The Science of Rights

Thank you, Mike 10-4. Given the format of this debate, I will state my primary arguments against the video in this Round. I will reserve any rebuttal of my opponent's Round 2 remarks for Round 3. I must begin by noting a dilemma. After I posted my acceptance, I did some preliminary research and very quickly discovered that, despite my opponent's odd pretense that this video was something he merely stumbled across, he is in fact the creator of the video and the author of the video's primary source: http://www.amazon.com.... Thus, while I stand by my initial assessment - the video is nonsense - I've no desire to be mean about it. Here's this guy who had an idea, took the time to write a book and self-publish it, and who's been pushing this same idea for close to three years through whatever platforms he can find. In most of the debates he's had on this site, regardless of the topic, he's circled back to this same content. Seems like the idea is important to him. Why tear the guy down? It serves no good purpose. It's more important to be kind than to be right sometimes, you know?I've written versions of a response that more or less stop here, and I still think that may be the wiser course. But I've also no desire to concede. So, perhaps foolishly, I'm going to try to thread the needle here. I'm going to give the video more credit than it is due, merely by engaging with it. I'm going to do my level best to not be personally dismissive as I do so.The video has awful production valueBefore engaging with the ideas the video presents, let's take a look at its flaws as a video. Most immediately evident, the narration is performed by a synthesized text-to-speech voice, and not a very good one at that. Even state-of-the-art synthesized speech sounds awful compared to human inflection and intonation. [1] The grating vocals alone render the video nearly unwatchable.The video contains many clichéd visual elements, including a waving American flag background, a galactic background, and a Star Wars-style slanted text scroll. The video punctuates nearly every sentence with apparently public domain still images devoid of any personality or artistry. The video dips and zooms into these images somewhat nauseatingly, and animates them with random powerpoint-style transitions.The audio jumps around in volume, particularly at the end - I would not recommend headphones - and is replete with irritating sound effects (buzzers, golf balls, etc.) and silly music.Twice during the video, the text on the screen appears in Comic Sans, which my opponent unfortunately also used as the typeface for the cover of his book. This is a terrible design error for any sort of writing intended for serious consumption.Because of its low production value, the video serves as a poor vehicle to convey my opponent's ideas, regardless of their merit.The video is incoherentI've neither the space nor the inclination to engage in a point by point refutation of the video. I'll instead grapple with the general tone and major themes in the video, and save specific rebuttals for those points my opponent chooses to emphasize in subsequent rounds.The central thesis of the video - although never clearly stated either in the video or by my opponent - is that people have individual, inalienable rights (specifically to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as phrased in the Declaration of Independence) which naturally derive from certain scientific principles. My opponent seems to feel that the source of Jefferson's "unalienable rights" must be susceptible to deduction from some underlying empirical or scientific principle for it to be "true." The video reflects no awareness of, much less any attempt to grapple with, the foundational thought of Hobbes and Locke in understanding Jefferson's concept of natural rights. I find it instructive to review the Woodrow Wilson quote that the video misunderstands within its first minute. My opponent claims that Wilson believed that inalienable rights are "nonsense." In fact, Wilson was criticizing sloppy thinking about individual rights - the "nonsense" Wilson dismissed was the "mere vague sentiment and pleasing speculation...put forward as fundamental principle." [2] This is precisely the intellectual error committed by my opponent, who attempts to elevate his musings on unconnected concepts into "scientific" proof for his peculiar theory of rights.My opponent's attempts to map dissimilar concepts onto each other is illustrated by his attempt to correspond the phrase "survival of the fittest," to the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Both phrases, of course, are derived from entirely dissimilar fields, and serve as pithy summaries of complicated philosophical and scientific concepts from differing intellectual traditions - Darwinian natural selection and Lockean natural rights theory, respectively. My opponent attempt to merge these two unrelated ideas by means of absurd leaps of verbal logic, but makes no further attempt to reconcile the (again, highly dissimilar) ideas behind their one-phrase summaries. [3] Throughout the video, the argument presented depends on the observations of "symmetry" between dissimilar ideas, but the symmetries identified are entirely superficial and completely fail to engage on the level of substantive concepts in science or political theory.My opponent relies heavily on something called the "constructal law." I won't go so far as to dismiss the "constructal law" as outright pseudoscience - there does appear to be some peer-reviewed analysis of the concept - but it is a niche idea with few proponents, and has been criticized (fairly, it seems) for its vague formulation and lack of testable predictions. [4] Even if one were to assume its validity as a scientific principle - a leap, at this point, given the lack of rigorous definition - my opponent draws an unjustified equivalence between Jefferson's formulation of rights and the constructual law. My opponent simply asserts that these things are the same, but gives no substantive reasoning behind this position. The video makes its case by superimposing the words "life," "liberty," pursuit" and "happiness" over a powerpoint slide of the constructual law, as if that is sufficient to prove his point. (I suppose the video also suggests you hold your breath for a while to prove how "freedom" is important - again, I found this less than compelling reasoning.)You should watch something else insteadI've watched Pro's video, so you don't have to. If you're in the mood to watch something absurd, I say it should at least be intentionally absurd. Hand-drawn Warner Bros. animation is an American classic. Check it out.Or, perhaps, if you wish to actually think seriously about Enlightenment-era rights theory, you might enjoy something on John Locke:[1] http://www.technologyreview.com...[2] https://archive.org.... My opponent deeply and unfairly mischaracterizes Wilson, as indeed the entire point of the paragraph is that liberty is inherently personal and individualistic - i.e., inalienable. See also https://archive.org....[3] http://tvtropes.org...[4] http://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de...