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Advisory.

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« on: November 30, 2007, 01:51:26 am »

Main guidelines of the debate forum are three wise sayings:
"If you can't find anything nice to say(Actually "if you can't say what you want to say without flaming/being offensive"),don't say anything at all."
"Treat others the way you would want to be treated."
"Think before you speak."
~DT

I advise debaters not to use personal examples (or close-by examples of people close to you) because they are not reliable in an argument (you should know this if you are at least in high school). You should aim to achieve true neutrality as much as possible. In a debate, statistics are important as evidence. Also, please link where you have gotten your statistics from for reliability. Remember that flaming or spamming or derailing of topics are strictly disallowed in here.

In order to make your arguments more structured and easier to read, it is recommended that you read the tips and strategies below so that you will know how to structure an argument and make an appropriate rebuttal or counter to your opponent's points.

When structuring your argument, you should start with a statement that shows what you wish to support or argue against. In some cases, you may decide to structure your argument around the statement, so that it is a conclusion rather than a statement that appears at the beginning. But once you have formulated a statement for what you wish to argue, you can begin to structure your argument around it. There are a few important things you should remember about your argument itself:

Your argument must follow logically. It has to make some sort of sense and match the statement or conclusion you have decided to argue for, and you should make some points to support or to refute someone else's argument. In other words, you are showing your reasoning for why you support or refute a statement in your argument.

Think in terms of how you arrived at your conclusion. How did you come up with that idea for your argument? Why is it a good idea? Or for a rebuttal, why is your opponent's points irrelevant, illogical or flawed? Does it contain fallacies, and if so, which ones are they, and why are they fallacies?

In order to enhance your argument, and appeal to other readers and debaters, here are some other suggestions:

Provide examples. Links to other websites are a good idea, but you must be able to implement them into your own argument, explain what it is and its relevance to your argument. Remember, you are taking ideas from websites or other sources so that you may use them in your argument. You are not taking ideas from other sources to make new arguments that don't belong to you. If you can't do that, then you should not use that link or source. Alternatively, you could also provide examples of your own, to make the idea more clear or easier to follow. Make sure the examples are appropriate and relevant, otherwise opponents will be able to pick your examples apart.

When structuring your argument, try to order your points in a way that is clear for both your opponents and your readers. Order them logically so that people can follow your line of reasoning. Avoid jumping from a point to another point that is not very relevant to the next point. Another good way of ordering your points is to place your second strongest point at the beginning (or your favorite), then order your other points from weakest to strongest so that you end your argument with the strongest point. Arguably, you could also order your argument from weakest to strongest.

If at all possible, try not to go too far off topic. It will detract from your argument and it will make it harder for people to follow your argument. You may decide to leave the off topic points until the end as a side note. Your argument should consist mostly of points that relate to the actual topic, not the side notes.

If you have a hard time explaining a point, you may decide to paraphrase it, in addition to providing examples. It helps people to understand what you mean when you state the same point a different way, since they may understand the paraphrase better than the way you worded the original point.

You may also choose to use an analogy to help readers relate. As with the examples, make sure to use an analogy that is appropriate and relevant. When picking on your opponent's analogy, be careful not to take the analogy too literally, since it is only a comparison to give readers an idea of what you are trying to say.

List of Fallacies
Please try to avoid using them. If you see one in someone's argument, you may point it out in a rebuttal by stating the fallacy and why it is a fallacy.

1. Strawman
The strawman is an argument fallacy where you proceed to knock down your opponent's argument, but you have knocked down a different argument and have failed to correctly understand or restate your opponent's argument. This is a lazy way of beating your opponent, and to inexperienced debaters, they will often think they have succeeded in beating their opponent, when they have defeated no one.

2. Ad Hominem
In Latin, this means to or towards the person. This is an argument fallacy where you accuse or attack the opponent's personality or the opponent himself rather than his argument. For example, claiming that you have spelling errors in your argument and therefore, your argument is false is an ad hominem since you are discrediting the debater for his own careless mistakes in syntax rather than the content of the argument that he makes. You can construct a better argument that shows what's wrong with the opponent's argument rather than attacking the opponent's background or character.

3. Circular Logic
This is a fallacy where you claim to show your reasoning by repeating the statement itself. This can sometimes be cleverly disguised by paraphrasing the statement. In other words, using a circular logic is really just a way of pretending to have an argument without really having one.

4. Non Sequitur
Non sequitur is Latin for "does not follow". It is an argument fallacy which occurs when you make a generalizing statement that is fallacious. In more mathematical terms, when you have a statement that says A implies B, this means that if A is true, B is true. However, it would be a non sequitur to say that if B is true, then A is true. This is a fallacy because if B is true, A could be true or false. We can say that if A is true, then B is true, if A implies B, but we cannot go backwards. For a trivial example, all fantasy stories are fiction, but it would be a non sequitur to say that all of fiction is fantasy.

5. Red Herring
A red herring is a distraction in an argument that does not contribute to the topic, and may derail the discussion towards another subject. Most advanced debaters can spot these and stop them before they change the topic completely, or have other readers mistaken the red herring for a valid argument.

6. Pot Calling the Kettle Black (or Hypocrisy)
The pot calling the kettle black is a hypocrisy where you accuse the opponent of something, when you are just as guilty of it yourself. This is a hypocrisy where you are doing something against what you say. Unlike the Ad Hominem fallacy, this actually damages the credibility of your argument because what you say and what you do are in direct contrast with each other, and is actually related to the argument.


For a more complete listing of argument fallacies, feel free to look at these links:
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html

~Adapted from AdventChildren.Net.
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« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2007, 04:12:33 pm »

Tyran said this in the last post on the now locked "Thoughts on America" topic but I didn't know if people would see it there so I'm adding this as a rule.

~Please do not create threads asking for people's views on a certain,country,culture,race,sexual preference things like that.
As we have seen,people cannot seem to be in any thread like that without flaming and being racist/offensive.So no more threads of that nature.
Any threads like that will be locked on the spot,to prevent future offenses.


~DT
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