BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
The death penalty should be banned

So... not sure what to say, but as I was talking about earlier, if a person commits a deed so horrendous, what choice do we have but to punish them to the best of our ability? Should we let them sit in jail, eating food, laughing, enjoying their life, while their victim may be dead, paralyzed, in a coma. And how about the victim's family? Do they not get to mourn for their loved one? And do they not seek vengeance for their loved one? How would you feel if your brother was shot in cold blooded murder, or if your sister was raped, or if your father died in a house fire that was caused by an arsonist? Do those people who would do such horrendous acts, not deserve anything but what they did to others? According to Hammurabi's Law Code, it was said that he judged things by making everything equal; "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." This may seem harsh, and the defendant may not be in the right state of mind, but who is to say that it still isn't wrong? If i had a family member who was killed in such a way, i would guarantee you that I would push for my loved one to be remembered and given justice. I would say that it is not fair to the family and friends of the deceased. But life is never fair, anyway; however this is our way of making it more fair.
The death penalty should be banned

My opponent states "The Death Penalty does not necessarily deter crime rates." I never stated that it did, however the principle of a crime being shown in public, usually gives other criminals at least the thought of the consequences. But if it actually lowers it than i am not sure. However, according to the Census of 2006, Texas, the state with the most amount of executions, has a smaller crime rate than others states that dont use the death penalty, either as much or at all. https://www.census.gov... The Site that is here, states that the state with the highest crime rate is South Carolina. And South Carolina has killed a total of 0 criminals in the last five years. Texas has killed a total of 73 criminals. If you scroll to the bottom of both of these sources, you will see that South Carolina has a higher crime rate compared to Texas' maybe because they dont use the death penalty. http://www.disastercenter.com... This is Texas' and http://www.disastercenter.com... this is South Carolina's. The data shows that Texas is actually quite lower on the list. Now onto to the topic of botched lethal injections. This topic is very iffy, because knowing whether a criminal is "feeling" tortured is not always known. I would say that criminals would not hesitate to lie, in order to get out of the punishment; i would not doubt that, however, there are certainly cases where the criminal has felt pain and therefore the state broke that citizen's 8th Amendment of No Cruel or Unusual Punishments. BTW it is in the Bill of Rights; not the Constitution. For your example, i would like to have a source on that, but i am willingly to agree to that, if you agree to the fact that for every 100 or so executions there is maybe one if even so called "botched" execution. Every since 1900, there have been about 9,000 executions; the British Journal of American Legal Studies has found that every since 1900, there have been about 270 "botched" executions. That isn't a lot of supposed "botched" executions, and of course we have to count for the fact that some of them might be lie. Overall, the idea of the death penalty not working or at least doing what it is supposed to do; kill those who have done very VERY horrendous deeds and deserve them, is not true. There is no reason on why the death penalty should not be banned. It does what it should do, although like anything else, there is room for improvement because as humans we have errors. Thank you! Your Turn! :)
The death penalty should be banned

Thanks for accepting my challenge. Now let's have some fun. I will not be posting 2 reasons every argument like I said last argument (change of plans, sorry). Nevertheless, good luck. First of all, the death penalty does not necessarily deter crime rates. Universities have wanted to, but failed to show that capital punishment deters crime. The Southern US, where 80% of executions take place in America, has a higher crime rate than the North. With the rise of lethal injections, there are more and more botched executions, leading to the victim feeling tortured before his or her death. In the United States, torturing to death is usually considered "cruel and unusual punishment", which is outlawed in the Eighth Amendment in out Constitution. Here's an example. In December 13, 2006, an execution in Florida was botched so badly that the Republican governor of Florida halted all executions in the state. What a dramatic change!
The death penalty should be banned

Hello, I'm Billy. I will be debating against the death penalty, the most extreme form of crime punishment. I will show you that the death penalty should and ought to be abolished. Here are 2 opening reasons to oppose capital punishment. (There will be 10 reasons total, 2 in each of the 5 rounds.) 1. The occasional mistake is more risky than it's worth. Let's say you accuse someone of murder, and the jury votes him as guilty and the state government executes him, but later you find out he's innocent. What would you say to his widow and children? Wouldn't they possibly end up suing the state? Executing the innocent is immorally evil and we cannot take this risk. 2. Racial and economic discrimination take part of execution. A 1980 study showed that those who killed whites are nearly 40 times likely to be executed than those who killed blacks, and it hasn't really improved these days. The poor are also more likely to be executed than the wealthy and prosperous. Black people are not only less likely to have their murderer punished, but is more prone to the death penalty. Of the 1,052 death row inmates on August 20, 1982, 42% of them were blacks, when 12% of the US population is blacks.
Scorpions have qualities that justify them being pets

