harvard can still know significantly less on a topic than a man who wrote a book on the same subject. It is the arguments and furnishings of evidence, and the methodologies used to arrive at the conclusions in the evidence, that count. Not who says them.
I've heard a great many experts state things that are fundamentally wrong about the topics they are experts on. And I've also been educated in casual conversation by people who beger received a degree in a field of study not eger held a formal job in such field, yet were able to cite studies, textbooks, manuals, and other white papers that backed their conclusion.
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@oromagi
Is it sad that this isn't news to me?
Back during the early stages of the Trump Presidency it was transparent to me that Twitter was loaded with bot accounts. There was a pro-trump bot network and an anti-trump bot network. I discovered both. It wasn't that difficult to do.
The same is true on Twitter and Facebook, but the Federal Government won't admit it until they are forced to.
Our own government has used fake and/or bot accounts on social media to spread propaganda for years. U.S. Central Command heads this project. It's called Operation Earnest Voice. It now even involves blog posts and such. [1] [2]
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Jeez. I need to proofread better lmao... revision 3:
I also changed the definition of evidence to align with that in the U.S. Code
TOPIC:
THE USFG should decertify the 2020 US Presidential Election due to illegal election activities sufficient to deny Biden's victory
STANCES:
PRO must argue there was a sufficient number of ballots affected by illegal election activities to decertify the election.
CON must argue there was not a sufficient number of ballots affected by illegal election activities to decertify the election.
DEFINITIONS:
The following sources will determine the standards for illegal election activities:
- U.S. Code and U.S. Constitution
For definitions, the U.S. Code, in its entirety, shall supplement the definitions, and where the U.S. Code fails to provide a definition, then The Law's law dictionary will be used:
And if neither can provide a definition, then Merriam Webster will be used.
"Sufficient" means that illegal election activities affected more ballots than the margin of victory for then-candidate Joseph R. Biden.
RULES:
By participating in this debate, PRO and CON agree to adhere to the following rules:
1. Use of logical fallacies are strictly prohibited. Any logical fallacy that exists in this Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies is banned from the debate. All logical fallacies shall be defined according to this Wikipedia webpage. Any deliberate usage of a logical fallacy results in immediate forfeiture and admittance of defeat. Accidental usage can be rectified by not using the fallacy again and moving on with the debate.
2. The rules and definitions of logic shall come from the webpage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_logic, and not Merriam Webster's online Dictionary or any other Wikipedia page. This debate shall be governed by the laws of logic, meaning burden of proof is required by both parties.
3. Usage of any propaganda technique, as defined, outlined, and explained in this wikipedia article, as an argument is banned:
4. Usage of any compliance technique, as defined, outlined, and explained in this wikipedia article, as an argument is banned:
5. The rules of grammar and proper english shall come from Grammarbook.com available here: https://www.grammarbook.com/ and they will be followed strictly. Deliberate attempts to use gibberish english result in forfeiture of debate by the person who committed the action.
6. Using definitions from any source not previously listed is strictly prohibited and results in forfeiture of debate.
7. For the purposes of this debate, evidence shall be allowed or rejected based on the Federal Rules of Evidence, available here:
8. Disobeying these rules repeatedly results in immediate forfeiture of debate.
Time for argument: One week
Voting system: Open
Voting period: One month
Point system Four points
Rating mode Rated
Number of arguments: 5
Characters per argument: up to 10,000
Does this sound good to you?
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@oromagi
The State Department, in 2018 stated there was a lab in Wuhan studying bat coronaviruses that had extremely low safety standards. They stated that, if there was going to be another pandemic, it would likely arise from that lab. [1] [2] [3]
Documents from the NIH, specifically Fauci's office, show he funded gain-of-function research through different grants. [4] [5]
In 2018, the NIH specifically wrote a news brief on how the Wuhan Institute of Virology is studying bat coronaviruses and how NIAID (which was chaired by Dr. Fauci at that time) funded the research. [6]
I cited sources from the left and right and government in addition to ones that link to the primary sources so that nobody would claim this is some sort of "witch hunt" on Fauci. The facts blatantly prove he helped fund the research into COVID-19 and that it likely started as a lab leak at a lab that was testing bat coronavirus.
Therefore, Dr. Fauci lied about his involvement in COVID-19 research. There is no question about it.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Right.
Hence the idea for a standalone app instead of a website viewer.
Hence the idea for a standalone app instead of a website viewer.
Maybe if they tried to fundraise for it we would all donate a little bit.
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@oromagi
Anywho... revision 2:
TOPIC:
THE USFG should decertify the 2020 US Presidential Election due to illegal election activities sufficient to deny Biden's victory
STANCES:
PRO must argue there was a sufficient number of ballots affected by illegal election activities to decertify the election.
