Fight Club Pub.

Originally posted by chissler
I have no objections to the thread remaining here. I like that debaters have a place to come to chat bout the forum. But I do feel that the excessive chit chat that is found all over BTS minimizes the FCP.

That is a very fair point.

How do we draw the line though?

What is good natured camaraderie and what is superfluous chatter?

It's a tough one, I can see all fighters being gunshy and apprehensive about making a remark. Perhaps that's the way it should be.

Some clarification...

This isn't a discussion on moving this thread. I'm raising a point that this thread should separate itself from all the other chit-chat threads on BTS. Currently, it is no different. Let's make it different. Let's make it better.

Let DATS be DATS and let the FCP be the FCP.

Again, I agree that the FCP has a place in the debate forum and debaters should have a place to call their own.

But this thread should be something more than just another "BTS chit chat" thread.

Again, my .02 only. Nothing more.

reply to post by schrodingers dog


We shouldn't have to worry about what to say and when to say it, but maybe there should be more debate discussion and less chit chat??

I enjoy the smack talk and the banter that goes on here....it lets us get to know each other better and with that, we are able to feel each other out better for the debates.

But, it shouldn't all be chit chat, nor should it all be serious debate talk. There needs to be a happy medium.

Now, who wants to come up with that definition???

Originally posted by Heike
reply to post by chissler

 

2. The FCP is not open to the public. My foes from the anti-skepticism threads can't follow me in here and harass me.

3. Every troll, bored kid, smack talker wanna be, etc. etc. can't come in here, take over, talk about whatever they want, and ruin the thread for the real fighters.

I think these two points sum it up perfectly in my opinion.

Its a great escape coming here. Its great to be able to post wihtout being accused of being a disinfo agent, government shrill or any other nasty stupid name. Its almost like its a break from the normal ATS

[edit on 8/4/2009 by OzWeatherman]

It doesn't have to be a complex ordeal.

If we're chatting about the debate forum, a specific debate, razzing one another, etc., do so here. If it's something else that has nothing to do with the forum, there are plenty of chit chat avenues on BTS.

Seems like a clean separation of what belongs where.

reply to post by chissler


You know, one man's chit chat can be another man's treasure.

What do you think the chances would have been of me getting to know MS and Ian to such a familiar degree that we decide to become RL friends and travel the country together.

I consider all the other fighters including yourself with the same affection. And it all came mainly out of this thing some call "chit chat."

Well it is not, it is people enjoying each other's company and getting to know each other and in the process engaging in extraordinary debates just for its own reward.



[edit on 8 Apr 2009 by schrodingers dog]

reply to post by chissler


That shouldn't be too difficult to live with.

And, that's how it should be.

The problem is that there is too much chit chat. Look at the pig latin above. Huh? It adds little to the forum. Did you know that every post in the Debate forum receives 250/post? I didn't until this week. Is it fair to award 250 points for:

Originally posted by The Vagabond
I will be delaying the move into other facets till the tail end of this post in order to exploit my opponent's recent errors, so indulge me.

The first word when I answer an SQ is yes or no, but my opponent has been far less honest, because my recent questions, in and of themselves, are FATAL to my opponent's position.

SQ2. Aren't our constitutional rights put in place to prevent abuses which would be extremely detrimental to the people?

While I cannot answer that question in a Socratic fashion as it is not posed as such, you presume subjective extremes and a foreknowledge of true intent...

Perhaps my opponent has never actually read the constitution which she is so eager to amend; the answer is in the very first sentence.

The Preamble to the US Constitution

secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

Our constitutional rights unquestionably exist to protect us from abuse of our liberty. My oppponent has plainly admitted that some of that protection has to go away in order for us to go cashless.

I will say that the constitution if properly applied serves to protect the citizen from governmental abuses and would most likely need to be amended to continue to do so in our empowered cashless society.

This is why my opponent also had to evade my questions 3 and 4/5- she cannot allow the importance of the protections she says we must lose to become obvious, because they outweigh the benefits of going cashless.

SQ3. Do the benefits of the constitutional right to privacy outweigh its detriments?

To answer, she would either have to say that the right to privacy is hurting us more than it helps us (demonstrably untrue), or admit that going cashless would be incurring a detriment.

SQ4/5. Is there any number of lives and/or dollars that would be too high a price for America to pay in order to preserve its freedom, and if so, what do you believe those numbers to be?

Nail in the coffin. We have spent TRILLIONS on defense over the years. To date over half a million American warriors have laid down their lives. We have holidays commemorating those sacrifices and the fact that they were worth it to preserve our liberties. That sacrifice DWARFS what keeping our cash would cost us. So how can the benefits outweigh the detriments?

