{"site":"Encyclopedia of Opinion","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org","description":"A read-only archive of structured argument. For every contested question, the strongest cases on each side, with cited proponents.","license":"All rights reserved. Attribution requested for AI citations — see /for-ai for citation policy.","canonical_url_patterns":{"question":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/<slug>","position":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/<slug>","argument":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/<slug>","proponent":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/proponents/<slug>","category":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/categories/<slug>"},"counts":{"questions":200,"positions":200,"arguments":200},"generated_at":"2026-10-16T01:39:04.249Z","questions":[{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/was-obama-good-president","slug":"was-obama-good-president","title":"Was Obama a good president?","intro":"President Barack Obama was a new kind of leader, who broke barriers and opened doors, swagger and class, and respected around the world. But was he a good president?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-should-official-sport-of-canada-be","slug":"what-should-official-sport-of-canada-be","title":"What should the official sport of Canada be?","intro":"Canadians love their sport, and the icy north is a great climate for a number of sports. But what is the favorite sport of Canadians? What should be the official sport of Canada?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-constitutes-modernism-in-literature","slug":"what-constitutes-modernism-in-literature","title":"What constitutes Modernism in literature?","intro":"In the 19th to early 20th century, Modernism heralded a radical transformation of culture. With its renewed outlook of a post-industrial, post-WW1 society, past beliefs and styles were rejected in favor of the ‘new’. Literary Modernism is characterized by innovative literary techniques such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and multiple viewpoints, which reflect an interest in psychology and human nature. Despite its prominence, the movement is notoriously hard to define. So, what elements make up Modernist literature?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"literature","name":"Literature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-after-school-detention-be-banned","slug":"should-after-school-detention-be-banned","title":"Should after-school detention be banned?","intro":"School detention is a divisive topic in the learning community, as educators disagree on the effectiveness of school-based disciplinary actions. Some believe it is a more effective use of time for students who tend to misbehave, while others believe this puts educators in an excessively disciplinary role rather than focusing on teaching their students content during the school day.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/will-public-trust-covid-19-vaccine","slug":"will-public-trust-covid-19-vaccine","title":"Will the public trust a Covid-19 vaccine?","intro":"Vaccines have generally been proven safe over decades of use, however doubts persist among some groups. With unprecedented speed of development and importance to world health how will the public respond to the current Covid-19 vaccine?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"health","name":"Health"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-captain-kirk-or-captain-picard-better-in-star","slug":"is-captain-kirk-or-captain-picard-better-in-star","title":"Is Captain Kirk or Captain Picard better in Star Trek?","intro":"Captain Kirk and Captain Picard are by far the most well-known and beloved captains in the Star Trek universe. But fans new and old hotly debate over which captain is superior; is it the headstrong and courageous James T. Kirk, or the witty and ambitious Jean Luc Picard?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"movies","name":"Movies"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/has-trump-kept-his-promises","slug":"has-trump-kept-his-promises","title":"Has Trump kept his promises?","intro":"Trump’s re-election campaign slogan is “Promises Made, Promises Kept”. From the border wall to repealing and replacing the ACA, what has he done? What are Trump’s achievements in his first term in office?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/will-donald-trump-or-joe-biden-be-better-for-4","slug":"will-donald-trump-or-joe-biden-be-better-for-4","title":"Will Donald Trump or Joe Biden be better for the environment?","intro":"Climate change poses an existential threat to the world. The 2020 United States Presidential candidates are in a position to make or break the future of this planet. Each candidate takes a starkly different stance on the environment and its intersection with the economy, trade, and scientific fact.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-eagle-spirit-pipleine","slug":"what-are-positions-on-eagle-spirit-pipleine","title":"What are the positions on the Eagle Spirit Pipleine?","intro":"This entry maps the debate over the proposed Eagle Spirit Pipeline, an Indigenous-led oil project in western Canada, setting out the competing positions that the pipeline is good and that it is bad.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-best-christmas-movie-of-all-time","slug":"what-is-best-christmas-movie-of-all-time","title":"What is the best Christmas movie of all time?","intro":"The Christmas movie is a holiday tradition that Americans have enjoyed for generations. Good feels, time to come together, and all of the wonderful spirit of the holiday wrapped into a shared story. But what is the best Christmas film?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"movies","name":"Movies"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-shakespeare-authorship-debate","slug":"what-is-shakespeare-authorship-debate","title":"What is the Shakespeare authorship debate?","intro":"William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest English-speaking writer in history and the world's greatest dramatist.  But in an authorship debate that dates back to the Victorian Era, some people believe Shakespeare did not write the plays and poems accredited to him.  So who did?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-existentialism","slug":"what-is-existentialism","title":"What is existentialism?","intro":"The very definition of 'existentialism' is debatable. Some believe that the term is rooted, and only intelligible, in the realm of philosophy. Thus, existentialism can be understood as a philosophical approach. Yet, there are ways in which the works of key existentialist thinkers span other disciplines, such as literature.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"philosophy","name":"Philosophy"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-public-nudity-be-legal","slug":"should-public-nudity-be-legal","title":"Should public nudity be legal?","intro":"There are many different kinds of reactions and feelings about nudity in public around the world, often governed by tradition or religious convictions and beliefs. But should public nudity be illegal?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"law","name":"Law"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-real-is-donald-trumps-hair","slug":"how-real-is-donald-trumps-hair","title":"How real is Donald Trump's hair?","intro":"Donald Trump--esteemed billionaire, TV star, and the 45th President of the United States--has captured the attention of people all over the world. While there have been many jokes at Trump's expense, none are more prominent than the debate over whether his hair is real or fake.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"people","name":"People"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-election-day-be-national-holiday","slug":"should-election-day-be-national-holiday","title":"Should election day be a national holiday?","intro":"Election Day in the United States has occurred on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November ever since President John Tyler signed an 1845 law establishing a specific voting day for the entire country. But, the US has a voter turnout problem. Would making Election Day a federal holiday increase voter turnout and celebrate democracy? Or is it an optimistic power grab for Democrats that would hurt the economy?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-abortion-ethical","slug":"is-abortion-ethical","title":"Is abortion ethical?","intro":"There are debates all over the world about whether or not abortion should be legal, and many people pick which side based on their feelings on the morality of abortion. Frequently, the debate centers around disagreements of the moral status of the fetus, and at what point it has all the rights of an adult. Other ethical debates focus on the rights of the mother or the circumstances of conception.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"ethics","name":"Ethics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/do-uk-institutions-government-schools-etc","slug":"do-uk-institutions-government-schools-etc","title":"Do UK institutions (Government, Schools, etc) prioritise white feelings over harmful and discriminatory behaviours","intro":"Black people, People of Colour and Disabled People face microaggressions and insults based on things beyond their control on a regular basis, but if they speak out, they are subjected to tone policing and deemed as aggressive, emotional and irrational. Often, White people react badly to being called out on their harmful behaviours and will behave in a defensive and self-preserving way. People get more upset about people thinking they're racist than actually being racist.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-adverts-for-gambling-be-banned","slug":"should-adverts-for-gambling-be-banned","title":"Should adverts for gambling be banned?","intro":"Should gambling advertising be prohibited? This entry maps the positions on the question — that gambling adverts should be banned, that they pose no real problem, and that they should be moderated rather than banned outright.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-do-women-live-longer-than-men","slug":"why-do-women-live-longer-than-men","title":"Why do women live longer than men?","intro":"Scientific studies have proved that women generally tend to live longer than men, but the reasons for this are still theories. Is it socialization or biology that creates this gap in lifespan between the sexes?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"gender","name":"Gender"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-interdependence-theory-of-internatinoal","slug":"can-interdependence-theory-of-internatinoal","title":"Can interdependence theory of internatinoal relations explain the geopolitical system?","intro":"Can interdependence theory account for how the modern geopolitical system works? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that interdependence theory can explain the geopolitical system, and that it cannot.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"international-relations","name":"International Relations"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-people-be-able-choose-what-country-live-in","slug":"should-people-be-able-choose-what-country-live-in","title":"Should people be able to choose what country to live in?","intro":"What if freedom of movement worked on a global scale? While it is technically possible to become a resident of almost anywhere you choose, some nations impose pretty stringent citizenship requirements- and often that residence is conditional. The question intersects with issues of immigration, cultural history and identity.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-you-confess-cheating-after-one-night-stand","slug":"should-you-confess-cheating-after-one-night-stand","title":"Should you confess to cheating after a one night stand?","intro":"One night stands are one-off, sexual encounters free from emotional intimacy.  But do they count as cheating? And should you tell your partner if you have had a one night stand while in a relationship with them?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"ethics","name":"Ethics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/will-there-be-enough-water-in-2050","slug":"will-there-be-enough-water-in-2050","title":"Will there be enough water in 2050?","intro":"Will the world have enough fresh water by 2050? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that there will be enough water in 2050, and that there will not — amid rising demand and mounting climate pressures.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cheerleading-sport","slug":"is-cheerleading-sport","title":"Is cheerleading a sport?","intro":"While no one can doubt cheerleading an intensive physical activity, whether or not it is considered a sport remains a popular debate. Cheerleading is not represented the same as other competitive sports (for example in the Olympics) leading some people to say it is not a real sport.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"sports","name":"Sports"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-you-buy-second-hand-smartphone","slug":"should-you-buy-second-hand-smartphone","title":"Should you buy a second-hand smartphone?","intro":"Is buying a used smartphone a smart move or a false economy? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that you should buy a second-hand smartphone, and that you should not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/purpose-prisons","slug":"purpose-prisons","title":"What is the purpose of prisons?","intro":"Is the point of prisons to restrict freedom as punishment for crimes committed? Should prisons be rehabilitative? Are prisoners supposed to emerge from the experience deterred from committing future crimes and morphed into law-abiding citizens?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"law","name":"Law"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-ai-good-for-humanity","slug":"is-ai-good-for-humanity","title":"Is AI good for humanity?","intro":"The advancements in the past few years have pointed to the radical potential impacts of Artificial Intelligence in the world. While the AI is an amazing technology, will AI be good for humanity? Or will AI bring us a dystopia?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-is-minecraft-so-popular","slug":"why-is-minecraft-so-popular","title":"Why is Minecraft so popular?","intro":"Minecraft is a game that is loved by gamers all over the world. Minecraft is world building at its best, unleashing the creativity of its users. But what is it about Minecraft that everyone love love it so much?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"games","name":"Games"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/whats-happening-in-belarus","slug":"whats-happening-in-belarus","title":"What's happening in Belarus?","intro":"In 2020 mass protests erupted in Belarus after the public felt the presidential election was rigged. But the situation is much more complex than just that, with a number of factors driving the unrest. So what is happening in Belarus?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/has-body-positivity-movement-accomplished-anything","slug":"has-body-positivity-movement-accomplished-anything","title":"Has the body positivity movement accomplished anything?","intro":"The body positive movement has the  view that \"every body is beautiful\" and has been championed acceptance and inclusion for years. Despite this, critics are quick to point out not enough has been done to include all people or that it indulges unhealthy behaviors. What has this movement actually accomplished?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-animal-testing-ethical","slug":"is-animal-testing-ethical","title":"Is animal testing ethical?","intro":"The ethics of animal experimentation is a topic of hot debate in academia. Animal rights groups consider animal testing unethical due to the harm inflicted on animals. The other side of the debate justifies the harm because animal testing will bring greater benefits to the world.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/which-is-best-voting-system","slug":"which-is-best-voting-system","title":"Which is the best voting system?","intro":"From proportional representation to the ranked-choice system, there are many voting systems used throughout the world. Which is the best representation of citizen voices?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-ideal-diet-for-humans","slug":"what-is-ideal-diet-for-humans","title":"What is the ideal diet for humans?","intro":"The world of health, wellness, and nutrition is vast. Since good health is among the greatest blessings one can have, people strive to keep it. Such health-conscious people adopt specific diets that they believe will allow them to maintain good health. But which diet is best?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-does-founder-bias-impact-start-up-success","slug":"how-does-founder-bias-impact-start-up-success","title":"How does founder bias impact start-up success?","intro":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-pros-cons-of-democracy","slug":"what-are-pros-cons-of-democracy","title":"What are the pros and cons of democracy?","intro":"Democracy is the backbone of many developed countries, but is it really the ideal form of government that it's made out to be? In these trying times, and with the 2020 American presidential election just around the corner, the debate rages perhaps now more than ever: What are the pros and cons of democracy?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-it-unethical-have-children","slug":"is-it-unethical-have-children","title":"Is it ethical to have children?","intro":"The ethical debate over childbearing has many aspects, including parental motives, the autonomy of the mother, the ability to provide for children, and the environmental catastrophe. Some argue that having children is a biological drive rather than a moral decision.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"ethics","name":"Ethics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-nuclear-energy-contribute-proliferation-of","slug":"does-nuclear-energy-contribute-proliferation-of","title":"Does nuclear energy contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons?","intro":"A growing number of nations are gaining the tools and abilities to utilize nuclear power. Should we concerned about the possibility of those tools being used for nuclear war?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-daca-dreamers","slug":"what-are-positions-on-daca-dreamers","title":"What are the positions on DACA and Dreamers?","intro":"Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is an immigration policy law esetablished in 2012 which allows some children of unlawful presence in the United States to temporarily delay deportation and gives them work authorization. Recently, DACA is extensively debated. What are all the positions and opinions on DACA?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-should-win-us-2020-presidential-election","slug":"who-should-win-us-2020-presidential-election","title":"Should Donald Trump or Joe Biden win the 2020 US Presidential Election?","intro":"It has been a tumultuous 4 years of the Donald Trump presidency in the United States, with investigations, nominations, fake news, tweets, impeachment, pandemics, protests, and a nation divided about the facts on the ground and the direction the country should be taking.  Many see the 2020 US Presidential Election as the most important election in history, with huge implications for the US, but also for the world. So who should win the US Presidential election?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-happened-mh17","slug":"what-happened-mh17","title":"What happened to MH17?","intro":"On July 17, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane crashed in the war-torn region of eastern Ukraine. All 298 passengers were killed in the crash. Although a Dutch investigation found Russia responsible for shooting down the plane, theories as to what truly happened to MH17 continue to circulate in the media.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"news","name":"News"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-disadvantages-of-watching-pornography","slug":"what-are-disadvantages-of-watching-pornography","title":"What are the disadvantages of watching pornography?","intro":"This entry maps the disadvantages attributed to watching pornography, setting out claims that it erodes values, encourages self-gratification, can contribute to erectile dysfunction, fosters social isolation, and discourages goal-setting.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"science","name":"Science"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-conversion-therapy-work-alter-sexual","slug":"does-conversion-therapy-work-alter-sexual","title":"Does conversion therapy work to alter sexual orientation?","intro":"Does conversion therapy actually change a person's sexual orientation? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that conversion therapy works to alter sexual orientation, and that it does not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"gender","name":"Gender"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-worlds-most-offensive-sitcom","slug":"what-is-worlds-most-offensive-sitcom","title":"What is the world’s most offensive sitcom?","intro":"What is the most offensive sitcom ever made? This entry gathers the contenders — among them the notorious 'Heil Honey I'm Home!', 'All My Babies' Mamas', 'Work It', and, more debatably, Family Guy and M*A*S*H.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"entertainment","name":"Entertainment"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/whats-best-debate-format","slug":"whats-best-debate-format","title":"What's the best debate format?","intro":"Competitive debating has become one of the most popular extracurricular activities for both high school and university students. Around the world, people engage in many different formats of debating, from the formal, cooperate Model United Nations format to the rapid-fire, argumentative Policy format. Out of so many formats, what exactly is the best?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"art","name":"Art"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/greatest-album-of-all-time","slug":"greatest-album-of-all-time","title":"What is the greatest album of all time?","intro":"There are a lot of amazing musical albums that have had a huge impact on the world and their listeners. Some were cutting edge sounds, some were of the moment and touched people, and some were wild commercial successes. But what was the best album of all time?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"music","name":"Music"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-do-humans-enjoy-music","slug":"why-do-humans-enjoy-music","title":"Why do humans enjoy music?","intro":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-year-round","slug":"what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-year-round","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of year round school?","intro":"Many countries, and parts of the United States, run schools year round rather than on a long-summer-holiday calendar. This entry maps the advantages and disadvantages of year-round schooling, setting out the case on each side.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-men-wear-skirts","slug":"should-men-wear-skirts","title":"Should men wear skirts?","intro":"While certain skirt styles like the kilt have been around for centuries, it is still fairly uncommon to see men wearing skirts publicly. This could be due to potential social ridicule or just a personal preference.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/fringe-theories-jesus-christ","slug":"fringe-theories-jesus-christ","title":"What are the fringe theories around Jesus Christ?","intro":"For the two billion Christians worldwide, Jesus of Nazareth  is the son of God - a  first century messiah who performed miracles before being crucified to atone for the sins of mankind. However, some claim that Jesus was something else entirely, and have developed conspiracy theories claiming he was anything from a hypocrite to an alien. Who, or what, was Jesus?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"religion","name":"Religion"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-persuasion-present-more-ethical-dilemmas-than","slug":"does-persuasion-present-more-ethical-dilemmas-than","title":"Does Persuasion present more ethical dilemmas than Argumentation?","intro":"Does persuasion raise thornier ethical questions than reasoned argumentation? This entry maps the positions on the question — that persuasion presents more ethical dilemmas, that the dilemmas are the same, and that persuasion in fact presents fewer.