BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Are there Rules in Warfare

I accept the challenge. There are rules in warfare. Armies cannot shoot at medics or attack hospitals attack men carrying the white flag or shooting men who are parachuting from a plane in distress and when they land they must be given a chance to surrender unless. it is apparent that they are engaging in a hostile act or attempting to escape. This does not include airborne troops, special forces, commandos, spies, saboteurs, liaison officers, and intelligence agents even if there plane is in distress. Counties cannot fight a war unless they have a distinctive uniform. Con will have to prove that these are not rules of warfare.
[Short Debate]: This House Would Ban Alcohol

Thanks to my opponent for agreeing to this debate and having such a quick response. REFUTATIONS: My Opponent says that banning alcohol creates more productivity, while I have a source that directly says that this is not the case [1], as well as saying that there are no shortages of abseneeism. By banning alcohol you are playing a game of "you want this, dontcha? too bad! " with the consumer, and because of that they would actually want that more. In fact, alcohol in moderation actually increases productivity within society [2]. My Opponent says that banning alcohol creates a more obedient society, but how is this the case when people are fighting each other, kidnapping others, and killing each other over a few drinks? He cites no sources for this massive claim of advancing society, so we must automatically negate this conention. Part of the BoP for my opponent is stating that it is both societally and morally just to ban alcohol, while he only makes points that benefits society, not morality, so we must automatically negate his case. In my Opponent's case, he spells out the example of teenagers studying more, doing school work, and excersizing, and for adults "doing philosphy", attending college, and researching, yet he has no proof that people would do this in place of drinking alcohol. People often use alcohol to escape these kinds of activities, so we must negate this contention. My Opponent says that if we ban alcohol, then teenagers would stop drinking as a direct result. In a country where drinking is illegal for teens, we cannot say that they will stop, because it is already illegal and they are breaking the law by doing it anyways, so we must automatically negate this example. [1] . http://www.cato.org...;[control+f productivity][2] . http://www2.potsdam.edu...;In
[Short Debate]: This House Would Ban Alcohol

I affirm the resolution that states Resolved: It is a morally just, as well as societally just, idea to ban alcohol from the general public. I agree with my opponents definitions. Contention 1: Banning alcohol creates more productivity. Productivity is key for society as it helps achieves things and creates a better world. The lack of productivity in an alcohol ridden world is vast. For example, employers loose thousands of hours of work due to "hungover" employees coming in. However, problems like such are eliminated with the banning of alcohol. There will be more efficient workers, less car accidents (DWI eliminated), and such forth. Contention 2: Banning alcohol increases general health. Health is important for the well being of society. However, alcohol deteriorates the public's health with many binge drinking deaths, liver damage, and brain cell loss. These are all substantial problems which can be eliminated with there not being alcohol. There will be none of this if alcohol is banned, leading to a healthier society. Contention 3: Banning alcohol creates a more obedient society, thus societally just. As we all know, there are many problems under the influence of alcohol. Many people are "angry drunks" for example. With the consuption of alcohol, people become disrupt with bar fights, destruction of homes while drunk (house is "wrecked" after party), and more. Where alcohol is banned, none of this will occur, which will therefore create a more obedient society as there won't be any disruptions caused by drunks. Contention 4: Banning alcohol advances society. Instead of "coming down for a beer" there are so many things that can be done. For teens, they could be studying more for class, doing school work, exercising, and such forth. And for adults, people can do philosophy, research, attend college again, and more things, thus creating a better society. For these reasons I affirm and will refute next round
Seniors in high school should be treated ultimately better than "lower classmen"

We seem to be debating different things here. I am debating that seniors, in general, should be treated better by the system (and since you talked about taxes paying for an equal education I assumed we were talking about the system). You are debating that freshmen should not be mistreated. I have no problem with that, but I don't think that is the topic. To make my position clear, everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, but due to the increased responsibility and expirience that comes with being a senior, seniors should get more respect. Now, for the arguements. 1). Being a good student comes with its own perks regardless of age. But apart from that, the school system should give preference to expirience. 2). I have never heard of a freshman graduating, and anyways graduating early, like being a good student, has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. I don't know any freshmen with jobs either. Responsibility is undeniably greater (in general) among seniors. 3). I'm not argueing for hazing. I, personally, have never been hazed. I am arguing that seniors generally deserve better treatment. That does not mean I think freshmen should get treated like crap. 4). Seniors ARE veterans in high school. They've been through more, and deserve better treatment because of it. Like I said, that doesn't mean under classmen should be mistreated. 5). I'm starting to feel like I'm being redundant. Expirience and responsibility should win. 5).
Seniors in high school should be treated ultimately better than "lower classmen"