It appears my opponent's account is inactive. As such, I ask that this debate be a tie. If my opponent comes back, I will refute his points and continue the debate. But as of now, I have other debate commitments and debating an inactive member is a waste of time, so I will not post in this round. Again, I ask that no one vote (Or vote to make a tie) since my opponent's account is no longer active.
Scorpions have qualities that justify them being pets

Wow, three debates on the same topic, I guess I will try to make this one interesting. Since you did not bother to define terms, I will do so Pet: an animal that is kept for noneconomic reasons, such as companionship or attractiveness Qualities: an inherent or distinguishing characteristic You must argue that it is their qualities that justify them as pets while I merely have to negate these arguments or provide counter-arguments since you hold the BOP.
Greatest NBA Player of All Time

Pro says I "didn’t acknowledge many of my points such as of course Kareems myp % will be lower because he played longer.” I feel that I have addressed the bulk of your argument. As far as Kareems MVP% being lower, I imagine that people reading are intelligent enough to understand why that is, and felt it unnecessary to address. In response to that, As I said earlier we should Also note that Bill Russell almost won twice the championships playing almost half the seasons of Kareem. Conclusion: “A five-time NBA Most Valuable Player and a twelve-time All-Star, Russell was the centerpiece of the Celtics dynasty, winning eleven NBA championships during his thirteen-year career.” (1) 11 championships out of 13 seasons... as the center piece. Kareem does not even come close. Thanks for reading! Vote Con! (1) http://en.wikipedia.org...
Greatest NBA Player of All Time

Rebuttals: MVP’s: Despite pro's claim that “as great as Russell was he did not deserve the MVP in the 1961-1962 season.” It is evident that 5/13 is greater than 6/20. In fact even if Bill Russell did not win that MVP 4/13 is still ever so slightly better than 6/20. Fact is Bill Russell was an MVP more of his career than Kareem. Scoring: I agree that Kareem was a more prolific scorer than Bill Russell. However, as Carmelo Anthony has shown, it matters not how prolific a scorer you are if your team still loses. Fact remains that Bill Russell was more of a winner than Kareem. Blocks: Pro argues that “in Russell's era players were way more likely to drive to the paint due to no 3 pt line while in Kareem's later career they didn't drive to the paint nearly as often so that is one reason he wouldn't have as many blocks.” We cant really know, as the eras of basketball were very different. On top of that Pro concedes that “Had they counted this stat in Russell's time he'd most likely be 2nd all time to Wilt.” Bill Russell wins this category. Pro says “Yes Russell won most of the times vs Wilt but Wilt almost always dominated him in their h2h matchup. Just because your team wins doesn't mean your better.” As I pointed out earlier with Carmelo as the example. Individual effort hardly matters unless it carries your team. Bill Russell was the corner stone of his team, and he carried his team to 11 Championships! Championships: This is the most important state as all other aspects of the game are to help your team win. You score to win. You rebound to win. You block shots to win. Nobody compares to Bill Russell. Not even the great Kareem. Bill’s 11 to Kareem’s 6. By itself that stat wins. Even more impressive, as I showed last round, Kareem was a champion 30% of his career. Bill Russell was for almost 85% of the time. Conclusion: This is hardly a contest. While stats are impressive, what really matters are championships. Bill Russell Wins this category almost with no contest. Bill Russell is the GOAT!
Greatest NBA Player of All Time

Rebuttals: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Jabber played 20 seasons. Bill Russell played 13 seasons. Pro says “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a 6 time mvp” 6 out of 20 is roughly 30% of his career he was an MVP. Lets contrast that with Bill Russell. 5 out of 13 seasons, that is almost 40% of his career as MVP. Bill Russell wins this comparison. Pro says of Kareem “a winner of 6 nba championships.” Out of 20 seasons that means Kareem was a champion 30% of his career. Pretty impressive. However, Bill Russell 11/13 is almost 85% of his career as a champion. Not even close. Also note that Bill Russell almost won twice the championships playing almost half the seasons of Kareem. Pro says of Kareem, he “is the all time leading scorer.” This is largely the result of playing 20 years. He averaged 24.6 points a game in his career. (1) Michael Jorden averaged 30 points a game in his career.(2) LeBron has averaged 27.5 per game in his career. (3) It is reasonable to assume that if Michael Jorden had played 20 seasons, he would have scored many more points than Kareem. Likewise if LeBron plays for 20 seasons, he will also surpass Kareem. Likewise, with blocks. Kareem’s numbers are only so high because he played 20 seasons. Kareem’s longevity is impressive. However, that does not make him the greatest NBA player ever. For example, John Stockton played 19 seasons, he is the league leader in career assists, and steals.(4) He was great there is no doubt. But if Magic Johnson had played 19 seasons, he would have had way more assists than Stockton as his career average of assists was 11.2 per game over Stockton’s 10.5 per game. Pro says “The main problem I have with Russell is that he was not a very good offensive player and that Wilt was far superior to him.” Russell was a good albeit not a great offensive player averaging 15.1 points a game in his career. However, he was amazing defensively. You say that Wilt was far superior to Russell, let us take a look. . They met several times, in fact “Wilt and Russell played against each other 142 times in 10 years. Russell's team won 88, Wilt's teams won 74. (14 game difference)”(5) Their careers occured at the same time, yet wilt only won 2 finals Bill winning 11. Both the center on their teams, and the center piece on their teams. Clearly Bill Russell wins this match up. Conclusion: Kareem was a great player. However, not the greatest ever. His scoring title while impressive is likely to be broken, as many players have averaged more points than Kareem per game in their career. It seems that it is only a matter of time until this record is broken. Bill Russell’s 11/13 championships is not likely to ever be broken. No NBA player even comes close. This is why Bill Russell is much more impressive than Kareem and ultimately the greatest NBA player ever. (1) http://www.basketball-reference.com... (2) http://www.basketball-reference.com... (3) http://www.basketball-reference.com... (4) http://en.wikipedia.org... (5) http://www.debate.org...
Greatest NBA Player of All Time

