I suppose I could have gone for the “quality” appeal… you know the “If we advertise anti-evolution we might lower the overall quality of the site and thus attract the wrong sort of people” line of argument.
or perhaps have delved into the tesk of showing the harm of believing evolution to be impossible.
The truble is. I figured I had everything pinned down. The ad was false information, which was granted. It follows that the ad served no other purpose than to misinform people about the status of evolution. Now what possible reason could anyone have for agreeing to advertising false information?
Money.
And that’s what it came down to… Carleas was basically saying that the page needed to make money to survive. From there he went on to say, that since the forum ought to remain philosophically neutral, the best thing to do would be to relegate the responsibility of choosing the ads to an algorithm, so that he would be left out of the process and thus maintain neutrality.
I pointed out that this algorithm was his choice, and that whatever followed from that choice was on him. I denied him the possibility of neutrality, and asked him, in light of that, to justify advertising what he knew to be false information.
I even offered to give him a list of ads, which were not mistaken, that could replace the anti-evolution one and make the page the needed amount of money. Denying him the excuse that the forum needed the ad to support itself.
In my mind it was game over.
But I played a good hand poorly… took too much for granted and didn’t explain myself fully and in enough detail. Nor did I spend much time attacking Carleas’ defense.
It’s a fair judgement… but a poor conclusion.
I made a deal with Carleas before the debate that if I won, the ad would be removed and if he won I’d tolorate it… So now I have to tolorate that garbage…
At any rate…
I would like to thank the judges for their fairness and time.
so… thank you.