Alright, I'm going to hit your arguments one at a time. 1. You stated that seniors are generally "more knowledgable and mature". What of the lower classmen that are considerably mature and intelligent for their age, possibly more so than seniors? They also get no respect and are treated as if they are nothing in comparison to seniors who don't seem to care. 2. Many freshman plan to graduate early and receive scholarships, so they are preparing for college, many have jobs, and many responsibilities of their own, so their benifits may actually be better than the seniors', so that eliminates that argument. 3. True, it is an incentive to stay in school, but the ridicule and emotional abuse lower classmen experience sure isn't and many times outweighs 1 year of special treatment. 4. Seniors aren't yet "verterans". They haven't graduated yet. Yes, noob is an insult, so it shouldn't be used. I'm not saying to bring the seniors treatment down, but bring the freshamn's up. Yes, seniors should still have certain privilages (days off, etc.) but they shouldn't be able to get away with putting down lower classmen. It's one of the larger reasons lower classmen hate school. 5. Like I said before, it's the emotional treatment lower classmen receive. es, seniors should get privilages, but they shouldn't be treated as if they are any better than everyone else.
Seniors in high school should be treated ultimately better than "lower classmen"

Now, this is a two round debate, so I'm going to assume that your position does not get much more in depth than your original post. All I have to do is prove that seniors should be treated better, and let's try not to bicker about the definition of a vague word like "better." 1). In general, seniors are more knowledgable and mature than under classmen. 2). Seniors are preparing for college, probably have a job, and have considerably more responsibilities. So they should get some benefits out of all this. 3). It is an ever so small incentive to stay in school. 4). Our society respects veterans of anything. A person who has been somewhere longer than another has something over them. Noob is an insult. The fact of the matter is that if you tried to treat a senior as if he were a freshman the senior would be insulted. Kids hate school enough as it is, they don't need to be treated the same as freshman who don't know anything. 5). This treatment isn't really unequal, anyway. If you stick through school long enough, everyone will be treated the same in the end. What would be really unfair would be an underclassman seeing the seniors get better treatment, finally becoming a senior, and then still get treated like an underclassman. Obviously there is much more that could be said in defense of preferential treatment of seniors, but this should suffice.
Seniors in high school should be treated ultimately better than "lower classmen"

Education is an opportunity given to students theoretically free of cost, taken into account of course that taxes do pay salaries, build facilities, etc. Education is a gift given to each generation in America and it should not be considered a trying matter. It should not be though of as forced upon you in any way! Yes, the law does dictate that every child in America is required to attend school, but that is only to ensure that student make choices that will ultimately enhance their life and ensure that everyone has equal opportunity. So, why is it that just because seniors have the same gift that "lower classmen" have and will ultimately complete as well, the seniors are treated as if they are special and better than everyone else? Whatever happened to equality? Because of this, I see no other vote than for the negative.
factory farms should be illegal

We all know that the process of is gross, but many Americans still eat bologna though the process of how it is made is terrible.Contention 1: Employment “In some countries, governments give tax breaks to companies that source locally, allowing them to pass on the lower cost to consumers,” Financial Times reported. “Price can be decisive in wooing low-income consumers to try branded products.”Factory farms put into the comunity locally and this helps employment, though they may look for low income earners they still higher those who will take the jobs in rual areas and this provides a great amount of jobs as I have stated in my last round. (http://realtruth.org...) There have also been factory farms that communities are even starting to live off of as the factory farms are giving back to the community by donating money to build schools and hospitals. (http://benefitof.net...) So making this illegal will harm the job sector and my opponent's source brought up that the workers are undocumented Latinos, but they are just trying to make a living for their families and this is what helps builds their family units as they are trying to live a better life then what they did have and closing down factory farms will harm the Latino Community and the average Latino.Contention 2: Cheeper Food and the cost of closing down.My opponent has dropped the fact that this is cheeper food and by closing down the factory farms would cause a major lose of life as without this technology we would be without 26/27 of the current population of Earth. Please extend this point across the board. Contention 3: TechnologyMy opponent has dropped how the industry has caused major technological advancements, so please extend that across. A spokesperson for the National Chicken Council explained in “Food, Inc.”: “The chicken industry has really set a model for the integration of production and processing and marketing their products that other industries are now following because they see that we have achieved tremendous economies. In a way, we are not producing chickens, we are producing food. It’s all highly mechanized, so all the birds coming off those farms have to be almost exactly the same size. What the system of intensive production accomplishes is to produce a lot of food, in a small amount of land, at a very affordable price.” (http://realtruth.org...)Contention 4: Humans>AnimalsAs I had also brought up last round that humans needs outweigh that of animals. I know this sounds harsh, but by the theory of Natrual Selection and the Survivial of the fittest. The humans are exterting their authority over the animals and we have every right to eat them. As I brought up last round factory farms have fed over 2 billion people. This is a ton of people who would starve without factory farms.
factory farms should be illegal