Which brings us back to my first question.
My opponent answers that people must be essentially good, honest, and trustworthy because civilization has not crumbled, and points out that most people do not hurt eachother over annoyances.

I respond with the first of my first socratic questions:
SQ1. If people are, as you say, intrinsically good, honest, and trustworthy, by nature, then shouldn't all evil arise either from error or from an abnormality in the offender?

SQ2. Doesn't a great deal of the evil in our world in fact arise from greed though?

People do hurt eachother for personal gain. Utopian philosophies which deny this, particularly Communism, have almost invariably been taken advantage of by men like Stalin, in some instances coming very near the breakdown of civilization indeed (had the entire world been communist when the Soviet Union fell, we would probably be in a dark age now, just like the dark age which eventually resulted from the rise and failure of tyrants in Rome).

The distinction between hurting people for personal gain and hurting people over mere annoyance also demonstrates the flawed construction of my opponent's questions.

To SQ1. No, but I'd kill several members of the Hessians motorcycle gang, starting with the one who has owed me 500 dollars since I was 18 years old. And if I were in government, even more. Even Carter left D.C. with blood on his hands.

To SQ2. Yes I would lie to avoid revenge. And if I were a politician... well, that speaks for itself (from both sides of its mouth).

And what of my opponent's only defense on constitutional matters; her little surprise from the kitchen?

She says we must assume that in the adoption of the proposed system that new protections will automatically be created and appropriate amendments will be made to the constitution.

I disagree. Constitutional amendment is the most difficult function of American government, and we almost never use it for anything except taking powers away from our central government. 27 amendments. 2 of them authorize new modes of taxation. 1 of them prohibits alcohol. The other 24 (including every single one since 1920) takes power away from the government or reorganizes that power to solve a problem that it had previously created.

We cannot ASSUME, with no specifics whatsoever from my opponent as to how the system will be setup to protect against abuses, that people will simply embrace it and magically come up with unspecified solutions to all of the problems with the idea, when the far easier and more likely method of passing this is to simply do it in congress and then claim to the Supreme Court that the Interstate Commerce Clause or some other empowering article restricts the scope of application for our rights.

They certainly didn't amend the constitution to allow for the PATRIOT ACT. Likewise, there was no amendment to usher in the phenomenon of what the ACLU has dubbed, The Constitution-Free Zone. The ACLU is being a bit sensationalist in that title, but it is a 100-mile deep zone containing 2/3s of the US Population wherein DoHS and the Border Patrol can search you and make copies of your private files and papers without probable cause, in an "administrative capacity" if they claim that border security is their motive.

My opponent said:

The government does not have the resources to arrest every man, woman and child in this country that would continue to deal in cash. Nor the resources to stop a nationwide revolt that would no doubt occur where the populous not behind such a personal and specific transition that would affect every aspect of their lives.

More socratic questions are in order.
SQ3. Will the populous be behind this transition in all parts of America?
SQ4. Will a nationwide revolt that you just said will "no doubt occur" create consquences which outweigh the benefits of a cashless society?
SQ5. Can you specifically describe such iron-clad assurances of liberty as would completely prevent that revolt, particularly such assurances as would circumvent the fact that under this system, there is a searchable database of private information and a computer system capable of rendering people unable to buy and sell?

But if opening the door to tyrany and civil war does not resolve this question once and for all, lets go deeper in. Since most of my opponents argument thus far could be solved by a recylcing bin installed at the Bureau of Printing and Engraving and a bottle of hand sanitizer by the cash register (and in the case of bank regulation, new measures are already being emplaced which require far less power given to the government than a cashless system), we'll wait on those and start with crime. It turns out, going cashless is statistically likely to increase crime and the damage that it does.

Bureau of Justice Statistics: Criminal Victimization for the US, 2006 (please see page 90)

Note on page 90 that personal effects are the most stolen item, followed by motor vehicles and their parts, then followed by credit cards and other purse/wallet contents, and cash comes in 4th.

So will the thugs who are now holding up liquor stores and mugging your granny stop, or will they just learn to focus more on the higher dollar items that they already prefer over cash?

Front companies, such as the pawn shops that currently provide a large amount of the drug money in this country and the shipping companies which are used to import drugs, are already thriving in seeming legitimacy and even paying taxes on what they have taken from society. That will not stop.

And electronic crime will get even worse.
Bureau of Justice Statistics on Cybercrime for 2007

The 3,247 businesses that incurred monetary loss from cybercrime lost a total of $867 million.

That's an average loss to victim of $267,015. Ever get mugged for that much?