CON must argue there was not a sufficient number of ballots affected by illegal election activities to decertify the election.
DEFINITIONS:
The following sources will determine the standards for illegal election activities:
- U.S. Code and U.S. Constitution
For definitions, the U.S. Code, in its entirety, shall supplement the definitions, and where the U.S. Code fails to provide a definition, then The Law's law dictionary will be used:
And if neither can provide a definition, then Merriam Webster will be used.
"Sufficient" means that illegal election activities affected more ballots than the margin of victory for then-candidate Joseph R. Biden.
RULES:
By participating in this debate, PRO and CON agree to adhere to the following rules:
1. Use of logical fallacies are strictly prohibited. Any logical fallacy that exists in this Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies is banned from the debate. All logical fallacies shall be defined according to this Wikipedia webpage. Any deliberate usage of a logical fallacy results in immediate forfeiture and admittance of defeat. Accidental usage can be rectified by not using the fallacy again and moving on with the debate.
2. The rules and definitions of logic shall come from the webpage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_logic, and not Merriam Webster's online Dictionary or the Wikipedia page. This debate shall be governed by the laws of logic, meaning burden of proof is required by both parties.
3. Usage of any propaganda technique as defined, outlined, and explained in this wikipedia article as an argument is banned:
4. Usage of any compliance technique as defined, outlined, and explained in this wikipedia article as an argument is banned:
5. The rules of grammar and proper english shall come from Farlex's grammar book available here: https://www.grammarbook.com/ and they will be followed strictly. Deliberate attempts to use gibberish english result in forfeiture of debate by the person who committed the action.
6. Using definitions from any source not previously listed is strictly prohibited and results in forfeiture of debate.
7. For the purposes of this debate, evidence is defined by entry 1, definition 1b in Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary (and only including entry 1, definition 1b of testimony) and shall also not break any of the debate rules.
8. Disobeying these rules repeatedly results in immediate forfeiture of debate.
Time for argument: one week
Voting system: Open
Voting period: Two weeks or one month
Point system Four points
Rating mode Rated
Number of arguments: 5
Characters per argument: up to 10,000
Does this sound good to you?
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@oromagi
Ok. So there were a few misunderstandings between what I wrote and what it was interpreted as.
Firstly, the compliance gaining rules listed on Wikipedia are not for cult propaganda. They are persuasion and sales tactics that are illogical forms of argumentation. There's cult compliance gaining and sales/persuasion compliance gaining. The Wikipedia page is for sales and persuasion compliance gaining.
The propaganda techniques simply meant that you or I can't implement a propaganda technique as an argument. Additionally, cult programming relies on logical fallacies and propaganda techniques, so I felt absolutely no need to add an additional rule for cult programming, since it is already largely banned from the debate.
Good catch on the encyclopedia. I simply chose it because it was a thorough read. I replaced it. I sense authorities matter more than content to you, which is cool. You can do you. I updated the rules accordingly.
I like Farlex's grammar book because it is extremely thorough and accurate. It is also ordered in a very logical way that makes it easy to browse and use. But I switched it to grammarbook.com, which is one of the OGs of grammar books and also considered one of the most widely held authorities in the field of grammar.
Rule 6 means using any source for definitions that isn't the U.S. Code or Law Dictionary or Merriam Webster or any other previously listed source isn't allowed. So, like, you can't go to Oxford's dictionary to define fraud when the U.S. Code already defines it. That is all I meant. If you can think of a clearer way to write that, I'm all ears.
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@Intelligence_06
I spend most of my life away from my desktop.
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@K_Michael
My mobile phone is a computer.
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One adendum.
CON must argue there was not enough illegal election activities to sufficiently challenge the results of the election
Sorry. I forgot to change that earlier. This went through a few revisions before I posted it lol.
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@oromagi
Any changes or do you accept?
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I did a forum post not as a delaying tactic, but because I tend to have extremely specific rules for my debates and I didn't want to waste time setting up multiple debates when we can just hash out what we want and don't want for our debate.
TOPIC:
The 2020 Election Should Be Decertified Due To Illegal Election Activities That Sufficiently Challenge The Results Of The 2020 Election
STANCES:
PRO must defend the above claim.
CON must argue there was not enough election fraud to decertify the election
DEFINITIONS:
The following sections of the U.S. Code will determine the standards for illegal election activities:
- 18 U.S. Code Chapter 29 - ELECTIONS AND POLITICAL ACTIVITIES
That is the section of the U.S. Code that deals with federal election crimes. If you can think of any other pertinent sections of the U.S. Code feel free to list them.
For definitions, the U.S. Code, in its entirety, shall supplement the definitions, and where the U.S. Code fails to provide a definition, then The Law's law dictionary will be used:
And if neither can provide a definition, then Merriam Webster will be used.