"If Slaughterhouses had Glass Walls everyone would be a Vegetarian" " says Paul McCartney. Cons arguments as said are that it is cheap and it has economic benefits. But what price do we pay for this? Apart from having very negative effects on the consumers" health and environment it also are very negative health effects on the workers. Animal cruelty and bad environments should not be the price we pay for cheep food. Workers are subjected to low pay and harsh environments. An unknown percentage of full-time and part-time workers are undocumented. Employers find undocumented workers to be ideal recruits because they are less likely to complain about low wages and hazardous working conditions. Workers are largely unaware of the inherent health hazards and social struggles they will encounter in this industry. "If you haven"t been in a hen plant, you don"t know what h*ll is, chicken sh*t is piled six feet high, and your lungs burn like you took a torch to 'em." Says a report on a rolling stone article. Although it has made jobs, these are not the type of working environments that are encouraged let alone legal. As far as the factory farming industry is concerned, the creatures pain, suffering, filth, sickness, crowding and environment are irrelevant as the animals get fat and can bring in a profit in ever shortening life spans. Not only that consumers are paying the price in higher taxes to subsidize the multinationals, higher environmental costs to remediate their damage, higher health costs, degraded lifestyle in the local communities, loss of the economic base of the local community and an insensitivity in the workers from constant exposure to the cruelty of the system. It is frightening enough that the Earth"s human population has nearly tripled since 1950, but even worse is that our species now eats more than five times more meat than we did back then. Humans don't need this much meat we survived back then without it we can survive now. As well as all the food being fed to factory farms can now be redirected to hungry people. http://feature.rollingstone.com... http://www.factory-farming.com... http://www.foodispower.org...
factory farms should be illegal

Contention 1: Factory Farms= Cheeper and more affordable prices. The method of factory farming is extremely cheep and more effective than traditionial farming/cageless farming. Take for instance the egg industry. If the egg industry were to switch back to traditionial methods the cost of eggs would increase by a whopping total of 40%!(http://smallfarms.cornell.edu...) "According to the Worldwatch Institute, 74 percent of the world's poultry, 43 percent of beef, and 68 percent of eggs are produced this way." ( http://en.wikipedia.org...) You can see from the above statement that a majority of our products are produced at factory farms and this shows how much of a price increase that it would cause from closing down Factory Farms. It will also take up a total of 580,000 additionial acres for farmers which takes away from their other livestock driving up prices all across the board. People who grow such foods usually place the "Organic label on the food, but those who buy such food are found to pay 20% more then food made by factory farms. Dary products would also suffer a 30% increase under the closing of factory farms. (http://eartheasy.com...) The switch is also expected to increase from the average of $6,372 to $8,232 per year. It does not seem like much, but that is a 30% increase for the average family in America. (http://www.creditloan.com...) The last large jump in dary was in 2011 when the price of milk jumped 30% from $3.30 per gallon to $4.40. There were experts perdicting that the world would face certain doom and starvation in the 1900s as the world population was growing largely, but due to factory farming and Green Technology the food production has been able to keep pace with the world population. It is said that if it weren't for this technology that we would only have 1/27th of the world's current population. Between 1961-1985, the world's ceral prodcution has more than doubled. (http://en.wikipedia.org...) Contention 2: Economic Benefits Factory farms have many economic benefits, for example, each year they provide the US with a total of 700,000 jobs. (www.foodispower.org/factory_farm_workers.htm) These jobs are mainly helping people in the rual comminity. Since the factory farms are very reliant on machinery this has caused the increase in other jobs in producing the machinerery of such equipment. (http://en.wikipedia.org...) In 2005, factory farming accounted for 40% of the Global meat production. Meaning that alone, the factory farming had helped support and feed over 2.8 billion people. (http://en.wikipedia.org...)
factory farms should be illegal

