People who believe that parents and other adults should be able to remove or ban books from libraries argue that they have the right to decide what material their children are exposed to and when; that children should not be exposed to sex, violence, drug use, or other inappropriate topics in school or public libraries; and that keeping books with inappropriate content out of libraries protects kids but doesn’t stop people for reading those books or prevent authors from writing them. People who believe that no one should be able to ban or remove books from libraries argue that parents may control what their own children read, but don’t have a right to restrict what books are available to other people; that frequently challenged books help people get a better idea of the world and their place in it; and that books are a portal to different life experiences and reading encourages empathy and social-emotional development.
via
Banned Books - Top 3 Pros and Cons
Vaccine Debate Discord Stoked by Russian Bots on Social Media during 2016 Election
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The American Journal of Public Health has found that the same Russian trolls, bots, and content polluters that influenced the 2016 US presidential election used Twitter to stoke both sides of the vaccines debate to promote “political discord” during the election.
The trolls, bots, and content polluters (bots that distribute malware) stirred animosity with tweets such as "At first our government creates diseases then it creates #vaccines.what’s next?! #VaccinateUS” and “You can’t fix stupidity. Let them die from measles, and I’m for #vaccination.”
Because both the pro- and anti-vaccine movements were impersonated, the study concluded that the goal was to increase hostility. Mark Dredze, PhD, one of the study’s authors, stated, “These trolls seem to be using vaccination as a wedge issue, promoting discord in American society.” He also stated, “Whether they’re specifically trying to make us distrust the medical system or just get us to fight more is unclear. But certainly they’ve identified this issue as a contentious one, and they’re promoting that contention.”
The study, “Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate,” examined almost 1.8 million tweets about vaccines sent between July 14, 2014 and Sep. 26, 2017 and found that, while some came from malware or spam accounts, more were sent from identified Russian troll accounts and many were linked to the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked propaganda group. The trolls tweeted about vaccines roughly 22 times more often than human users. The Russian troll accounts tweeted both pro and con vaccine messages and used the hashtag #VaccinateUS for both sides of the debate.
Renee DiResta, Head of Policy at Data for Democracy, stated, “This isn’t just happening on Twitter. This is happening on Facebook, and this is happening on YouTube, where searching for vaccine information on social media returns a majority of anti-vaccine propaganda. The social platforms have a responsibility to start investigating how this content is spreading and the impact these narratives are having on targeted audiences.” In Feb. 2018, Twitter removed 3,800 Internet Research Agency Accounts. In Apr., Facebook deleted 135 Russian accounts and another 650 in Aug. 2018.
Almost 100% of Russian children are fully vaccinated, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), compared to 72.2% of American children, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
According to an Aug. 2018 study of 195 nations published in JAMA, “Global Mortality from Firearms, 1990-2016,” the two countries with the highest 2016 firearm mortality rates were Brazil (43,200 deaths) and the United States (37,200 deaths), which together accounted for 32% of all global gun-related deaths that occurred outside of armed conflict. The study offers the first-ever assessment of firearm deaths worldwide, with the primary objective of comparing patterns in gun-related mortality to information about the availability of firearms.
In 2016, an estimated 251,000 people worldwide died from gun-related homicides (64%), suicides (27%), or unintentional injuries (9%). Each year between 1990 and 2016, more firearm deaths occurred outside war zones than in areas of armed conflict, with the exception of the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
The six countries with the highest number of firearm fatalities in 2016 (Brazil, United States, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Guatemala) accounted for more than half of all global gun deaths, despite holding less than 10% of the world’s population. Worldwide, the annual rate of firearm deaths decreased from 4.2 deaths per 100,000 in 1990 to 3.4 deaths per 100,000 in 2016. The study’s findings supported the hypothesis that the availability of firearms and the extent of gun controlpolicies at the national level are reflected in differing levels of violence between countries.
The researchers noted that “Although public perception is frequently focused on the use of firearms in homicides, particularly mass shootings, suicides involving firearms greatly outnumber firearm homicides in many countries. Among these countries, the presence of firearms in the home has been directly linked to their greater use as a means of suicide, as well as to increases in unintentional firearm injury deaths.”
In an editorial article about the study published in JAMA, Dr. Frederick P. Rivara of the Departments of Pediatrics and Epidemiology at the University of Washington wrote, “For individuals living in the United States, where the national policy debate has focused largely on interpersonal violence, the study provides a reminder of the importance of firearm suicide. In 2016, there were 2 firearm suicides for every firearm homicide.”