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a 6 time mvp, a 19 time all star (missed only 1 all star due to being injured for most of the first half of the season), 2 time finals mvp (should of been 4 time though), a winner of 6 nba championships. He has the best longevity of any NBA ever, be is the all time leading scorer, 3rd in career blocks (blocks werent counted for his whole career tho). And he accomplished so many more things. The main problem I have with Russell is that he was not a very good offensive player and that Wilt was far superior to him.
Greatest NBA Player of All Time

I contend that Bill Russell is the greatest basketball player of all time. His career stats are unmatched. “A five-time NBA Most Valuable Player and a twelve-time All-Star, Russell was the centerpiece of the Celtics dynasty, winning eleven NBA championships during his thirteen-year career. ” (1)11 championships out of 13 seasons. .. as the center piece. No other player even comes close. (1). http://en.wikipedia.org...
The Universe is deterministic

Thanks spacetime for accepting the challenge.This issue has been bothering me from a long time. Hours of thinking made me reach to this conclusion. The Universe is deterministic. Let me clarify that it is deterministic not in a superstitious way, like some sort of destiny or God which controls us, but more like saying that we don't have totally open option. Basic Statement:The Universe is determined because its existences is limited to a certain amount of options. Let me reduce it a bit. Imagine that you have to make a choice. In our Universe this means that you have to choose between A or B. You can't choose whatever you want, you have to choose A or B. You can't choose C, or R or 4 or whatever. Just A or B. In this way we have a certain degree of choice but we don't have the complete freedom, we are limited. I have 2 arguments that support this thesis.1 The nature of our existence scientifically limits us. Imagine a battleship board. You are in space 8A. The thing is that you want to be in 8A and in 3F too, both at the same time. As you know, we can't be in two different places at the same time. As you see, our freedom of choice is limited by the laws of nature.The nature of our existence makes the Universe determined. The laws of nature limit what we can do. We can do everything that is coheherent with them. But we can't do what we want, we can't chose to do the things nature doesn't allow us to do. This prove my deterministic statements.2 The complex design of the Universe needs determinism.Our Universe is almost perfect. The details it has are incredible. The possibility of all the coincidences that make us as we are happening at the same time is minimum. If only one little thing had happened to be different, our life would be very different, maybe impossible to exist.I believe that our life as it is would have been improbable without a determined Universe. There must be some kind of determination to allow this to happen.¿What happens with free will?If what I proposed here is correct, we don't have total free will. We can chose between certain determined options but we can't choose whatever we want. I was first disappointed with the absence of free will in this thesis, but I'm a bit consoled by knowing that we have some kind of degree of choice.
The Universe is deterministic

I really want to discuss about this because I'm not sure of my opinion. I think that the universe must be deterministic because of its excellent design and for the limits that existence itself has. However, if this is true, it means that we will never be free, which is really upsetting hahaha. To clarify some points: * It would be interesting to focus on the metaphysical implicancies of this issue and the relation with free will, religions, time-space composition and future prediction. * Determinism is the philosophical position that for every event, including human interactions, there exist conditions that could cause no other event. Other debates often concern the scope of determined systems, with some maintaining that the entire universe is a single determinate system and others identifying other more limited determinate systems (or multiverse). Numerous historical debates involve many philosophical positions and varieties of determinism. They include debates concerning determinism and free will, technically denoted as compatibilistic (allowing the two to coexist) and incompatibilistic (denying their coexistence is a possibility). https://en.wikipedia.org... *Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action. Some conceive free will to be the capacity for an agent to make choices in which the outcome has not been determined by past events. https://en.wikipedia.org... Accept the challenge if you want to debate in a educated way and always open to new ideas. I want to learn and the challenger should want the same
The Earth is older than the Bible perceives.