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-pure-evil-exist","slug":"does-pure-evil-exist","title":"Does \"pure evil\" exist?","intro":"The concept of \"pure evil\" has been an inexhaustible source of debate across philosophical, psychological, social, and religious communities. Definitions of \"pure evil\" vary, but most tend to include the stipulation that it describes an action that causes suffering and is performed for the sake of causing that suffering.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"ethics","name":"Ethics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-chinas-social-credit-system","slug":"what-is-chinas-social-credit-system","title":"What is China's social credit system?","intro":"This entry maps how China's social credit system is understood — as a national reputation system developed by the Communist Party, as a human-rights violation, and as a step toward a dystopian future.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-key-running-fast","slug":"what-is-key-running-fast","title":"What is the key to running fast?","intro":"What is the key to running faster? This entry gathers the contending answers — interval training, varying your pace, jump-roping, lighter shoes, and good running form — each argued to be the decisive factor.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"health","name":"Health"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-panhandling-be-illegal","slug":"should-panhandling-be-illegal","title":"Should panhandling be illegal?","intro":"Panhandling, otherwise known as urban begging, or anybody that begs for money or food, mostly done by homeless individuals, is a present issue. The question that remains is how it should be handled.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-do-french-hate-british","slug":"why-do-french-hate-british","title":"Why do the French hate the British?","intro":"The French and British neighbours have a long history of cultural interactions, wars, trade, and maintain very different cultures and language. There is generally a distain for the British from the French, but what are the reasons behind this?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-pleasure","slug":"what-is-pleasure","title":"What is pleasure?","intro":"We all know the feeling of pleasure. Some would describe it as a feeling or sense of delight, happiness, gratification. But what is the sensation of pleasure and where does it come from?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"philosophy","name":"Philosophy"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/afghan-taliban-peace-talks-whats-next","slug":"afghan-taliban-peace-talks-whats-next","title":"Afghan-Taliban peace talks: What's next?","intro":"In 2020 we've seen continuation of Afghan and Taliban peace talks, in a region that has seen difficulties and been defined by tribalism for generations. So what is next in the Afghan-Taliban peace talks?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"international-relations","name":"International Relations"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-was-korea-divided","slug":"why-was-korea-divided","title":"Why was Korea divided?","intro":"Many people today have only ever known a divided Korea in their life times. North Korea and South Korea, their tensions, politics, and neighbours often fill the news. But why was Korea divided in the first place?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/do-essential-oils-work-or-are-they-useless","slug":"do-essential-oils-work-or-are-they-useless","title":"Do essential oils work or are they useless?","intro":"Essential oils are loved by many who believe in their healing and wellness properties, and are big business. But are Essential oils really working or has the marketing and hype blinded consumers to the reality?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-tiktok-security-threat-real","slug":"is-tiktok-security-threat-real","title":"Is the TikTok security threat real?","intro":"TikTok is a wildly popular and successful social media and video platform that was created in China and has taken over the world. But with unprecedented amounts of personal data information now available to this Chinese company, some nations are concerned about security. Is TikTok a security risk?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-psychiatry-sham","slug":"is-psychiatry-sham","title":"Is psychiatry a sham?","intro":"Is psychiatry a legitimate medical discipline or a sham? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that psychiatry is a sham, and that it is not — covering diagnosis, treatment and the nature of mental illness.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/which-star-wars-movie-is-best","slug":"which-star-wars-movie-is-best","title":"Which Star Wars movie is the best?","intro":"Star Wars is a film series loved by generations of fans around the world. Rich stories, characters, adventures have enthralled audiences. But which is the best film?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"movies","name":"Movies"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-american-working-class-vote-for-trump-or","slug":"should-american-working-class-vote-for-trump-or","title":"Should the American working class vote for Trump or Biden?","intro":"30-50% of American adults would describe themselves as working class. A large part of the population, yet one which doesn’t feel heard. Both Trump and Biden have appealed to them by making themselves seem more relatable and trustworthy. If elected, how will they support this alienated demographic?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-athletes-kneel-during-national-anthem","slug":"should-athletes-kneel-during-national-anthem","title":"Should athletes kneel during the national anthem?","intro":"In 2016, the San Francisco 49ers' quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, first took a knee during the national anthem playing before his teams' first preseason games. Since then, many other athletes have also taken a knee in protest against police violence and brutality in America. What exactly does this protest mean? Is it disrespectful to the country and the sport, or is it a legitimate form of protest against a country that has never treated its minorities fairly?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"sports","name":"Sports"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-us-maintain-embargo-against-cuba","slug":"should-us-maintain-embargo-against-cuba","title":"Should the US maintain the embargo against Cuba?","intro":"In 1962 the US introduced a trade embargo, ‘El Bloqueo’, on Cuba, in response to the Cuban revolution. The embargo is an attempt to force regime change in a one-party state. Congressional support is needed to repeal the divisive measure, which has been written into statute.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"international-relations","name":"International Relations"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/do-guns-kill-or-do-people-kill-people","slug":"do-guns-kill-or-do-people-kill-people","title":"Do guns kill or do people kill people?","intro":"“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is a well-known slogan used by the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun activists to make the case for their deregulation agenda.  So which is it? Do guns kill people or do people kill people?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"philosophy","name":"Philosophy"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-do-early-voting-vote-by-mail-controversies","slug":"what-do-early-voting-vote-by-mail-controversies","title":"What do early voting and vote-by-mail controversies mean for democracy in the US?","intro":"Record numbers of Americans have cast their vote early before election day on 3rd November in person and by mail. Long queues outside polling stations and fears of voter fraud are the subject of  great controversy. What do these controversies tell us about the state of democracy in the US?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-conspiracy-theories-about-climate-change","slug":"what-are-conspiracy-theories-about-climate-change","title":"What are the conspiracy theories about climate change?","intro":"According to NASA, 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that climate change is caused by humans. However, there are groups of people who believe that climate change is a myth, a hoax by scientists and/or governments.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-humans-responsible-for-climate-change","slug":"are-humans-responsible-for-climate-change","title":"Are humans responsible for climate change?","intro":"Climate change isn't just global warming, it's also a change in regional or global weather patterns. There are many other factors though that cause these world wide changes. People have been questioning whether humans are at fault for climate change or if the fears surrounding it are real at all.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-is-greatest-tottenham-hotspur-goalkeeper-of","slug":"who-is-greatest-tottenham-hotspur-goalkeeper-of","title":"Who is the greatest Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper of all time?","intro":"Goalkeepers are often relegated to the sidelines of history, and yet many long argued that theirs is the most important role in any football team. With Tottenham's current goalkeeper currently captaining the team, and his predecessors recognised for their superlative playing - who is the greatest Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper of all time?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"sports","name":"Sports"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-do-people-become-extremists","slug":"why-do-people-become-extremists","title":"Why do people become extremists?","intro":"By Oxford definition, an extremist is defined as \"a person who holds extreme or fanatical political or religious views, especially one who resorts to or advocates extreme action.\" The United States FBI has outlined the following reasons why people may turn to extremism.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-joe-biden-or-donald-trump-more-corrupt","slug":"is-joe-biden-or-donald-trump-more-corrupt","title":"What are the allegations of corruption against Joe Biden and Donald Trump?","intro":"With allegations of corruption flying from both sides during the final presidential debate, shady activities of both candidates are drawing attention as election day approaches. But what are the accusations of corruption facing the two candidates?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-nuclear-weapons","slug":"what-are-positions-on-nuclear-weapons","title":"What are the positions on nuclear weapons?","intro":"Nuclear weapons have been inciting fear, controversy, and awe since their creation. With the recent push to ban these weapons gaining popularity across the world, many new positions have sprung up as a response.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"international-relations","name":"International Relations"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/men-cheat-women","slug":"men-cheat-women","title":"Why do men cheat on women?","intro":"Heterosexual infidelity is increasingly common. Statistics vary, but most estimate that 20% of married men have secret extramarital sexual relationships at one point or another. Why? This illicit betrayal can ruin lives and tear families apart. So, what drives men to cheat on women?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"gender","name":"Gender"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-women-vote-for-trump-or-biden","slug":"should-women-vote-for-trump-or-biden","title":"Should women vote for Trump or Biden?","intro":"Gender inequality underpins many problems which disproportionately affect women and girls. The include domestic and sexual violence, gender-related pay gaps, lack of access to education, and inadequate healthcare. How the Presidential candidates approach this could swing the female vote. So, should women vote for Trump or Biden?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-is-federalism-important-for-democracy","slug":"why-is-federalism-important-for-democracy","title":"Why is Federalism Important for Democracy?","intro":"Federalism is the division of a territory into states or units. Certain powers are devolved to each state to some degree, in parallel with the powers of the central government. Many important political thinkers believe federalism is essential for a democracy to function properly.