Ragnar_rahl should join Social's tourny

First, it is important to understand that we can never know exactly how much value can be obtained from doing a debate on DDO until after it is completed. The same goes with how much value is expended. This is because we never know if an opponent is going to forfeit their rounds, or if they are going to argue the exact same arguments you've heard a thousand times. So, just like with investing in the stock market or a bogo hooker, it is all about BELIEVING that you'll get more bang for your wang. Looking at my opponent's past, we can see that he has easily demonstrated that he believes that debates on DDO are a worthwhile investment of his time and effort. He has participated in more DDO debates than the vast majority of DDO members [2]. This shows that he consistently views that he gets more out of the debates than he puts in. And being that he has been in 145 debates, one cannot really say that he tried it at first, and didn't like it, as that would be more convincing if he had only done a handful of debates, not 145. This shows that he viewed that they were worth the value, and upon completion of those debates, that view was reinforced. Now, this brings us to the next point. Most of my opponent's debates were from a long time ago. In fact, he hardly ever does debates anymore [1], only 2 in the last 4 months. This would seem to indicate that he use to find the debates meaningful, but no longer does. This seems consistent with marginal value. The more debates he does, the less valuable they become. However, the reverse is also true. The longer he goes without debates, the more valuable they become, and he has been without debates for a while, so it stands to reason that their value is growing. We can also see that he has recently started doing debates again. His most recent (apart from this one) is right here [3]. This is a debate that he started with a new member. We can see from the OP, that the new member put a lot of work into it (or copy and pasted, not sure, didn't check), and so my opponent knew that the debate was not likely to be forfeited. Also, the debate was religious based, and so my opponent should have known that there is an insanely small chance of actually changing him opponent's mind on the matter (religion is one subject that is practically cemented down in online forums). So if he didn't take the debate for an easy win, nor to actually change someone's mind, we must assume that he did it for his own enjoyment. Thus indicating that the value of debates to him is starting to reach the tipping point. We can also see from starting this debate with me, that he must be holding some value in debates, for if he just wanted to say "no" there are far more energy and time conserving methods to do so. Ergo, he must get something out of this. Looking at the opponents that he has chosen to debate in these recent debates shows that he is willing to debate new people, to see new views. He has never debated me before, nor has he debated DAN123. Therefore, we know that he places some value in debating new people that he hasn't debated before. In social's tourny, of which I requested he join, he has only debated against 2 of the signed up members, and has only done 3 debates against them. So most of the people there will be new to him. So because we can assume that my opponent is logical and doesn't do things for random, non-value reasons, we can assume that we will likely get value out of the debates in this tournament, at least the odds of getting value are stacked great enough to match the odds of which he has acted on in the past. [1] . http://www.debate.org... [2] . http://www.debate.org... [3] . http://www.debate.org...