Pick your own debate!

First, theory: Vagueness ////////////////////// In my opponent's analysis of my unemployment contention he states that unemployment is "not necessarily" bad and that it -could- result in a -possibly- good situation. When I pressed him for advocacy on a situation, he says he has none. Basically he's saying there's many situations that could happen and he's not going to advocate a specific one. This is vagueness. I can't attack any potential situations because he refuses to advocate one. This is simply unfair: 1. Destroys clash Vagueness is unfair because I can't effectively engage his position if I don't know what it is until his later speeches. 2. Moving target Vagueness is unfair because he can just kick out of all my responses by narrowing his advocacy down to something that they don't apply to. 3. Education disrupted Instead of focusing on the issue, we're forced to focus on the technicalities in order to understand the issue. This means less education overall in the round. Fairness is a voting issue: 1. Levels the playing field. A fair playing field is necessary to adjudicate the round in terms of which side did the better debating, and voting on theory is necessary because forcing me into a theoretical discussion hinders my ability to engage any other arguments. 2. Check abuse. Fairness is a necessary check against abuse, otherwise debaters would always have an incentive to utilize unfair arguments as no-risk issues. 3. Key to education. Fairness is more important than substance or any theoretical standards because if debaters can't fairly engage is substantive discussion they won't have any incentive to debate, meaning that we can't access the benefits of education or any other standards. 4. Reject opposition. Rejecting the opposing team sends a message that argument that destroy fairness are inherently detrimental; voting against them is the most effective way to do this. Constructive: Dropped Argument: Robots are unpredictable ////////////////////// Extend my analysis on tabula rasa. My opponent has conceded my point that robots are unpredictable. This is very important. Don't let my opponent try to counter this point. A dropped argument is like a dropped egg, once it's dropped it cannot be fixed again. Rebuttals: "is" interpretation ////////////////////// "what I meant is that he must show the cause-effect link that he claims between the development of advanced artificial intelligence and detriment to humanity to necessarily be the case." I can accept this, except for the "necessarily be the case". He says he "understands where I'm coming from". Extend my two reasons for preferring the "likely to be" interpretation as my opponent has not attacked them. I'm "pessimistic" ////////////////////// This is a blatant ad-hominem: "A debater commits the Ad Hominem Fallacy when he introduces irrelevant personal premisses about his opponent. Such red herrings may successfully distract the opponent or the audience from the topic of the debate." [3] Not a voting issue. Giving robots morals ////////////////////// My opponent's answer to all possible scenarios seems to be to give robots "morals". Well, 1) Extend my robots are unpredictable analysis. This alone defeats this point as even if a programmer should "install" morals, the unpredictability of extremely advanced artificial intelligence means the robots could circumvent or misinterpret the installed morality. 2) Morals are relative. Who is to say that one programmer feels humans are evil and it would be moral to allow them to be killed? Or another programmer upholds consequentialism over deontology. Point being: there is no universal moral truth. 3) What is the likelihood that every single robot programmer would install "morals" into every single robot? Governments would certainly have an incentive not to in order to order to create war machines (more on this later). It would only take a few non-moral robots to wreak massive havoc on humanity. Robots will have no use for us ////////////////////// "this is assuming that robots will inevitably treat us with disdain, rather than with a sense of debt and gratitude that we created them." This doesn't even counter my argument. I never said the robots would hate us, they would simply view us as an inferior species. Let me quote my impacts: "All we should expect is that we humans are treated by the machines as slave workers, energy producers or curiosities in zoos." Humans use oxen as slave workers to carry things, we put apes in zoos as curiosities, and we use plants as energy producers. Do humans hate oxen, apes, or plants? No, we just view them as inferior and thus we use them to whatever ends we want. This is the same thing that will happen to humans. ""Why should humans listen to our elderly when they want care, if they are growing senile and thus less intelligent than us?"; or "Why should humans listen to the mentally disabled, when they beg for help, when we are far more intelligent than them?"" Again, missing the point. Comparing human to human and robot to human is not relevant. Remember, robots will treat us as an inferior species, as we will be. Robots will think of humans the same way we think of oxen: useful, inferior, and we can use them for whatever we want. Animals are inferior to us, and we do use them to whatever end we want. My opponent states humans have compassion, but how many humans don't want to use animals at all? Peta is the only organization that has this goal, and it only has 750,000[1] members out of 6,812,800,000[2] people in the world. Even if robots COULD have compassion or "morals", that doesn't defeat this point. Unemployment ////////////////////// "And lastly, he assumes that unemployment is a negative. This is not necessarily the case - if we are no longer employed, and indeed have no reason to search for employment (given that robots have taken control of this), then we have more time for leisure activity, and more time to make our own entertainment. There is an obvious benefit to being given more time to pursue our own interests, separate from the 9-5 demands of everyday work." Entertainment requires money, which requires employment "we may get a pension similar to what we give our elderly at present" No, cross-apply robots are a superior species. "But even if not, and we are "left to fend for ourselves", then we can still survive as an agrarian society. We did so for many centuries before the Industrial Revolution, and we can do so again. Sure, it would be a different lifestyle from the one we have at present, but there's no reason to presume it to be a bad one." When pressed if he advocates this scenario (agriculture society) he says he does not: "No, I'm not. I'm saying that if that scenario were to come about, just as if the "pensioned retirement of the human race" scenario that I also outlined were to come about, I wouldn't mind. Advocacy would imply that I have a preference - which would also imply that I believe there to be benefits or harms associated with such scenarios - which I don't." My opponent thus does not provide any alternative to capitalism. Under capitalism we must have employment to have leisure and entertainment (and housing, food, etc.). Thus this is a vague point, cross-apply vagueness and don't let him provide an alternative in the next speech on the grounds of fairness. War Robots ////////////////////// My opponent says I don't provide a link. He obviously ignored my evidence. Governments will want to use robots as opposed to humans for war because they "can be ordered into action without delay or resistance" and are "self-replicat[ing]". Extend my war contention. [1] http://answers.encyclopedia.com... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org... [3] http://www.fallacyfiles.org...