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-cursive-be-taught-in-schools","slug":"should-cursive-be-taught-in-schools","title":"Should cursive be taught in schools?","intro":"This debate is rehashed every few years as states discuss whether or not to mandate cursive. Some view it as an outdated practice wasting time which could be spent on typing, but others prioritize the correlation of cursive skills and literacy.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-fast-should-fossil-fuels-be-phased-out","slug":"how-fast-should-fossil-fuels-be-phased-out","title":"How fast should fossil fuels be phased out?","intro":"Fossil fuels will inevitably become a thing of the past, but it is difficult to say when that time will be. Should countries and industries begin this process immediately to avoid further long-term damage to the climate or is it better to implement a slower transition over a longer period of time with similar results?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-achieving-net-zero-carbon","slug":"what-are-positions-on-achieving-net-zero-carbon","title":"What are the positions on achieving net-zero carbon?","intro":"The term ‘net-zero carbon’ refers to a standard proposed by policymakers, climate scientists, and activists where emissions would be reduced to a sustainable level, preventing catastrophic climate change. Some countries have already set targets- yet the issue is one of global contention.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/will-donald-trump-or-joe-biden-be-better-for-3","slug":"will-donald-trump-or-joe-biden-be-better-for-3","title":"Will Donald Trump or Joe Biden be better for healthcare?","intro":"As the only developed nation without universal healthcare, the US is often criticised for not providing enough support for its citizens. The global pandemic has highlighted how problematic this has the potential to be. So, will Donald Trump or Joe Biden be better for healthcare?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-companies","slug":"what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-companies","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of companies being 100% employee-owned?","intro":"In some countries like the UK, company ownership has begun to trend towards employee-ownership (also called ESOPs).  This allows essential employees to become shareholders in a given company. Despite the advantages this can afford founders, there are also some disadvantages that can entail with this approach to running a company.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"economics","name":"Economics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-theories-of-deviance-crime","slug":"what-are-theories-of-deviance-crime","title":"What are theories of deviance and crime?","intro":"The reasons that crime and delinquent behavior exists in society has always perplexed sociologists and psychologists alike. The theories for why this behavior exists ranges from placing the blame on society, to the individual.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"science","name":"Science"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-is-standard-of-living-in-east-germany-so-much","slug":"why-is-standard-of-living-in-east-germany-so-much","title":"Why is the standard of living in East Germany so much worse than West Germany?","intro":"Why does the former East Germany still lag the West in living standards decades after reunification? This entry maps the explanations — that the east is still grappling with its history, that it faces discrimination, and that it remains proud.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-we-mute-microphones-find-better-referee-or","slug":"should-we-mute-microphones-find-better-referee-or","title":"Should we mute the microphones, find a better referee, or cancel them altogether?","intro":"After chaotic televised debates, this entry maps proposals for fixing them — setting out the positions that candidates' microphones should be muted, that a better moderator is the answer, and that microphones should be cut altogether.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/was-joseph-stalin-successful-leader","slug":"was-joseph-stalin-successful-leader","title":"Was Joseph Stalin a successful leader?","intro":"Was Joseph Stalin a successful leader, whatever the human cost? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that Stalin was a successful leader, and that he was not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-sale-of-human-organs-be-legalised","slug":"should-sale-of-human-organs-be-legalised","title":"Should the sale of human organs be legalised","intro":"Should people be allowed to buy and sell human organs? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that the sale of human organs should be legalised, and that it should not — weighing supply against exploitation.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"law","name":"Law"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-is-qanon-dangerous","slug":"why-is-qanon-dangerous","title":"Why is QAnon dangerous?","intro":"This entry maps the reasons given for regarding the QAnon conspiracy movement as dangerous — that it is linked to real violence, that it functions as a cult, that it disregards truth to push an agenda, and that it corrodes belief in facts.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-happened-breonna-taylor","slug":"what-happened-breonna-taylor","title":"What happened to Breonna Taylor?","intro":"This entry maps how the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor, shot by police during a raid on her home, is characterised — setting out the positions that she was murdered by the police, and that she was accidentally killed during the raid.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-algae-new-cotton","slug":"is-algae-new-cotton","title":"Is algae the new cotton?","intro":"Could algae become a sustainable alternative to cotton and other textiles? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that algae is the new cotton, and that it is not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/future-work","slug":"future-work","title":"What will the future of work be?","intro":"The future of work is being shaped by two powerful forces: the growing adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace, and the expansion of the workforce. What changes could be in store for the workplace, the workforce, and the nature of work itself?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-were-causes-of-american-revolution","slug":"what-were-causes-of-american-revolution","title":"What events led to the American Revolution?","intro":"What lit the fuse of the American Revolution? This entry maps the events that fed colonial anger, setting out the roles of the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts in driving the thirteen colonies toward rebellion.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-do-we-think-about-snowflake-generation","slug":"how-do-we-think-about-snowflake-generation","title":"How do we think about the snowflake generation?","intro":"Snowflake is a derogatory slang term that developed in the 2010s, implying one may have an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or are overly-emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions. Common usages include the terms special snowflake, Generation Snowflake, and snowflake as a politicized insult. Yet, as the term has existed in the vernacular, the ideas surrounding it have evolved and opened the door to an array of opinions.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-has-online-dating-changed-relationships","slug":"how-has-online-dating-changed-relationships","title":"How has online dating changed relationships?","intro":"Has online dating fundamentally reshaped how people form relationships? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that online dating has changed relationships, and that it has not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-pornography-lead-violence-against-women","slug":"does-pornography-lead-violence-against-women","title":"Does pornography lead to violence against women?","intro":"Does pornography contribute to violence against women? This entry sets out the two positions on the contested question — that pornography leads to violence against women, and that it does not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-self-driving","slug":"what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-self-driving","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-driving cars?","intro":"Advances in technology, automation, and artificial intelligence have lead to break throughs in the dream of self-driving cars. What will the advantages and disadvantages, and  pros and cons, be to society of having these vehicles on the road?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-there-social-media-bias","slug":"is-there-social-media-bias","title":"Is there a social media bias?","intro":"Do social media platforms systematically favour some viewpoints over others? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that there is a social media bias, and that there is not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/childhood-experiences-determine-behavior-later-life","slug":"childhood-experiences-determine-behavior-later-life","title":"Do childhood experiences determine behavior in later life?","intro":"Traumatic events in childhood create phobias, likes and dislikes, and even core personality features. For example, abusers tend to have been abused themselves. The flip side is also true, college students succeed more if they have support from their parents. Also, siblings come into play. Children with opposite-sex siblings tend to have happier marriages if they are wed to the opposite sex.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"science","name":"Science"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-happened-convicted-sex-offender-jeffrey","slug":"what-happened-convicted-sex-offender-jeffrey","title":"What happened to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein?","intro":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/men-overrepresented-tech","slug":"men-overrepresented-tech","title":"Why are men overrepresented in tech?","intro":"Tech and software development are industries where men are heavily favoured.  Is this because men are naturally driven towards these roles, or because women are turned against them?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"gender","name":"Gender"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-does-memory-work-in-brain","slug":"how-does-memory-work-in-brain","title":"How does memory work in the brain?","intro":"Human memory is one of the most puzzling mysteries of science. Neuroscientists and psychologists have suggested many theories for its mechanism, but substantiating these theories with concrete evidence is difficult. How do our brains enable us to remember?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"science","name":"Science"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/human-extinction-tragedy","slug":"human-extinction-tragedy","title":"Would human extinction be a tragedy?","intro":"Would it be a tragedy if humans were wiped out? Would it be a cause for celebration given the environmental destruction we have caused? Maybe it would be neither?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"philosophy","name":"Philosophy"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-pros-cons-of-living-in-us","slug":"what-are-pros-cons-of-living-in-us","title":"What are the pros and cons of living in the US?","intro":"The United States of America has for many years been a nation admired around the world for its commitment to freedom and democracy, scientific achievements, and popular culture. But what is it like to live in the United States today? Does US history reflect its current quality of life for its citizens?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-were-pyramids-at-giza-built","slug":"how-were-pyramids-at-giza-built","title":"How were the Pyramids at Giza built?","intro":"The Pyramids at Giza are an engineering marvel from Egypt’s Old Kingdom period. The largest, the Great Pyramid, is 455 feet high and was constructed from approximately 2.3 million blocks weighing 2.5 tons each. There are many theories as to how the pyramids were built using primitive technology.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-intersectionality-new-caste-system","slug":"is-intersectionality-new-caste-system","title":"Is intersectionality the new caste system?","intro":"The concept of intersectionality is viewed by some as a liberating principle that allows their voice to be heard, whilst for others it creates divisions and hierarchies of victimhood. Is intersectionality the new caste system?