BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Mars mission would inspire kids to become scientists

"Why we must go to Mars." On to Mars: "The first manned landing on Mars would serve as an invitation to adventure for children around the world. There will be some 100 million kids in the U.S. schools over the next 10 years. If a Mars program were to inspire just an additional 1 percent of them to pursue scientific educations, the net result would be one million more scientists, engineers, inventors, medical researchers and doctors."
Artificial gravity can overcome zero-gravity on Mars mission.

The problem of zero gravity during the trip to Mars is actually not a problem at all: zero-gravity conditions can be eliminated altogether during the trip, as artificial gravity can be created through the use of centrifugal force. Furthermore, we should take into account the Mir cosmonauts, Sergei Avdev spending a total of 748 days in zero-gravity over 3 missions, and Valeri Polyakov spending 438 consecutive days without gravity. There were no long term negative impact, giving us no reason to believe that zero gravity causes long-term health problems in the window of time proposed for a Mars trip. [4]
Mission to Mars creates needed heroes

James Cameron. "Why Go to Mars?" Space.com. August 25, 1999: "Our children are raised in a world without heroes. They are led to believe that heroism consists of throwing a football the furthest, getting the most hang time during a slam dunk, or selling the most movie tickets with your looks and your boyish charm. [...] Going to Mars is not a luxury we can't afford. It's a necessity we can't afford to be without. We need this. [...] We need this, or some kind of challenge like it, to bring us together to all feel a part of something and to have heroes again."
No Mars mission until it's faster, safer, cheaper

Gregg Eastbrook. "Why We Shouldn't Go to Mars." Time. Jan. 26, 2004: "Rather than spend hundreds of billions of dollars to hurl tons toward Mars using current technology, why not take a decade--or two decades, or however much time is required--researching new launch systems and advanced propulsion? If new launch systems could put weight into orbit affordably, and if advanced propulsion could speed up that long, slow transit to Mars, then the dream of stepping onto the Red Planet might become reality. Mars will still be there when the technology is ready."
Many more unmanned scientific missions can be sent to Mars

Because a robotic mission to Mars is so much cheaper than a manned mission, many more unmanned missions can be sent. The Mars rover missions cost about $250 million a pop. An optimistic estimate puts the cost of sending humans to Mars at $160 billion. Others think it could cost as much as a trillion dollars. That is 640 Mars rover missions. This means that a manned mission will probably obtain almost 1/600th of the scientific data, and possibly 1/600th of the scientific knowledge and progress. A manned mission, therefore, is decidedly unscientific in this regard.[2]
A manned mission to Mars would unify humankind

Captain Alan Bean, The 77-year-old was part of the Apollo 12 mission and became the fourth man to walk on the Moon, sidedd with going to Mars instead of returning to the Moon: "We ought to gather the international community and go to Mars. I know it isn't how others feel because it is much cheaper to go back to the Moon but I would rather we went to Mars. If we did it with all those other countries it would have a tremendously unifying effect on the Earth. It would be an inspiration for all people on Earth."[1]
Manned mission to Mars will stimulate the engineering industry

Karen Auguston. "Why We Need a Mission to Mars." Design News. February 2, 2004: "A manned mission to Mars just might single-handedly salvage what's left of the engineering profession here in the U.S., where interest in anything involving second-order differential equations has been on the wane since the mid-1980s. [...] In 1961, I didn't hear John Kennedy describe to the nation how we were going to put a man on the moon. My mother had already put me down for nap. But in 1969, I—along with my brother and sister and tens of thousands of kids across America—was glued to the family television out on the back porch, watching Neil Armstrong make one big step for man. [...] What happened in space in that day in July 1969 captured the world's attention. And it inspired tens of thousands of kids just like me—and many of you, I'm guessing—to set their own goals to do well in school, go on to study engineering, and then go to work for NASA. [...] We didn't all achieve that last part, but tens of thousands of us born before 1969 worked hard, got into engineering school, and earned our degrees. Our numbers increased every year between 1976 and 1985. [...] Since then, the number of engineering degrees awarded in the U.S. has declined steadily every year, with the exception of 1995, when there was a small up-tick."
Robotic missions to Mars are equally effective as manned ones

Jazz Shaw. "Robots Should Go Where Man Hesitates." Pajamas Media. July 20, 2009: "Robotic exploration delivers countless advantages. It is true that there will always be situations where a live human being will be able to adapt and think through situations which would leave a machine crippled in the dust. But have we done so badly with the robots currently in service? Two rovers on Mars are still trundling along, dragging disabled wheels and running on low power due to dust covered solar panels, but performing their mission years beyond initial projections. Also, unmanned missions are free of the burden of delivering air, food, water, and all of the other requirements for keeping humans alive. They weigh less, cost less, and can take all the time they need to arrive at their destination."
Committing to Mars will inspire NASA to make it happen