I will be arguing that factory farming should be illegal i will accept the first person who wishes to argue against. :) definition/s: factory farming- a system of rearing livestock using highly intensive methods, by which poultry, pigs, or cattle are confined indoors under strictly controlled conditions. Layout Round 1: My opponent has the choice of either using the first round for acceptance, or can present any arguments that they may have. If they present an argument R1, they must only enter ""no round as agreed" in the last round or consent to a full, seven point forfeit. If they only use Round 1 for acceptance, the debate proceeds as normal. Round 2: Initial Arguments/Rebuttals Round 3: New Arguments/Rebuttals Round 4: Concluding statements and final rebuttals.
Colonization of Space, Luna, and Mars in the next 20 years.

You said: "I never once said the forests or crops would be planted in the moons soil, or on the moon. Ever heard of bio-domes and the like? A good Sci-Fi series to watch would be Andromeda, in that series they keep some plants INSIDE their ship to help produce oxygen." Well I think we need to assume there would be forests and crops on the moon, because just having them inside ships, etc. would only be a viable (ish) solution for oxygen inside ships. If we're sustaining a colony and producing oxygen with a forest, that forest would need to be planted on the moon. Also, even a biodome uses a lot of resources from Earth, so that's not a be-all end-all solution. I think you're focusing too much on the Sci and not nearly enough on the Fi. "Plants can grow in almost anything." If we consider plants as an entire kingdom of life, this could be true. But we're talking about very specific types of plants - those that can be eaten, and trees. Crops certainly can't grow in almost anything. "But I'm sure several asteroids have brought the correct type of metals and minerals, if they weren't there before." Again, there's an issue of scale. Let's say we need tungsten to create the filaments for lightbulbs. Maybe there's a chunk of tungsten in an asteroid 100 miles from our colony, but we need much more than a chunk - we need enough to mine, process, and use on a large scale. The presence of the necessary elements isn't enough - abundance matters just as much. "Of course the moon would mostly be a launching pad for colonizing Mars, which has plenty of known resources at its disposal(Which includes water.)" To my knowledge, Mars has ice which we believe to be water ice. I don't believe we've discovered any flowing water. If we were to use this ice, we'd need to cut away chunks of it from the poles, transport it to a more temperate region of the planet, and melt it. Also, if we're going to be mining Mars for resources, we'd need to transport a whole lot of previously made equipment to the planet - it's not like we can just grab a rock, start chipping away, find some iron, and build a house. All in all, I think the ideas you have are inviable in the time period you laid out, and your argument relies on a lot of assumptions that you haven't convinced me should be accepted.
Colonization of Space, Luna, and Mars in the next 20 years.

"First of all, a forest and crops would require water, which you've already acknowledged is a problem. Secondly, forests and crops don't grow in anything - they grow in nutrient-rich soil. The surface of the moon is rocky and hard. Finally, you assume a forest on the moon could produce oxygen. An atmosphere is required to keep that oxygen around long enough for it to be breathed by humans, and carbon dioxide is required for that oxygen to be produced in the first place." Erk.. You're getting a little off track here. I never once said the forests or crops would be planted in the moons soil, or on the moon. Ever heard of bio-domes and the like? A good Sci-Fi series to watch would be Andromeda, in that series they keep some plants INSIDE their ship to help produce oxygen. Also, the surface of the moon is actually rather dusty. I'm not much of a farmer, but some treatment might make it possible to use for growing crops. Plants can grow in almost anything. "Making energy requires initial energy to run the power plant, and a system of distribution, both of which I see being a huge problem on the moon." A power plant on the moon was what I was getting at. But solar panels would help as well. As for distribution, of course "power lines" wouldn't work. Underground pipes might be more appropriate. "All of that being said, I'd like to add one more thing: In hypothesizing about colonizing space, I think one's imagination tends to take entirely too many things for granted. The majority of items used every day by people (pencils, silverware, toothbrushes, toilets, linens, lightbulbs, glass, plastic, etc.) are made from resources that are most likely either not found on the moon, or not found in sufficient quantities to refine and turn into products. I believe that if a colony on the moon were to exist, the vast majority of its everyday items would be imports from Earth." I'll grant you that this hypothesis relies heavily on whether or not there are enough of the correct type of resources on the moon. But I'm sure several asteroids have brought the correct type of metals and minerals, if they weren't there before. Of course the moon would mostly be a launching pad for colonizing Mars, which has plenty of known resources at its disposal(Which includes water.).