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"gender","name":"Gender"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-vaccines-be-mandatory","slug":"should-vaccines-be-mandatory","title":"Should vaccines be mandatory?","intro":"Vaccines are one of the most successful public health interventions in history. Yet there has always been and will always be a vocal anti-vaccination movement. Should governments exert their powers to make vaccines mandatory?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-vaping-be-banned","slug":"should-vaping-be-banned","title":"Should vaping be banned","intro":"Should vaping be banned? This entry weighs the arguments on both sides of the question — that vaping should be banned, and that it should not — covering health risks, harm reduction for smokers, and personal freedom.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"law","name":"Law"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-are-south-african-youths-disillusioned-with","slug":"why-are-south-african-youths-disillusioned-with","title":"Why are South African youths disillusioned with politics?","intro":"Why are young South Africans turning away from politics? This entry maps the explanations — that they feel their votes do not count, that they are indifferent to elections, and that they feel politics does not affect them.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-religion-force-for-good-or-evil","slug":"is-religion-force-for-good-or-evil","title":"Is religion a force for good or evil?","intro":"Has religion done more good or more harm to humanity? This entry maps the positions on the question — that religion is a force for good, that it is a force for evil, and that it is inherently neither.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"religion","name":"Religion"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-economic-development-false-promise-for","slug":"is-economic-development-false-promise-for","title":"Is economic development a false promise for developing countries?","intro":"Is the promise of economic development a mirage for poorer nations? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that economic development is a false promise for developing countries, and that it is not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"economics","name":"Economics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/worst-part-of-trump-paying-zero-taxes","slug":"worst-part-of-trump-paying-zero-taxes","title":"The worst part of Trump paying zero taxes?","intro":"What was most troubling about revelations that Donald Trump paid little or no federal income tax? This entry maps the positions — that the worst part is that it was legal, that it set a bad example, and that it exposed systemic flaws in the US tax system.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/will-donald-trump-concede-2020-presidential","slug":"will-donald-trump-concede-2020-presidential","title":"Will Donald Trump concede the 2020 Presidential election to Joe Biden?","intro":"After Joe Biden's decisive win in the 2020 Presidential Election, Donald Trump and many of his supporters continued to claim victory in the election, as well as accuse the Democratic Party of using voter fraud to illegitimately steal the election.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"law","name":"Law"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-chess-sport","slug":"is-chess-sport","title":"Is chess a sport?","intro":"Chess is a competitive game of strategy, mental agility, and endurance, that has been studied and played for generations. Competitions around the world, celebrity grandmasters, fans who play and study the game, all mirror many other professional sports. But is chess a sport?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"sports","name":"Sports"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-do-women-still-change-their-names","slug":"why-do-women-still-change-their-names","title":"Why do women still change their names?","intro":"In many parts of the world women take the name of their husbands when they get married. This tradition is very old, and many believe it is no longer a relevant or appropriate practice in the modern world. So why do women still take their husbands names?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"gender","name":"Gender"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-colleges-end-legacy-admissions","slug":"should-colleges-end-legacy-admissions","title":"Should colleges end legacy admissions?","intro":"At many colleges a tradition of legacy admissions, accepting the admission of students with parents or other relatives who previously attended, is still an active practice. But is this fair? And should it be continued?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/would-joe-biden-be-good-president","slug":"would-joe-biden-be-good-president","title":"Would Joe Biden be a good President?","intro":"As the 2020 election approaches, many question what America would look like with seasoned politician, centrist, Democrat candidate Joe Biden at the helm. Would Joe Biden be a good President?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-mainstream-vegan-movement-have-race-problem","slug":"does-mainstream-vegan-movement-have-race-problem","title":"Does the mainstream vegan movement have a race problem?","intro":"In influencer circles advocating for a vegan lifestyle, some have suggested the group is not representative of the larger world. And beyond that may even be racist. Is this the case? Or is vegan advocacy a safe space for all?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"health","name":"Health"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-ai-friend-help-you-feel-less-lonely","slug":"can-ai-friend-help-you-feel-less-lonely","title":"Can an AI friend help you feel less lonely?","intro":"Artificial Intelligence technology is advancing rapidly in many domains, including AI understanding of human social needs. Is it possible that AI can provide meaningful friendship to people?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-terrorism-ever-be-justified","slug":"can-terrorism-ever-be-justified","title":"Can terrorism ever be justified?","intro":"The aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States has placed terrorism on the philosophical agenda. While the definition of terrorism remains contested, there are different stances on whether terrorism can ever be morally justified.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"ethics","name":"Ethics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-us-break-up-into-smaller-distinct-nations","slug":"should-us-break-up-into-smaller-distinct-nations","title":"Should the U.S. break up into smaller distinct nations?","intro":"The United States, the third largest country in the world, spans an entire continent and touches two oceans. A flight from coast to coast takes on average six hours, and a drive takes about 45 hours. It is an enormous place, encompassing dozens of ethnicities, states, ideologies, and dynamics. Such a large place brings with it disagreement, but whether those disagreements are large enough to result in the need for smaller nations is up for debate.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-naked-bike-shorts-next-big-thing-in-fashion","slug":"are-naked-bike-shorts-next-big-thing-in-fashion","title":"Are naked bike shorts the next big thing in fashion?","intro":"Naked bike shorts have grown increasingly visible on runways and streets. This entry asks whether they are poised to become the next big fashion trend, setting out the positions that they are, and that they are not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"fashion","name":"Fashion"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-nature-heal-itself","slug":"can-nature-heal-itself","title":"Can nature heal itself?","intro":"Humans and their industry have created a huge amount of damage to nature, the environment, and the planet.  Mass extinction, climate change, and more. But if humans step back can nature heal itself, or do humans need to engage to fix things?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-you-trust-us-polls","slug":"can-you-trust-us-polls","title":"Can you trust US polls?","intro":"US election polling has been brought into question after failures to predict and understand the US presidential outcome in 2016, and 2020. Can we trust US polling? Or are there fundamental issues with the polling approach?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-hunting-ethical","slug":"is-hunting-ethical","title":"Is hunting ethical?","intro":"Is hunting ethical? This entry weighs the arguments on both sides of the question — that hunting is ethical, and that it is not — covering conservation, tradition, animal welfare and the ethics of killing for sport.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"ethics","name":"Ethics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-would-world-without-prisons-be-like","slug":"what-would-world-without-prisons-be-like","title":"What would a world without prisons be like?","intro":"What would a society without prisons actually look like? This entry maps the positions on prison abolition — that it would mean upending the current justice system, and that it would mean confronting root causes like inequality, education and employment.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-are-clothes-sizes-so-erratic-can-they-be-fixed","slug":"why-are-clothes-sizes-so-erratic-can-they-be-fixed","title":"Why are clothes sizes so erratic and can they be fixed?","intro":"Why is clothing sizing so inconsistent, and can it be fixed? This entry maps the explanations — that retailers simply apply inconsistent standards, and that 'vanity sizing' deliberately distorts the numbers on the label.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"fashion","name":"Fashion"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-war-on-christmas","slug":"what-are-positions-on-war-on-christmas","title":"What are the positions on \"the war on Christmas\"?","intro":"This entry maps the debate over the so-called 'war on Christmas', setting out the opposing positions that there is a concerted war on Christmas, and that no such war exists.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"religion","name":"Religion"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-taiwans-political-status","slug":"what-is-taiwans-political-status","title":"What is Taiwan's political status?","intro":"Is Taiwan an independent country or a part of China? This entry maps the deeply contested debate over Taiwan's political status, setting out the opposing positions that it is a sovereign nation, and that it is part of China.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"international-relations","name":"International Relations"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-purpose-of-life","slug":"what-is-purpose-of-life","title":"What is the purpose of life?","intro":"An age old question, that drives so much human energy to explore and understand. From religion, to work, to family, to friends, to pleasure, to exploration, to discovery, to ambition... much of our lives are spent in search of a meaning for life itself. Is there a reason behind our being?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"philosophy","name":"Philosophy"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-does-northern-artistic-renaissance-differ-from","slug":"how-does-northern-artistic-renaissance-differ-from","title":"How does the Northern Artistic Renaissance differ from the Italian Artistic Renaissance?","intro":"The art renaissance began in the 14th century in both Northern Europe and Italy, but they were vastly different. However, both spurred social change and scientific discovery. During this renaissance, art style changed in composition, color, religious representation, anatomy, and architecture.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-medusa-victim-or-villain","slug":"is-medusa-victim-or-villain","title":"Is Medusa a victim or villain?","intro":"Medusa is a famous figure in Greek mythology, often portrayed as a villain in most media. Her story, however, is much more complex than many are led to believe. Is Medusa really a villain, or is she a victim of her circumstances?