"Why we must go to Mars." On to Mars: "There are additional reasons to send humans to Mars. Nations, like people, thrive on challenge; they languish without it. The space program needs a challenge. Consider these statistics: Between 1961 and 1973, with the impetus of the moon race, NASA produced technological innovations at a rate several orders of magnitude greater than that it has shown since. Even so, NASA's average budget in real dollars then was only about 20 percent more than today ($16 billion 1998 dollars compared with $13 billion). Why the enhanced productivity? Because NASA had a goal that forced its reach to exceed its grasp. Far from being a waste of money, having NASA take on the challenge of a manned mission to Mars is the key to giving the nation a real return for its space dollars."
Mars mission unlike past missions; no practical benefits

Gregg Eastbrook. "Why We Shouldn't Go to Mars." Time. Jan. 26, 2004: "Two centuries ago, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left St. Louis to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase," George W. Bush said, announcing his desire for a program to send men and women to Mars. "They made that journey in the spirit of discovery ... America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons.[...] Yet there are vital differences between Lewis and Clark's expedition and a Mars mission. First, Lewis and Clark were headed to a place amenable to life; hundreds of thousands of people were already living there. Second, Lewis and Clark were certain to discover places and things of immediate value to the new nation."
A manned mission to Mars would be too expensive

"TNR Flashback: The Case For Exploring Mars." The Plank, The New Republic. July 17th, 2009: "One objection to a manned mission to Mars is that robotic craft could do the job just as well at a fraction of the cost--a compelling argument as we watch the Spirit rover successfully bound (or rather inch) over the surface of the Red Planet. On January 10, The Washington Post's editors wrote, 'The success of NASA's latest Mars venture has proved the worth of unmanned missions, while manned space flight is exorbitantly expensive.' The Los Angeles Times approvingly quoted physicist and space guru James Van Allen as saying that we could explore Mars with robots 'at far less cost and far greater quantity and quality of results.' Or, as Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, bluntly summed it up, 'There's no real rationale for a manned space program.'"
Many astronauts are willing to assume risks of Mars Mission

Alex Kirk. The Mars Society Frequently Asked Questions. 8 April 2008: "There are many of people who, if told that they could be part of an expedition to Mars only if they abandoned all hope of returning to Earth, would jump at the chance. Thousands more would sign up for a trip where their chances of returning were only 50/50. Looking back over time, people have always been willing to risk their lives for things they care about, for great missions of exploration. More importantly, why should people who will be staying safely here on Earth deny the people who wish to take that chance the opportunity, just because the explorers might die?"
Mars is uniquely suitable for a manned mission

Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. "Why Go to Mars." 2004: "Mars, as cold as it is, is not as oppressive an environment as almost any other place we can think of going in the Solar System. From a runaway greenhouse effect, Venus is 900 degrees Fahrenheit and would melt or vaporize most things you sent to its surface. Mercury is also very hot, being close to the Sun. So when you look at the nearby terrestrial planets, Mars is looking … just right, in spite of the challenges."
Inspiration is not a sufficient justification for Mars mission

Gregg Eastbrook. "Why We Shouldn't Go to Mars." Time. January 26, 2004: "The thought of travel to Mars is exhilarating. Surely men and women will someday walk upon that planet, and surely they will make wondrous discoveries about geology and the history of the solar system, perhaps even about the very origin of life. Many times I have stared up at Mars in the evening sky--in the mountains, away from cities, you can almost see the red tint--and wondered what is there, or was there. [...] But the fact that a destination is tantalizing does not mean the journey makes sense, even considering the human calling to explore. And Mars as a destination for people makes absolutely no sense with current technology."
Mars mission would require raising taxes, cutting social services

Gregg Eastbrook. "Why We Shouldn't Go to Mars." Time. Jan. 26, 2004: "Present systems for getting from Earth's surface to low-Earth orbit are so fantastically expensive that merely launching the 1,000 tons or so of spacecraft and equipment a Mars mission would require could be accomplished only by cutting health-care benefits, education spending or other important programs--or by raising taxes."
Solar radiation is no major danger to Mars astronauts.

Radiation only becomes dangerous when absorbed in large quantities, over short periods of time. According to the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council, a dose of 100 rem causes a 1.81% increase in the likelihood of cancer in the next 30 years of a person's life. Astronauts inside a spaceship during any of the last 3 large recorded solar flares would have experienced doses of 38 rem; inside of the storm shelter - 8 rem. On the surface of Mars, which offers much radiation protection due to its atmosphere, the unshielded dose would have been 10 rem, the shielded dose 3 rem. In total, radiation doses of 52.0 and 58.4 rem taken on the missions, are well below dangerous thresholds -- even were they to come all at once. [3]
No way to land safely and reliably.