BJS on identity theft for 2005

About 1.6 million households experienced theft of existing accounts other than a credit card (such as a banking account), and 1.1 million households discovered misuse of personal information (such as social security number).

As you'll see at that source, the average loss to ID theft was about $1600, which means add another 2.59 billion dollars to the 867 million that hackers cost people.

Had to cut that down, too big. And then award 250 points for:

Originally posted by intrepid
Topic? "Cheddar, the only REAL cheese."

Kind of demeaning to the debates imo. We are trying things but have yet to come to a decent conclusion.

reply to post by intrepid


Oh intrepid please, just take away the damn points.

Surely this isn't about something as insignificant as that?

reply to post by schrodingers dog


I don't dispute the weight that this chit chat carries. I'm not as active as I once was, but believe me.. I was no different when I was more active on the board. But what I'm voicing here is a concern that these two threads are merely echoing one another. And I raised this point to you, the members, who are involved in both threads to hear your thoughts on it.

Schro, your responses thus far are appreciated. But for some others, I think my point was lost as the case quickly became that the thread shouldn't be moved.

Question...

If DATS and the FCP are merely an echo of one another, is that something that participants should evaluate?

Originally posted by schrodingers dog
reply to post by intrepid

 

Oh intrepid please, just take away the damn points.

Surely this isn't about something as insignificant as that?

I agree.

Or, leave the extra points for actual debates only, and make FCP posts a point apiece.

I don't think anyone is going to get their panties in a wad over points. They don't mean much of anything to most of us.

Originally posted by schrodingers dog
Oh intrepid please, just take away the damn points.

Surely this isn't about something as insignificant as that?

It's not that simple. That was the first thought. Didn't work out.

As to it being insignificant I disagree. Well thought out debate posts deserve the recognition they get. When I found out about that this week I was a little put off.

Originally posted by intrepid
The problem is that there is too much chit chat. Look at the pig latin above. Huh? It adds little to the forum.

Guilty as charged. I apologize for that... Those posts, would have been best suited for BTS.

Did you know that every post in the Debate forum receives 250/post?

Didn't know that... but if Points is the main issue here - then why not cut the point amount? Hell, make it one point - I don't think ANY of us post in here for the points.

- Carrot



[edit on 4/8/2009 by CA_Orot]

Originally posted by chissler
reply to post by schrodingers dog

 

Question...

If DATS and the FCP are merely an echo of one another, is that something that participants should evaluate?

Yes, and I and the other cross-threaders have to do a better job with that.

reply to post by chissler

If DATS and the FCP are merely an echo of one another, is that something that participants should evaluate?

They aren't, though.

One thread's business needs to be kept out of the other thread and vice versa, but DATS has no topic. It is a chat thread. That's it.

This thread serves several purposes, whereas DATS' purpose is simply chatting for, honestly, a handful of regular posters.

Originally posted by intrepid
It's not that simple. That was the first thought. Didn't work out.

Can't you just take the points away or reduce them to 1 per post for the whole forum?

You can always reward debates with "applause" or some other mechanism.

I'm just thinking out loud here ...

Can you not move it to BTS and still restrict access? I don't post much on here but I do read it and laugh. I consider everyone in this forum to be comrades and friends who I can trust.

If there is not a thread like this one, new fighters and ones like me who don't "chit chat" much to begin with will never socialize with the other fighters. Then you don't have a community of fighters, you just have a bunch of people who debate and rarely talk.

[edit on 4/8/2009 by Irish M1ck]

I honestly don't see how there can be any issue here.

Let's talk debates...talk smack about debates (with the occasional off-topic banter thrown in), and leave it at that.

If you don't have something to say that couldn't be posted anywhere else...then why does it HAVE to be said here? It could just as easily be taken to BTS or anyplace else.

Nothing to get worked up about in my opinion.

Originally posted by schrodingers dog
Yes, and I and the other cross-threaders

have to do a better job with that.

I agree.... And have wondered if the reason all of this has come about was due to the recent cross-overs from one thread to the other...

I really do think that leaving the DATS business in the DATS thread, and the FCP stuff here - is the answer. Rather then taking it away or closing it all together...? And that requires that the responsibility lie on each and every one of us...

- Carrot

reply to post by skeptic1


I guess my opinion of this thread is that it should aspire to be more than just mindless chit-chat about nothing. That sort of chat will surely appear from time to time as it is inevitable in any relaxed environment. But when it outright consumes the thread and finding any lengthy discussion on a debate is like a needle in a haystack, it raises a concern.

(I know I'm a moderator, but I'm not speaking here as a staff member. I'm speaking here as a fellow debater)