"Sufficiently challenge" means that illegal election activities more ballots than the margin of victory for Then-candidate Joseph R. Biden.
RULES:
By participating in this debate, PRO and CON agree to adhere to the following rules:
1. Use of logical fallacies are strictly prohibited. Any logical fallacy that exists in this Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies is banned from the debate. All logical fallacies shall be defined according to this Wikipedia webpage. Any deliberate usage of a logical fallacy results in immediate forfeiture and admittance of defeat. Accidental usage can be rectified by not using the fallacy again and moving on with the debate.
2. The rules and definitions of logic shall come from the webpage newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Logic, and not Merriam Webster's online Dictionary or the Wikipedia page. This debate shall be governed by the laws of logic, meaning burden of proof is required by both parties.
3. Any propaganda techniques as defined, outlined, and explained in this wikipedia article are banned from usage:
4. Any compliance techniques as defined, outlined, and explained in this wikipedia article are banned from usage:
5. The rules of grammar and proper english shall come from Farlex's grammar book available here:
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/The-Farlex-Grammar-Book.htm. And they will be followed strictly. Deliberate attempts to use gibberish english result in forfeiture of debate by the person who committed the action.
6. Using alternative definitions from the ones listed in the above sources is strictly prohibited and results in forfeiture of debate.
7. For the purposes of this debate, evidence is defined by entry 1, definition 1b in Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary (and only including entry 1, definition 1b of testimony) and shall also not break any of the debate rules.
8. Willfully and knowingly disobeying these rules repeatedly results in immediate forfeiture of debate.
Does this sound good to you?
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In 1981 Russians were standing in line for bread, while Americans were getting obese from the food they were eating.
In 1981 Russians were living in dilapidated apartments with toxic water while Americans were living in homes with clean water supply.
In 1981 Russians were waiting in long lines to receive basic hospital care while Americans simply went to the nearest hospital and got whatever care they needed.
I have no idea what the sources told the person who did the study, but by nearly any standard of development applied, the United States was far ahead of Russia and most other communist countries in terms of standard of living.
And the United States isn't even capitalist. It is simply less communist than other countries.
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Honestly, the ones that stick to formal debating have very little users in them and are mostly tumbleweeds.
The only ones that could be considered close that have rational discussions on them and a userbase are debateisland (which is mostly just like the forum posts on here) and Well.com, which has much less engagement than this website.
But both do not really offer much in the line of formal debating.
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The real reason I miss the site is because the world's greatest libertarian debater's arguments are now lost unless archive.org managed to archive all of them.
Imagine being so good at debating that you can leave a platform for years and still manage to have the top position in the leaderboard.
I really wonder what happened to that legend of a debater.
Anyways, it appears a new challenger has emerged. Oromagi is pretty good at debating. Boy I would LOVE to see a debate between him and Mikal, tbh.
But, hey. This website is pretty awesome. It feels like the way Debate.org used to be, which is great!
But it feels like a lot more of an echo chamber than Debate.org was. Probably because not enough non-progressives are on it!
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As the title says.
First off, this website is the true successor to Debate(.)Org. I don't know how many of you remember that fantastic website, but it was a debator's paradise. It recently closed down due to reasons I don't know. But the website devolved into internet trollery around 2016 or so after many years of hosting rational debate. So when I found this website I was glad someone picked up the proverbial torch.
That being said. . .
The website is really buggy on mobile phones and lacking some features available to desktop users. Also, depending on the browser, you can be halfway through posting an argument, open a new tab to obtain your source, and come back and the page reloads, forcing you to start over. I write my arguments in the text box to prevent formatting issues that some run into when copy-pasting from word processors.
It is also frustrating to log in on a mobile device and have to press the menu button because the homepage is the landing page for enticing the general public to join. And a portion of the links from the menu button are not optimized for mobile.
These usability issues would be solved with a standalone app.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
Gosh. You are the walking epitome of "I reject reality and substitute my own."
IWantRooseveltAgain: Trump is guilty!!! He colluded with them dirty Ruskis!!!
FBI: No.
CIA: No.
NSA: No.
CID: No.
State Department: No.
CISA: No.
U.S. Army Cyber Command: No.
Senate Intelligence Committee: No.
Reality: No.
IWantRooseveltAgain: He is guilty!!! I have no proof but I know it's true!!!
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@IwantRooseveltagain
Oh. THAT one? In the FBI investigation documents, Mueller literally states that when the Russian lawyer approached them with dirt on Clinton, after Trump Jr. And others heard the dirt and approached Trump, then-candidate Trump declined the deal.
You can read this in the Mueller Report on pages 110-120.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
It was a transition team meeting. Presidents have had those for decades. The incoming president has all sorts of meetings like that. Biden did too.
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