According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), firearms rank 12th on the list of the top 20 leading causes of death in the United States; the top three causes are heart disease, cancer, and stroke.
In terms of civilian gun ownership, the United States ranks #1 in the world with 120.5 guns per 100 people, representing 45.88% of the total number of privately owned firearms in the world.
The United States has 120.5 guns per 100 people -
Proponents of more gun control often want more laws to try to prevent the mass shootings and call for smart gun laws, background checks, and more protections against the mentally ill buying guns. Opponents of more gun laws accuse proponents of using a tragedy to further a lost cause, stating that more laws would not have prevented the shootings.
(Source: gun-control.procon.org)
As almost 20 million students prepared to go back to US colleges and universities, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released new unemployment statistics. The data indicated that people with at least a bachelor’s degree have more employment and higher participation in the workforce, but also showed that unemployment rates for less-educated workers is falling faster.
The July 2018 total unemployment rate was 3.2% for people over age 25 and 3.9% for those over 16. For those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, the rate was 2.2%, while those who earned associate’s degrees or went to college but did not graduate had a rate of 3.2%. The rate jumped to 4.0% for people with only a high school diploma and 5.1% for those who did not finish high school.
The numbers were an improvement over July 2017, when the rates were 3.6% for people over 25, 2.3% for bachelor’s degree holders and higher, 3.7% for an associate’s degree or some college, 4.5% for high school graduates, and 7.0% for those who did not finish high school.
While the unemployment rate for workers without high school degrees was higher than their counterparts with more education, the rate was the lowest it has been since 1992, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics adjusted how it measures education. However, fewer people without high school diplomas are participating in the workforce. In July 2018, 46.9% of people without high school diplomas were in the labor force, compared to 57.9% of those with high school diplomas, 65.4% of people with some college or associate’s degrees, and 73.4% of those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
(via College Graduates Less Likely to Be Unemployed, per US Department of Labor Data - ProCon.org)
(Source: procon.org)
![Attorney General Jeff Sessions implemented a new “zero-tolerance” policy for illegal immigration that involved prosecuting all adults crossing the southwest border illegally, noting a 203% increase in illegal border crossingsfrom 2017 to 2018. [1]...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/a15323ac4dd0668a5fe4b872b4b4adcf/tumblr_pdqqv7CeDq1s2qwndo1_500.jpg)
Attorney General Jeff Sessions implemented a new “zero-tolerance” policy for illegal immigration that involved prosecuting all adults crossing the southwest border illegally, noting a 203% increase in illegal border crossingsfrom 2017 to 2018. [1] The change resulted in about 3,000 children being forcibly separated from their parents because the children couldn’t be held in a federal jail alongside their parents. [2][3] The separated migrant children were detained at government-run facilities, including a new “tent city” built to handle the influx of kids needing housing, while their parents were held in federal jail. [4][5] Previously, families who were contesting deportation or applying for asylum remained in the United States out of detention until their cases were resolved. [6]
The families separated at the border included a mix of legal asylum seekers and illegal border crossers from throughout Central America, many fleeing gang violence in their home nations. [7][8] DHS states that families attempting to enter the country through legal means are not prosecuted, and that asylum seekers at ports of entry were not turned away. [9] Media reports and an ACLU lawsuit disagree, saying that some asylum seekers at ports of entry in Texas and California were separated from their children or denied entry by armed Customs and Border Protection agents. [10][11]
In a June 2018 national survey of 1,000 likely voters, Rasmussen Reports found that 54% of likely voters and 82% of Republicans believed that parents who attempted to enter the United States illegally were more to blame for the separation than the government. [12] A Quinnipiac University poll found that 66% of Americans opposed the policy, compared to 27% who supported it; that support rose to 55% among Republicans. [13]
Following an international outcry and planned nationwide protests, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 20 to keep families detained together. [14] One week later, a federal judge ordered the government to reunite children with their parents within a month. [15]
Proponents of the family separation at the US-Mexico border say the policy was intended as a deterrent to people making the long and dangerous journey to cross the US-Mexico border illegally. They also contend that the US government is trying to curb abuse of its asylum process and that people who knowingly violate US laws have to face the consequences.
Opponents of family separation at the border say that the separating children from their parents has a damaging psychological, emotional, and physical impact. They also contend that the policy violates international law and basic human rights, and that separating children from their parents because of immigration status is immoral.