There is no existing technology or one realizable in the foreseeable future, that can safely and reliably land a cargo of more than approximately one metric tonne to the surface of Mars. It is instructive to remember that to this point half of all attempts to survive the 'fifteen minutes of terror' to the Martian surface have ended in failure. Additionally, existing technologies cannot deliver a cargo to the surface of Mars that a human could survive uninjured, the g-forces experienced upon landing are too large. The difficulty is that Mars' thin shallow atmosphere make traditional atmospheric reentry technologies impossible for larger vehicles while at the same time making pure retrorocket technologies unworkable as well, it would be better that Mars had no atmosphere at all. Coupled to this is Mars' relatively large gravity compared to the Moon and you have a problem for which there are currently no solutions - short of a space elevator. Self assembling robots made up of smaller components are a distinct possibility for exploring the Martian surface, but that relegates humans to observing the activity from orbit. See also N. Atkinson: "The Mars Landing Approach: Getting Large Payloads to the Surface of the Red Planet" - July 17, 2007, Universe Today
Risks of mission to Mars are better assumed by robots

Jazz Shaw. "Robots Should Go Where Man Hesitates." Pajamas Media. July 20, 2009: "When the Mars Polar Lander entered the Martian atmosphere in 1999, it immediately fell silent and was never heard from again. It is now believed that it crashed into the wall of a canyon, smashing on the rocks far below. It was a terrible loss in terms of technology and discovery, disappointing many, but imagine our reaction if that had been a landing craft with five astronauts on board. Some risks are still best left to our machine surrogates."
Humans should send a manned mission to Mars to find life

Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. "Why Go to Mars." 2004: "We learned in the 1960s that Mars's surface has features that, as far as we can tell, can only have been made in the presence of water: standing water, running water, deluging water. There are features that look like they're floodplains. There are riverbeds that are straight and riverbeds that meander. Combine all of this, and you consider how important water is to life on Earth, you can't help but speculate that Mars was once a really wet place, possibly even harboring life at one point. So much of what drives cosmic exploration involves the quest to learn whether or not we're alone in the Universe—as an intelligent species, or as life at all. Mars being so close compared with the rest of the cosmos—it's a slam dunk as a place you want to go visit."
Public opinion favors a manned mission to Mars

"Poll: Americans Say U.S. Should Go To Mars." CBS News. July 20, 2009 "A slim majority of Americans believe the United States should send astronauts to Mars despite the current economic crisis, a newly-released CBS News poll finds. [...] Fifty-one percent of those surveyed back the journey to Mars. Forty-three percent opposed it. In 2004, 48 percent said the U.S. should send astronauts to Mars, while in 1999 that figure was 58 percent."
Willingness of astronauts to go to Mars does not justify mission

Jazz Shaw. "Robots Should Go Where Man Hesitates." Pajamas Media. July 20, 2009: "It’s not that American heroes are in short supply. The waiting list of brave, daring professionals hoping to enter the space program is massive, and many stand ready to risk their lives to advance the cause of science and push mankind past any and all boundaries. But is this really the way we wish to spend those lives?"
Affirmative action only deprives whites of unearned opportunities.

Michel Rosenfeld. "Affirmative Action and Justice: A Philosophical Inquiry." New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press. (1991): "affirmative action plan is precisely tailored to redress the losses in prospects of success [by blacks and women] attributable to racism and sexism, it only deprives innocent white males of the corresponding undeserved increases in their prospects of success…."
Schools have right to improve diversity in ways of their choosing

"Affirmative Action." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. April 1, 2009: "Diversity is many things—so many things, in fact, that institutions will think it worthwhile to concentrate on some diversity factors rather than others. One college may emphasize admitting foreign students; another may make its mission to educate poor students; a third may specialize in getting science students who have shown unusual promise in high school. If colleges have a legally protected interest in choosing a diverse student body, why don't they have a legally protected interest in deciding which part of the diversity spectrum to single out for special attention? If they can single out a part of the spectrum, why can't they use a simple device like set-asides to effect their purpose?"
Affirmative action makes race only a small "plus" for candidates.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Affirmative Action". October 10th, 2007: "racial or ethnic background, at Harvard, might be deemed a 'plus' in a particular applicant's file, yet it does not insulate the individual from comparison with all other candidates for the available seats.…This kind of program treats each applicant as an individual in the admissions process. The applicant who loses out on the last available seat to another candidate receiving a “plus” on the basis of ethnic background will not have been foreclosed from all consideration for that seat simply because he was not the right color or had the wrong surname. It would mean only that his combined qualifications…did not outweigh those of the other applicant. His qualifications would have been weighed fairly and competitively, and he would have had no basis to complain of unequal treatment under the Fourteenth Amendment."
Affirmative action wrongly takes from one group to give to another.