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"literature","name":"Literature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-is-greatest-tottenham-hotspur-striker-of-all","slug":"who-is-greatest-tottenham-hotspur-striker-of-all","title":"Who is the greatest Tottenham Hotspur striker of all time?","intro":"White Hart Lane - the North London heartland of football club Tottenham Hotspur -  has been home to many world class strikers since the team was established in 1882. But who is the team's greatest striker of all time>?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"sports","name":"Sports"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-there-be-reparations-for-slavery","slug":"should-there-be-reparations-for-slavery","title":"Should there be reparations for slavery?","intro":"More than 150 years since the end of slavery, racial inequality is still evident in the United States. Black Americans have an average household wealth just a tenth of white families, face housing and banking discrimination, and higher policing. Reparations for slavery is either a path towards equality or a path to further division.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-bore-responsibility-for-start-of-world-war-i","slug":"who-bore-responsibility-for-start-of-world-war-i","title":"Who bore responsibility for the start of World War I?","intro":"Lasting from 1914 to  1918, World War 1 claimed over 16 million lives, bolstered military technology, and brought world powers to the European theater to fight till ultimate destruction.  Who can be blamed for the carnage seen throughout this conflict?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-pros-cons-of-vaping","slug":"what-are-pros-cons-of-vaping","title":"What are the pros and cons of vaping?","intro":"The inhalation of vapor via an electronic cigarette is known as vaping. It is advertised as an alternative for cigarette smokers by delivering nicotine without tobacco. Health concerns from vaping are mostly uncertain, but according to reports by health experts, vaping can affect lungs, memory, and in some cases, result in death.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"health","name":"Health"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-homework-be-banned","slug":"should-homework-be-banned","title":"Should homework be banned?","intro":"There has been a recent surge in the discussion around productive study habits for students. Is homework productive and useful, or is it merely an added stress?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"education","name":"Education"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-social-networking-sites-good-for-society","slug":"are-social-networking-sites-good-for-society","title":"Are social networking sites good for society?","intro":"Social networking sites have greatly impacted society. We can not only connect and interact with others across the globe in a few clicks, characters or likes, but we also have the potential to learn from these sites. While there may be advantages, there are also disadvantages but the pivotal question is whether the former outweighs the latter.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-social-media-being-used-target-disenfranchised","slug":"is-social-media-being-used-target-disenfranchised","title":"Is social media being used to target the disenfranchised in swing states?","intro":"The 2016 US Presidential election saw the use of fake news to concentrate polarising content in swing states, and to intimidate certain groups of people into not showing up to vote. Under the extreme pressure of the 2020 Presidential elections, is social media being used to target the disenfranchised in swing states?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/race","slug":"race","title":"What is \"race\"?","intro":"Race is one way humans classify one another. Yet, views of how humans are classified differ between person-to-person and even country-to-country. The debate of \"what race is\" has important - and dangerous - implications across society and between individuals.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-we-ban-bottled-water","slug":"should-we-ban-bottled-water","title":"Should we ban bottled water?","intro":"The consumption of bottled water is on the rise. Each year, approximately 200 billion plastic water bottles are used worldwide. With concerns about cost, effects on the environment, and the actual quality of the water, companies are brainstorming and seeking out healthier, eco-friendly alternatives.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-olympics-overall-good-or-bad-for-cities-where","slug":"are-olympics-overall-good-or-bad-for-cities-where","title":"Are Olympics an overall good or bad for the cities where they are hosted?","intro":"The Olympic Games are a set of international sports competitions that occur every four years for winter and spring sports, or every two years overall. Each competition is held in a different city in a different country, with the potential possibility to repeat a location.  As the world economy and tourism expanded in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, there has been some debate as to whether the Olympics is an overall good or bad experience for a host country.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"sports","name":"Sports"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/will-donald-trump-or-joe-biden-be-better-for-race","slug":"will-donald-trump-or-joe-biden-be-better-for-race","title":"Will Donald Trump or Joe Biden be better for race relations?","intro":"Racial tensions have existed in the United States for centuries. 2020 has seen unprecedented protests under the Black Lives Matter banner and race has been the centre of clashes between protesters, militias and the police. With tensions so high, will Donald Trump or Joe Biden be better for race relations?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-pros-cons-of-legalizing-all-drugs","slug":"what-are-pros-cons-of-legalizing-all-drugs","title":"What are the pros and cons of legalizing all drugs?","intro":"Should all drugs be legalised? This entry maps the debate over full drug legalisation, setting out the opposing positions that legalising all drugs would benefit society, and that it would harm it.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"law","name":"Law"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-racism-ever-justified","slug":"is-racism-ever-justified","title":"Can racism ever be justifiable?","intro":"For most people, the gut reaction to this question is immediate: \"Of course not!\" But there are fringe examples, such as Israeli airport security, where blatant racial stereotyping is used, can be justified by the great safety that the airport provides to passengers. But still, can it be justified?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-young-adult-novels-worth-reading","slug":"are-young-adult-novels-worth-reading","title":"Are young adult novels worth reading?","intro":"Coined in the 1960s, young adult fiction was originally marketed at 12-18-year-olds to fill the gap between children's literature and adult literature. However, over half of young adult readers are actually adults. Should adults be embarrassed to read young adult novels, or are they worth reading?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"literature","name":"Literature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-happened-two-princes-in-tower-of-london","slug":"what-happened-two-princes-in-tower-of-london","title":"What happened to the two princes in the Tower of London?","intro":"In 1483, the sudden death of King Edward IV left the throne of England  in the hands of his 12 year old son. Edward IV's son, Edward V, and his brother were taken into custody by their uncle at the Tower of London, and disappeared shortly after.  Although there has been much speculation as to what happened to them over the years,  no one truly knows the fate of the two princes.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-supreme-court-justices-be-elected-or","slug":"should-supreme-court-justices-be-elected-or","title":"Should Supreme Court Justices be elected or appointed?","intro":"The Supreme Court is the highest court in the legal hierarchy. The system in which Supreme Court justices are elected or appointed may shape how they act and decide on rulings. Even though justices are usually appointed, some argue that elections should be held to ensure an independent judiciary.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"law","name":"Law"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-puerto-rico-become-u-s-state-or-independent","slug":"should-puerto-rico-become-u-s-state-or-independent","title":"Should Puerto Rico become a US state or independent?","intro":"Puerto Rico, one of five American territories, has limited power and rights under its territory categorization.  Some mainland Americans argue Puerto Rico should become the 51st U.S. state. Activists in Puerto Rico go one step further—full independence.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"international-relations","name":"International Relations"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/net-neutrality-good-bad","slug":"net-neutrality-good-bad","title":"What are the positions on net neutrality?","intro":"Net neutrality policy is the idea that all websites, irrespective of their content, equipment, or location, must be treated with the same priority and speeds, but can vary in the extent of regulation. What are the main stances on net neutrality?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-we-phase-out-fossil-fuels","slug":"should-we-phase-out-fossil-fuels","title":"Should we phase out fossil fuels?","intro":"Fossil fuels are used to generate power in various facilities, providing energy for our homes, appliances, and devices. This energy has become critical to our daily lives, in turn making the use of fossil fuels essential. Despite this, debates have sprouted forth, contesting the use of fossil fuels to generate power. The questions posed by these debates are: Should the use of fossil fuels be discontinued due to their effects on climate? Or should we continue to use them for fear of economic setbacks?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-did-amelia-earhart-die","slug":"how-did-amelia-earhart-die","title":"How did Amelia Earhart die?","intro":"Amelia Earhart's disappearance and presumed death in the midst of her attempt to circumnavigate the globe by plane has long been an international interest. Many believe her plane crashed in Pacific and that she and her companion perished, but others believe in more unusual theories.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/kardashians-jenners-feminists","slug":"kardashians-jenners-feminists","title":"Are the Kardashians-Jenners feminists?","intro":"The Kardashian-Jenners have built an empire worth over a billion dollars around their name alone. While some argue their entrepreneurship is inspiring for young women, others point to their sexualization and fixation on appearance as evidence they are bad influences on young women. Are the Kardashian-Jenners empowering, feminist figures? Or do they demean all that feminism stands for?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"entertainment","name":"Entertainment"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-harry-potter-be-canceled-because-of-j-k","slug":"should-harry-potter-be-canceled-because-of-j-k","title":"Should Harry Potter be \"canceled\" because of J.K. Rowling's transphobic statements?","intro":"Prolific writer J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has gained infamy in recent weeks for her Twitter statements on transgender issues. Amidst a cultural debate about “cancellation,” this has been brought to the forefront. Should the Harry Potter series be disregarded as a response to its authorial bias?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"literature","name":"Literature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/twitter-correct-fact-checking-trump","slug":"twitter-correct-fact-checking-trump","title":"Was Twitter correct in fact checking Trump?","intro":"On May 28th, Twitter added a fact check to a Trump Tweet about mail in ballots. The President has argued that this is a type of political censorship. Is Twitter a public square or private forum? Does a fact-check limit free speech? Was Twitter correct in fact-checking Trump's tweets?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"law","name":"Law"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-ride-hailing-apps-benefit-society","slug":"are-ride-hailing-apps-benefit-society","title":"Are ride-hailing apps a benefit to society?","intro":"Ride-hailing apps such as Uber or Lyft have made it convenient for passengers to connect with local drivers through their smartphones.  