(Source: procon.org)
“PRO/CON Debate Series Returns to Santa Monica Pier - Mondays in August” — PRO/CON Debate Series Returns to Santa Monica Pier - Mondays in August - ProCon.org
(Source: procon.org)
French essayist Joseph Joubert wrote in 1896: “It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”
For the last 15 years, I’ve led the nation’s most popular debate organization, ProCon.org. While our public charity has served more than 180 million people since 2004, our obsession with critical thinking, education, and informed citizenship has met a formidable and unexpected ally – one whose audience could reach into the billions. I’m talking about IBM and its Project Debater.
IBM is the company that brought computers to the world and democratized education on a global scale that Johannes Gutenberg with his revolutionary printing press could never have imagined. Their technology has empowered, challenged, and sometimes scared humanity in meaningful ways. When IBM’s Deep Blue defeated chess legend Gary Kasparov and when IBM’s Watson trounced Jeopardy! champions, computers were seen as our powerful servants and our rivals, too. Those games had clear winners and losers.
In debate, winning and losing is subjective and beside the point. The goal of debate is to enlighten, to stoke critical thinking using ethos, logos, and pathos, so that the debaters and the audience can see the range of opinion artfully, passionately, and compellingly expressed, and thus come to their own well-informed conclusions. When done well, debate helps us all.
Exactly one month ago in San Francisco, I had the pleasure of seeing IBM’s Project Debater in action against two debate champions. Over the course of two debates in which humans and machine each had 10 minutes to prepare, humans used their natural advantages over machines including physical gesturing, making eye contact, personalizing information, creating empathy, and applying various rhetorical strategies from strawman to slippery slope to appeal to emotion.
Project Debater countered with its own unique advantages, including drawing facts and arguments from 300 million records and avoiding ums and ahs. What surprised me the most was when Project Debater used procatalepsis (pre-rebuttal) and personal anecdote (we felt empathy for the machine), inflected its voice and altered its cadence, addressed nearly all of its opponents’ arguments, avoided grammatical errors, and timed its arguments to fit neatly within the required parameters.
The tech reporters in the room largely saw Project Debater as a technology innovation (“To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”) and most of the resulting press framed the technology as a gadget. As someone who appreciates the power of debate, I see the potential value of Project Debater as being far more significant than that of a mere gadget.
ProCon.org is widely used by students in high school and college and by media searching out balanced, unbiased information. Its official mission statement is: “Promoting critical thinking, education, and informed citizenship by presenting controversial issues in a straightforward, nonpartisan, and primarily pro-con format.”
As machines are programmed to teach themselves and learn from our mistakes and theirs, the capabilities of artificial intelligence become staggering. Machine-learning technologies are often seen as exciting innovations by Silicon Valley and Wall Street, while middle America sees a frightening and uncontrollable march to machines becoming our masters.
Because debate benefits us all, I see the man vs. machine conflict personified in Project Debater as a potential means of sharpening perspectives, teaching empathy and perhaps even respect for opposing views, demonstrating civility in argument, and stimulating critical thinking on any issue for which there are competing views.
Sure, the technology has obvious room for improvement. There’s no question. But then again, when I see our federal government, mainstream media, universities, public spaces, and Thanksgiving tables sadly polarized in bitter partisan conflict, I see that we humans have obvious room for improvement in debate as well.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “Don’t raise your voice. Improve your argument.” In today’s hyper-polarized society, ProCon.org and IBM’s Project Debater are thankfully capable of helping us do just that.
