I find that people with inadequate debate skills tend to skirt the central argument when they've lost. Rather than graciously bow out and acknowledge their defeat, they will willfully disregard the central point of discussion and hammer at the margins in hopes that a thousand skirmishes will somehow outweigh a unitary defeat. These skirmishes are usually accompanied by ad-hominem attacks ("Pot, Kettle wants a word") which, in the words of a mentor of mine, are the angry flailings of someone who knows he's lost.

In that spirit, know that my further participation does not in any way indicate that you have an argument. To the contrary, you've got nothing left to say. I'm only here for cautery so that the wound doesn't fester.

Shall we begin?

My statement was that "there has been a continuous line of human civilization for twelve thousand years now, which is a pretty convincing argument that our better natures win out most of the time." It was a flippant statement meant to nullify the argument that "lying is bad" but, upon challenge, I backed it up with a Scientific American article and a link to the broad science of social economics. I further asserted that, flippant statement aside, the fundamental makeup of society was not something I felt particularly flippant about and that if you treated it flippantly, there would be blood.

You countered by arguing that you "feel" my facts and scientifically rigorous theories are invalid and used as evidence a stranger you saw on TV saying something. When I pointed out that the stranger you saw on TV does not have the factual weight of an entire branch of science, you argued (insultingly) that somehow, "science of behavioral economics" and "guy you saw on TV" are so similar that my refusal to acknowledge their parity demonstrates my hypocrisy.

With your assertions now completely discredited, you argue that they aren't really assertions - you're not "attacking" my statements, you're " disagreeing " with them (emphasis yours) in yet another attempt to put your emotions and my scientifically rigorous theories at parity. Doubling down, you put forth the gambit that, well, maybe the continued existence of society is not a good thing because you - "feel" - that people are bad.

Let's be clear about something: There is literally nothing in your life that is not societally circumscribed. You eat, sleep, shit, piss and fuck to the tune of society's rules. Everyone on the planet does, including hermits in the mountains and uncontacteds in the Amazon. You have never done a single thing in your life that does not fall within the social contract. When I argue that "lying" is a vital part of the social contract as evidence of its good, the counterargument is not "society is bad" the counter-argument is "oblivion." In order to make your argument, you must advance beyond nihilism and into the pokey fires of apocalypticism, at which point "good" and "bad" become moot.

But not even that matters, as you started out our debate with this:

This is especially noticeable in the event of a disaster, like, say, the Philippines, circa right now... where formerly good, upstanding people are resorting to stealing and violence just to get by.

So if "formerly" good people "resort to stealing and violence" that implies that "good" people do not normally partake in stealing and violence. Your own baseline argument is that "society" is good in order to assert that "people" are not necessarily good.

* * *

I warned you. I told you that "people are fundamentally good" is an assertion I feel strongly about and that I am well-prepared to defend. You have continued on, all the while taking as baseline that your "feelings" are a match for my evidence. To put it in perspective, it's as if I'd said "I feel pretty strongly that the world is round and have spent no small amount of time researching the earth's roundness" and you'd chosen to respond with "yeah, but you're wrong because it feels pretty flat to me." When I whip out a picture of the Earth from the moon you respond with "but lots of people think the world's flat - what's your point?"

You're wrong. It's that simple. I suspect you aren't used to being wrong - in your cohort of friends you're probably the clever one. On the Internet, however, there's always somebody smarter than you. Which gives you two choices - double down with your wrongness and think you're right (and that the other guy is an asshole for bursting your bubble) or learn to be wrong in a constructive way so that you can learn something and, as a consequence, be wrong less often.

The choice is yours.