According to the Bible, the Earth is 6,000 years old. (http://www.gotquestions.org...) I believe the Earth is older than this, and if you believe otherwise, feel free to accept this debate with me.Rules:1. No trolling.2. Please debate respectfully.3. Try to use sources, and very reliable.4. Please do not plagiarize.Good luck.
You will discover the same laws of nature in anything and everything

"If same laws of nature can be found in anything and everything, why do we have different models like quantum mechanics and newtonian mechanics? What is the need to carry out the expensive research?" Because the models are simply progressions from the more wrong to the less wrong. And ultimately the fact that things like General Relativity do not mesh with QM is a strong indication that there is some deeper laws that unify the theories. There's some bits like E8 and others which may do this, but as we have seen from the past these are often things which, when solved, prove hugely important. There was once a shift from the Physics of Maxwell and the traditional physics of Newton. The idea that gravity worked instantly whereas light was found to travel at a specific speed. If, for example, the sun was to vanish. We should fling out off away from our curved path, and then seven minutes later suddenly see the sun vanish. Or the Physics of Aristotle which should tell us that vacuums cannot and do not exist, because things would move infinitely fast and gravity would no longer affect them and all manner of strange on goings. We have always found these forces, unified them, and found that they were all part of the same thing. The force that pulls us to the Earth is the same that makes the planets orbit. What makes magnets work, also keeps the magnets from passing through our hands. That light travels the same speed even at speeds, demands that there is no center of things. We have different rules, in different places, because the rules are imperfect. We try to make the rules match the world, and we do experiments and make them match better. And become less wrong, but the rules are imperfect. The reason we spend money and do research to try to figure out about the world, is because we know there's something to be figured out, we know this because they don't agree. And we know they should, because in the long run they always have. There's the old parable about blind men and elephants, which gives different views of the same animal by the limited perspectives we have available. We know what the tail is like, and how the ears feel. We know there's more so we build massive particle colliders, etc. http://chem.tufts.edu... - Not to dis the Socratic method, but you might want to give some reason they should be different at different levels. It's not like you need to offer a debate to learn these things. You can really just Google them rather than ask here. We find they really do work the same everywhere we look, and the more we look the more things drop away and the fewer constants we have but rather interplays between the various laws we find everywhere, and at various levels. -- If you look at an elephant under a microscope it looks different, but its stil lhe same elephant.
You will discover the same laws of nature in anything and everything

"The laws of nature differ according to the level of organization and complexity. That means, the laws of nature for simple, low level organizations are different from that of complex, high level organizations." No. Those are the different effect of those same laws. Take two seemingly different realms such as one at the size of a molecule vs. the middle world (our typical understanding of the world). In the molecular level the Brownian motion dominates. It's like a world being constantly bombarded with ping-pong balls. Cells and other things which interact at this level very often do work, not by directly moving an object from one specific place to another, but by making it so that one way of organizing things is more likely than another. Rather than fight the random motion cellular processes generally just use enzymes to make a result more likely. DNA doesn't replicate because cellular mechanisms go out and find the right bits and toss them in there, but because the right bit is made far more likely to fit than anything else bouncing around. And once it's in place it doesn't bounce away because it sticks there. Likewise for some things like breathing this is tragic. Because CO poisoning happens because CO binds better than O2 to our hemoglobin, and binds so well, in fact, that it doesn't release on the other end. It just clogs up all the oxygen carrying bits of our blood and we die. These should perhaps seem like they are radically different rules of nature. But, they aren't. These are the same exact laws of nature, which at different levels gives us different rules. It isn't that things fly at the molecular level, but rather that gravity is so weak compared to the electromagnetic force of things hitting each other at that level that it becomes negligible. And all that bouncing around, that's heat. Every law of nature that works at our level works the same at that level. But, things are way less massive, so gravity becomes rather moot. Things are way closer so electromagnetism becomes hugely important. Likewise if you go to even more massive things like galaxies and black holes, we find the electromagnetic forces become negligible and the gravitational forces can overwhelm spacetime itself. But, are these different laws? No. They are how those laws work at particular levels. Is the gravity that keeps me on Earth different than the gravity that keeps the moon in orbit? No. Is the electromagnetic force that allows water to stick together or oxygen to bind to hemoglobin different than the force that allows me to touch things (the electromagnetic force is the reason objects don't just pass through each other). No matter how far the rabbit hole goes down, it's still gravity pulling you.