Written by ProCon.org CEO Kamy Akhavan and originally published in IBM’s THINK Blog at https://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/2018/07/power-of-debate-ai
(via Amplifying the Awesome Power of Debate – IBM’s Project Debater and ProCon.org - ProCon.org)
(Source: procon.org)
ProCon.org Names LPGA Golf Pro Deb Richard Chair of Its Board of Directors -
(Source: procon.org)
![The US Mint shipped 8.4 billion pennies for circulation in 2017, more than all nickels (1.3 billion), dimes (2.4 billion), and quarters (1.9 billion) combined. [1] While countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have phased out their...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/992333ea783fbd579a82857c630baca5/tumblr_pc65rybAHB1s2qwndo1_500.jpg)
The US Mint shipped 8.4 billion pennies for circulation in 2017, more than all nickels (1.3 billion), dimes (2.4 billion), and quarters (1.9 billion) combined. [1] While countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have phased out their one-cent pieces, Harris Poll found that 55% of Americans are in favor of keeping the penny and 29% want to abolish it. [2][3]
The US Mint produces coins as instructed by Congress, so a law would have to be passed by Congress and signed by the President in order for pennies to be removed from circulation. [4] Several unsuccessful legislative efforts have sought to bring about the penny’s extinction. Most recently, in 2017, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) sponsored ultimately failed legislation that would have suspended minting of the penny. [5]
(via Should the Penny Stay in Circulation? - Top 3 Pros and Cons - ProCon.org)
(Source: procon.org)
Proponents of the ban on bottled water say that it would reduce waste and protect the environment by preventing the manufacture, purchase, use, and discarding of up to 68 billion plastic water bottles a year. They also say that banning bottled water is good for our health because of reduced exposure to potentially contaminated sources of water and to the toxic chemicals emitted from the bottles themselves and the plastic bottle manufacturing plants. A ban would save consumers and local governments money, and protect local communities from the threat of depleted or contaminated municipal tap water supplies.
Opponents of the ban on bottled water say that it would remove a healthy beverage choice for consumers, leading to increased consumption of unhealthy sugary drinks. They also say that the ban is misguided as a waste-saving measure as other beverages are sold in containers that are more harmful than plastic water bottles. A ban would remove a practical option for water storage and dissemination during times when municipal tap water supplies are contaminated, as well as removing a beverage choice that the majority of American consumers want, negatively harming small business profits.
(via Should Bottled Water Be Banned? - Top 4 Pros and Cons - ProCon.org)
(Source: procon.org)
![The net neutrality rules adopted in 2015 regulated the internet as a common carrier, the same category as telephone service, under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. [5] The FCC rules prevented internet service providers (ISPs) from...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/033d8df9cb58a7c2aafec06e4edf31d1/tumblr_p9wu8oYgS11s2qwndo1_500.png)
The net neutrality rules adopted in 2015 regulated the internet as a common carrier, the same category as telephone service, under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. [5] The FCC rules prevented internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking, slowing, prioritizing, or charging consumers extra money to access certain websites. For example, under net neutrality rules, Verizon could not speed up access to websites it owns, such as Yahoo and AOL, and could not slow down traffic, or charge extra fees, to other major websites like Google or YouTube. [4]
On Dec. 14, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted (3-2) to overturn those net neutrality rules and reclassified internet service as an information source, rather than a common carrier. [1] [5]
Many state attorneys general filed suit against the FCC decision, and the US Senate voted (52-47) to approve a resolution to invalidate the decision. [6] [25] Unless overturned by courts or legislative action, the FCC’s removal of net neutrality rules will be officially implemented on June 11, 2018. [26]
(via Should Net Neutrality Be Restored? - Top 3 Pros and Cons - ProCon.org)
(Source: procon.org)
In the aftermath of the May 18, 2018, school shooting at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, the debate over whether or not violent video games contribute to youth violence has reignited.
(via School Shootings Reignite Debate over Violent Video Games - ProCon.org)
(Source: procon.org)
![Police body cameras are in use around the world from Australia to Uruguay. [19][32] They were first trialed in the United States in 2012 in Rialto, CA. [1][2][5] In 2015, in response to the number of high profile shootings of unarmed black men by...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/24391a2686003a30e53821df22984431/tumblr_p9lo1xD8G41s2qwndo1_500.jpg)
Police body cameras are in use around the world from Australia to Uruguay. [19][32] They were first trialed in the United States in 2012 in Rialto, CA. [1][2][5] In 2015, in response to the number of high profile shootings of unarmed black men by police officers, President Obama pledged funding for a nationwide program to equip departments with body cameras. [19] Law enforcement agencies in 45 states and DC have received funding from the Department of Justice’s Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program, which spent over $58 million between 2015 and 2017. [6] 35 states have introduced specific legislation covering their use, [4] and a study prepared for the National Institute of Justice found that there are over 60 models of police body cameras available to purchase in the United States. [3]
(via Police Body Cameras: Top 3 Pros and Cons)
(Source: procon.org)
The debate over whether college is worth it frequently centers on college cost and debt. New numbers from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System reveal a record $1.5 trillion in student loan debt in the United States.
(via New College Debt Record Tops $1.5 Trillion and Harms Women Especially - ProCon.org)
(Source: procon.org)