Punishing one group in order to compensate another is inherently wrong, particularly when the wrongs are generations in the past. This is what is happening in the case of affirmative action. Whites are being deprived of opportunities simply on the basis of the color of their skin and how that relates to past injustices done by their white ancestors to blacks (or other minorities). This action of taking from one group to give to another is wrong.
Diverse schools receive poor ratings from students

"Diversity and Affirmative Action: The State of Campus Opinion". Stanley Rothman, S. M. Lipset, and Neil Nevitte. 2002: The article shows an inverse relationship between the number of minorities on campus and the favorable ratings students give of the quality of their education. Students on majority-white campuses were shown to be more negative about the quality of their education the more blacks the campuses enroll. This study does more than indict affirmative action if taken at face value; it provides a reason for resegregation!"
Affirmative action contradicts the notion of meritocracy.

In a meritocracy, equal opportunity is essential. Every individual must have the equal opportunity to demonstrate their merit, and gain reward on the basis of that merit. Yet, Affirmative Action creates race as a factor in providing individuals with rewards. Instead of earning a reward such as a certain high paying job through merit, Affirmative Action opens the potential that race will be the determining factor for that reward being assigned to an individual. It makes unequal access to opportunities, violating both the notion of equal opportunity and meritocracy.
Diversity improves group decision-making

Stephen Cranston. "The argument for diversity." Financial Mail. December 4, 2009: "in the US, experiments by Scott Page of the University of Michigan found that a diverse group was better at solving complex problems than experts. The reason is that people with similar qualifications or professional training often think alike. Adding people with different skills, backgrounds and life experiences tended to improve the group's performance. And there is no doubt that the monocultural management at Anglo and Barlows was no longer appropriate in the 1990s and beyond."
Affirm action wrongly considers race over econ/edu factors

Economic or educational disadvantages do not necessarily correlate to those of a particular racial/ethnic status. There are many examples of wealthy well educated black youths that have experienced every society advantage there is. There are also examples of white youths that have lived in economic and educational squaller. If it is economic and educational disadvantages that are the problem, why not focus in affirmative action on these criteria instead of race and ethnicity.
Affirmative action is only way to level playing field

There are many ways in which society is unequal today, and which cannot change without institutional help: 1. Past historical discrimination severely limited access to educational opportunities and job experiences. 2. Ostensible measures of "merit" may well be biased toward the same groups who are already empowered. 3. Regardless of overt principles, people in positions of power are likely to hire people they already know or people from similar backgrounds, or both. This means that racism may not change on its own, and requires an institutional approach such as affirmative action to level the playing field.
Anomaly of "poor white Appalachian" less important than broad racism

Opponents of Affirmative Action argue that it is unfair to the "poor white male from Appalachia" to give the wealthy black neurosurgeon's son an advantage in school admittance. Yet, the problem with this idea is that ignores the fact that there are for more poor blacks as a result of institutional racism. This relative disadvantage of blacks is what drives the need for affirmative action. As Charles R. Lawrence III and Mari J. Matsuda write in their 1997 book "We Won't Go Back: Making the Case for Affirmative Action": "All the talk about class, the endless citings of the ‘poor white male from Appalachia,’ cannot avoid the reality of race and gender privilege."
Youth playing violent games exhibit more aggression.

Paul Boxer. "It's up to parents to enforce a ban on violent video games." NJ.com. July 1st, 2011: "High-profile events such as teenagers getting inspired by the actions of a violent video game character can be tragic, but they also distract from the large body of knowledge that has accumulated on the impact of violent media on children. Since the early 1970s, scientists have observed very clear, frequently replicated and strikingly robust effects. In experimental studies, children who view violent television shows or films — or who play violent video games — are significantly more likely to behave aggressively in comparison to children who view nonviolent television shows or films, or who play nonviolent video games. In long-term studies, individuals who consume violent media during childhood end up more aggressive as adults, in comparison with peers who consume nonviolent media during childhood. The studies that have produced such findings now number in the hundreds. The effects have been seen in children from urban areas, as well as suburban and rural areas; in the United States, as well as many other Western and non-Western nations."
Youths can test/find their own identity in violent games.

Cheryl Olson. ¨It’s Perverse, but It’s Also Pretend.¨ The New York Times. June 27, 2011: "a teen can try out different identities — how it feels to be a hero, a trickster, a feared or scorned killer, or someone of a different age or sex — in the safe fantasy world of a video game."
Ban makes parents' job easier.

Tamika Mallory. "Failure To Ban Violent Video Games Makes Job Harder For Parents." News One. July 1, 2011: "As a mother of a teenage son, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve walked into a room and turned off a video game or TV program that I felt was inappropriate for a still developing child. But despite how often I pull the plug or refuse to let him buy certain products, the reality is that our Supreme Court just made my job and the job of other parents that much more difficult. Ruling on Monday that violent and dangerous video games could not be banned to minors, the Supreme Court in essence said to all of us: you’re on your own."