People treat the debates like a poll. "Vote for who you already agreed with." and I can Prove it.

"Perhaps others are able to draw natural conclusions that you are unable to grasp." What does this have to do with anything? I'll admit that I am unable to grasp how this statement answers the one you seem to suggest it answers. "If a crowd does not provide any given idea with validity, then the idea does not matter and eventually dies..." This is not an attack but I question your sanity. Are you seriously suggesting that if enough people disregard gravity, the universe will fly apart? "Public opinion denotes factuality very much so." Public opinion correlates with factuality but does not cause it, and in fact has no impact on it what so ever. Opinion is the perception of an event, and factuality is the event itself. To say that perception effects reality directly is like saying that the baby who covers up his eyes to hide during peek-a-boo is actually blacking out the world. It's a basic logic concept, correlation does not denote causation. For example, dodge viper ownership correlates closely with affluence, this does not mean purchase of a dodge viper will make one rich. "People are smart, much smarter today than ever before…" That's debatable in and of itself. While IQ scores have gone up ever since we developed a test for them, whether or not those tests actually measure what we call intelligence, as opposed to skill at taking tests, is unknown. "…why haven't you posted the results to "prove it" as you've claimed?" I did, and here I will again. But if you're referring to my previous experiments, they were on unrelated forums and irc chat rooms from ages ago and I will not reprint those private conversations here assuming I even logged them at the time, and could find the logs now. I did the experiments for my own edification, I was not looking to publish. "I have a high school diploma, as do the majority of the users on this site, so we're not only qualified to think logically, but we possess the education to critique a debate and vote accordingly." Having the ability to do something and actually doing it are wildly different things. Beyond that, Jay Leno has made spectacularly funny examples of just how dim the average American can be. But anyway, for the record, I'm a drop out with a GED and some college (54 hours 3.1 GPA). You'll not hear me being classist about ‘education'. Many of our species greatest minds were self-educated. This ideological reliance on formal education to grant the attribute ‘intelligent' is a relatively recent phenomenon, and stems mainly from the government's desire to tell us what to think. Asimov wrote a great article entitled "What Is Intelligence, Anyway?" about education and intelligence. You've touched an an interesting subject, quite separate from the main point. "…don't you think people will see right through what you're doing?" Perhaps. The question is however what will they do if and when they do? Do I expect them to cheat? By say voting for what they disagree with just to 'prove' me wrong? No, simple stubbornness or loyalty to an idea will prevent that in most cases. Do I expect them to say to themselves "This guy's an idiot, of course I'll read the debate and vote accordingly, no matter my personal position!" Well, that's one of my goals. "I see many things. I see plans, within plans." -‘Third Stage' Guild Navigator _David Lynch's Dune, 1984. "I think it may be a deceitful and possibly spiteful way to insult someone's intelligence and maneuver them into voting for your debate." My position in the sample debates was that anyone who voted for me did so without reason beyond preconceived opinion, as I did not present a single argument. Why would I set out to insult people who agree with me? Besides, even if that were the case, why would it be a bad thing? I don't really want people who don't bother to think on my side anyway, they're a liability. I'm not looking for yes-men I'm looking for independent, thinking, humans. This entire debate is moot, I got votes without arguing in the other debates. That's proof positive people do not read debates and vote merely with their prejudice. The only thing left to debate is degree. You've stepped on a daisy cutter solo, but at least it was for a good cause, we got people thinking. :) --- Here again are the links to the debates in question. http://www.debate.org... http://www.debate.org... http://www.debate.org...