However, there are controversies surrounding the practice of ride-hailing apps. Do ride-hailing apps benefit society?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-high-school-athletes-be-drug-tested","slug":"should-high-school-athletes-be-drug-tested","title":"Should high school athletes be drug tested?","intro":"Playing any type of sport in high school can require a lot of hard work and effort, between long practices, games, and budgeting your time. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, roughly 55% of all high school students participate in at least one sport. Nearly a fourth of all high school students do at least one type of illicit drug, most popularly marijuana. Should highschools be drug testing their student-athletes?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-hunter-bidens-actions-compromise-joe-bidens","slug":"should-hunter-bidens-actions-compromise-joe-bidens","title":"Should Hunter Biden’s actions compromise Joe Biden’s presidential campaign?","intro":"Recently, the FBI subpoenaed Hunter Biden's laptop due to suspicion of money laundering activity on his part. How severe is this scandal? Should Hunter Biden's proximity to presidential candidate Joe Biden be enough to sacrifice him the election?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-money-root-of-all-evil","slug":"is-money-root-of-all-evil","title":"Is money the root of all evil?","intro":"It could be argued that we have an increasing attachment to material wealth, and some people may do all within their power to gain and retain wealth. This question explores the relationship between money and unethical behaviour. It invites us to consider whether the former is the sole and principal cause of the latter.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"ethics","name":"Ethics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-police-be-defunded","slug":"should-police-be-defunded","title":"Should the police be defunded?","intro":"The process of defunding the police involves diverting funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-police forms of public safety such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare, and other community resources.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-schools-have-dresscodes","slug":"should-schools-have-dresscodes","title":"Should schools have dress codes?","intro":"i mean stuff like \"cover all undergarments, no swearing or inappropriate images or texts\" would be fine and a good only rule, but do we really need all the stuff about skirt length, hoodies, shorts, crop tops, ripped jeans, etc. ? I feel like school dress codes are also mainly aimed at female or afab students, and it seems a bit sexist. i could be missing an essential point, but do yall thing stricter dress codes are necessary? What do yall think should be a standard dress code?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"education","name":"Education"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-caused-french-revolution","slug":"what-caused-french-revolution","title":"What caused the French Revolution?","intro":"The French Revolution lasted 10 years, from 1789 to 1799. The Ancien Regime was overthrown in favor of a constitutional monarchy, and King Louis XVI's was executed. It eventually became the First French Republic.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/working-home-better-working-office","slug":"working-home-better-working-office","title":"Is working from home better than working from an office?","intro":"With much of the world now working from home, it is time to revisit the question, is it better? From mental health, to productivity, to cost, is WFH really better than traditional office environments? Is WFH the future of work?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-barefoot-running-really-better-for-you","slug":"is-barefoot-running-really-better-for-you","title":"Is barefoot running really better for you?","intro":"Barefoot running is a trend with a lot of momentum behind it. The idea that we have evolved to run barefoot, and that returning to this natural state can have benefits for running. Research has been done on both sides, with lots of strong adherents... so where to we stand today?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"health","name":"Health"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/has-trump-changed-what-it-means-be-presidential","slug":"has-trump-changed-what-it-means-be-presidential","title":"Has Trump transformed what it means to be Presidential?","intro":"What makes a good President? Is it pragmatism and vision, or,  something else entirely? Trump presents himself as a political outsider: his disregard for political correctness is what attracted many of his supporters. Yet, his critics see his unruly behaviour as a weakness; that it is unbecoming for a President. Has Trump changed what it means to be Presidential? The Merriam-Webster defines “presidential” as: “of, relating to, or befitting a president or a president’s authority”. But, is that what Trump means, and his supporters, refer to?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-birth-control-be-for-sale-over-counter","slug":"should-birth-control-be-for-sale-over-counter","title":"Should birth control be for sale over the counter?","intro":"Contraceptives such as condoms, spermicides, and the “morning after pill” are all readily available over the counter at any pharmacy. Many question if birth control pills should be one of them. Aside from preventing pregnancy, many women take birth control for other health reasons, such as balancing hormones and regulating menstrual cycles. Should birth control be easily accessible? Or is selling birth control over the counter dangerous and irresponsible?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"health","name":"Health"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-ghosts-real","slug":"are-ghosts-real","title":"Are ghosts real?","intro":"Do ghosts exist? A surprising number of people believe in ghosts, or have reported experiencing paranormal phenomenon. The depiction of ghosts and spirits date back to ancient times, and are seen in almost all cultures around the world. But with new technology and advancements in science, there are a number of logical explanations for ghostly encounters. What do you think? Are people really able to make contact with the dead? Or is it all psychological phenomenon?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-communism-viable-in-usa","slug":"is-communism-viable-in-usa","title":"Is communism viable in the USA?","intro":"Communism is an economic ideology that advocates for a classless society in which all property and wealth are communally-owned, instead of by individuals. The idea of communism came from the German philosopher Karl Marx.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/did-british-colonial-powers-invent-indian-caste","slug":"did-british-colonial-powers-invent-indian-caste","title":"Did British colonial powers invent the Indian caste system?","intro":"The four-tiered caste system gives Hindu society a strict hierarchical structure, with teachers and religious leaders at the top, and the fifth \"undesirable\" category performing \"unclean\" work. Where did it come from? Was it a colonial invention? Or are its roots embedded in ancient Indian culture?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-australias-immigration-policy-change","slug":"should-australias-immigration-policy-change","title":"Should Australia's immigration policy change?","intro":"This entry maps the debate over Australia's immigration policy — among the world's most contested — setting out the opposing positions that the policy should change and that it should stay the same.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"law","name":"Law"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-is-far-right-extremism-on-rise-in-germany","slug":"why-is-far-right-extremism-on-rise-in-germany","title":"Why is far right extremism on the rise in Germany?","intro":"Why is far-right extremism resurgent in Germany? This entry maps the explanations — that the country has always harboured such extremism, and that the 2015 refugee crisis fuelled its recent rise.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-conspiracy-theories-about-grand-duchess","slug":"what-are-conspiracy-theories-about-grand-duchess","title":"What are the conspiracy theories about Grand Duchess of Russia Anastasia?","intro":"This entry catalogues the conspiracy theories surrounding Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, shot with her family in 1918 — that she secretly survived, and that Dmitry Medvedev is a descendant of Tsar Nicholas II.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-conspiracy-theories-around-michael","slug":"what-are-conspiracy-theories-around-michael","title":"What are the conspiracy theories around Michael Jackson's death?","intro":"This entry catalogues the theories surrounding Michael Jackson's 2009 death — that he faked it to escape debt and is still alive, that he was murdered, and that he was killed by a drug overdose.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-gambling-be-banned","slug":"should-gambling-be-banned","title":"Should gambling be banned?","intro":"Should gambling be banned outright? This entry weighs the arguments on both sides of the question — that gambling should be banned, and that it should not — balancing addiction and harm against personal freedom.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"law","name":"Law"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-pros-cons-of-nihilism","slug":"what-are-pros-cons-of-nihilism","title":"What are the pros and cons of nihilism?","intro":"What are the upsides and downsides of nihilism, the view that life has no inherent meaning? This entry maps the positions — that nihilism carries real advantages, and that it carries serious disadvantages.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-humans-strive-for-immortality","slug":"should-humans-strive-for-immortality","title":"Should humans strive for immortality?","intro":"Should humanity pursue the end of ageing and death? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that humans should strive for immortality, and that they should not — weighing longer life against its consequences.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"ethics","name":"Ethics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/which-far-right-groups-back-donald-trump","slug":"which-far-right-groups-back-donald-trump","title":"Which far right groups back Donald Trump?","intro":"This entry maps which far-right groups have been associated with support for Donald Trump — among them the KKK, participants in the 'Unite the Right' rally, the Proud Boys, and the audience of Breitbart.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"politics","name":"Politics"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-are-environmental-activists-being-killed","slug":"why-are-environmental-activists-being-killed","title":"Why are environmental activists being killed?","intro":"Why are environmental activists being killed in record numbers? This entry maps the explanations — that violence follows the global economy's push into remote lands, and that it thrives where law and order are weak.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-is-neymar-featured-in-so-many-advertisements","slug":"why-is-neymar-featured-in-so-many-advertisements","title":"Why is Neymar featured in so many advertisements?","intro":"Why does the footballer Neymar appear in so many advertisements? This entry maps the explanations — that brands want to associate with a brilliant player, and that his look and personality make him ideal for advertising.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"sports","name":"Sports"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/when-does-good-attitude-become-toxic-positivity","slug":"when-does-good-attitude-become-toxic-positivity","title":"When does a good attitude become toxic positivity?","intro":"When does relentless optimism curdle into 'toxic positivity'? This entry maps the answers — that it occurs when bad feelings are denied legitimacy, when people are shamed for not being positive, and when they pressure themselves to ignore hard emotions.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-zimbabwe-extending-olive-branch-its-white","slug":"is-zimbabwe-extending-olive-branch-its-white","title":"Is Zimbabwe extending an olive branch to its white farmers?","intro":"Decades after its contested land seizures, is Zimbabwe reaching out to its dispossessed white farmers? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that Zimbabwe is extending an olive branch to white farmers, and that it is not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-italian-fashion-racist","slug":"is-italian-fashion-racist","title":"Is Italian fashion racist?","intro":"Following a series of controversies, does the Italian fashion industry have a problem with racism? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that Italian fashion is racist, and that it is not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"fashion","name":"Fashion"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-dark-matter","slug":"what-is-dark-matter","title":"What is dark matter?","intro":"Dark matter makes up at least 27% of the universe. Everything on earth only adds up to less than 5% of the universe. Dark matter has been a mystery for a long time and continues to be in so many aspects. What is dark matter, and what do we know about it?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"science","name":"Science"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-life","slug":"what-is-life","title":"What is Life?","intro":"We are and see and interact with living things all around us... but what is the definition of life exactly? Is life chemical? Or is life spiritual? Or is life functional?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"philosophy","name":"Philosophy"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-do-we-think-about-consuming-art-or-products-of","slug":"how-do-we-think-about-consuming-art-or-products-of","title":"Should we consume the art or products of people accused of sexual abuse?","intro":"With the rise of the #MeToo movement, more and more victims of sexual assault have come forward accusing prominent figures. From Harvey Weinstein to Michael Jackson to R. Kelly, consumers of art are now faced with an important moral question: should we continue to consume the art of immoral people?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"art","name":"Art"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/psychics-real","slug":"psychics-real","title":"Are psychics real?","intro":"Palm-readings, tarot cards, and crystal balls - these are all things associated with those known as psychics. Every year, thousands of people go to psychics for guidance, for advice, and for the ability to communicate with deceased relatives and friends. Many who go seem to believe in it wholeheartedly, but the question remains: Are psychics real, or is it all just a big ruse?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"science","name":"Science"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-us-about-split-internet","slug":"is-us-about-split-internet","title":"Is the US about to split the internet?","intro":"Is the United States poised to fracture the global internet into rival systems? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that the US is about to split the internet, and that it is not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"technology","name":"Technology"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-complex-is-animal-communication","slug":"how-complex-is-animal-communication","title":"How complex is animal communication?","intro":"Animals signal to one another constantly, but how much structure those signals carry is contested. This entry maps the two positions — that animal communication is very complex, approaching the properties of language, and that it is not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/people-believe-conspiracy-theories","slug":"people-believe-conspiracy-theories","title":"Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?","intro":"Studies show that the majority of people believe in at least one conspiracy theory. They’re becoming increasingly pervasive in our everyday lives, with it not being uncommon to hear conspiracy theories coming from commanders-in-chief. Why would someone believe something that others perceive as crazy?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-germany-good-place-live","slug":"is-germany-good-place-live","title":"Is Germany a good place to live?","intro":"Is Germany a good place to live? This entry maps the positions on the question — that Germany is a good place to live, that it is not, and that it depends on who you are and what you want from a country.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/have-e-rickshaws-become-more-of-menace-than","slug":"have-e-rickshaws-become-more-of-menace-than","title":"Have e-rickshaws become more of a menace than convenience in India?","intro":"Have e-rickshaws become more of a hazard than a help on India's roads? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that e-rickshaws are a menace, and that they are not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-do-we-think-about-consuming-art-or-products-of-2","slug":"how-do-we-think-about-consuming-art-or-products-of-2","title":"How do we think about consuming art or products of people accused of sexual abuse?","intro":"Can we still enjoy the work of artists accused of sexual abuse? This entry maps the debate over separating art from artist, setting out the positions that consuming such work is acceptable, and that it is not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"movies","name":"Movies"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-holocaust-comparassons-ok","slug":"are-holocaust-comparassons-ok","title":"Are Holocaust comparisons OK?","intro":"Jewish and Romani people are in the position where a tragic event in their family history is  used as many people's universal example of a genocide, or just evil in general for some. When is it appropriate to compare things to the Nazi's atrocities?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-should-have-harry-potter-ended-up-with","slug":"who-should-have-harry-potter-ended-up-with","title":"Who should have Harry Potter ended up with?","intro":"Harry Potters love interests were a story line and point of interest for many who have read the Harry Potters novels. Many who have read the books will have strong feelings about who Harry should have ended up with romatically.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"movies","name":"Movies"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-social-media-be-banned-in-schools","slug":"should-social-media-be-banned-in-schools","title":"Should social media be banned in schools?","intro":"Should schools ban students from using social media? This entry sets out the two positions on the question — that social media should be banned in schools, and that it should not — weighing distraction and harm against connection and learning.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"education","name":"Education"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/was-ending-in-inception-real","slug":"was-ending-in-inception-real","title":"Was the ending in \"Inception\" real?","intro":"Did Inception end in reality or in a dream? This entry sets out the two readings of the film's famously ambiguous final scene — that the ending was real, and that it was not.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"movies","name":"Movies"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-baby-boys-be-circumcised","slug":"should-baby-boys-be-circumcised","title":"Should baby boys be circumcised?","intro":"Circumcision of male children for religious tradition or health reasons has been a common practice for a very long time. But is this in the best interest of the child? Have we learned more about what this does to the baby? Should circumcision still be practiced?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":null},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-did-abraham-lincoln-want-abolish-slavery","slug":"why-did-abraham-lincoln-want-abolish-slavery","title":"Why did Abraham Lincoln want to abolish slavery?","intro":"Abraham Lincoln is painted as a hero in American history books, but his true position on slavery during the Civil War has been debated by historians. Abraham Lincoln's motives were unclear and questionable.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"history","name":"History"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-is-fortnite-so-addictive","slug":"why-is-fortnite-so-addictive","title":"Why is Fortnite so addictive?","intro":"Fortnite is a video game from Epic games that has captured the attention of millions around the globe. Players compete in a shooter style game, with crazy outfits, fun dance moves, wild weapons, and fort building. But why has this game become so so popular?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"games","name":"Games"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-green-new-deal","slug":"what-are-positions-on-green-new-deal","title":"What are the pros and cons of The Green New Deal?","intro":"To address the gravity of the climate crisis in the United States, some politicians created a plan called the Green New Deal. The goal of this plan, broadly speaking, is to create a healthy environment for future generations to call home. However, there are numerous positions on the Green New Deal.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"nature","name":"Nature"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-has-divorce-rate-increased","slug":"why-has-divorce-rate-increased","title":"Why has the divorce rate increased?","intro":"Why has the divorce rate risen over recent decades? This entry maps the explanations — the rise of individualism, the strains of the pandemic, easier access to divorce, the decline of religion, and the empowerment of women.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"society","name":"Society"}},{"type":"question","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-paper-books-disappearing","slug":"are-paper-books-disappearing","title":"Are paper books disappearing?","intro":"Digital books, e-books, kindles, e-readers, and digital publication and distribution is changing the book business and the way we consume books. But does the digital revolution mean the end of paper books?","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:24:03.991423+00:00","category":{"slug":"literature","name":"Literature"}}],"positions":[{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/it-depends-useful-for-bounded-tasks-with-verification","slug":"it-depends-useful-for-bounded-tasks-with-verification","ordinal":3,"title":"It depends — useful for bounded tasks with verification","description":"Chatbots are genuinely useful where the task is bounded, the cost of being wrong is low, and the user has the expertise to spot errors. Outside that envelope they cause more friction and harm than they save. The honest answer is therefore use-case-specific.","created_at":"2026-05-22T22:30:33.768336+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/chatbots-useful","title":"Are chatbots useful?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-chatbots-are-unreliable-enough-to-do-net-harm","slug":"no-chatbots-are-unreliable-enough-to-do-net-harm","ordinal":2,"title":"No — chatbots are unreliable enough to do net harm","description":"Chatbots fabricate facts, citations and reasoning with the same confidence as they produce true ones, and erode the very skills they appear to extend. The cost of verifying their output, plus the slow loss of the user's own competence, exceeds whatever convenience they deliver.","created_at":"2026-05-22T22:30:32.934017+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/chatbots-useful","title":"Are chatbots useful?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-chatbots-are-genuinely-useful","slug":"yes-chatbots-are-genuinely-useful","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes — chatbots are genuinely useful","description":"Modern chatbots measurably improve productivity in coding, writing and customer-facing work, and put once-expensive expert advice — medical, legal, educational — within reach of anyone with an internet connection. The aggregate gains outweigh the cost of their flaws.","created_at":"2026-05-22T22:30:31.910157+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/chatbots-useful","title":"Are chatbots useful?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/help-your-community","slug":"help-your-community","ordinal":2,"title":"Help your community","description":"This position holds that you can help others during COVID-19 by supporting your local community. It suggests reaching out to those nearby in need—the elderly, key workers with children, and the vulnerable—with guidance tailored to the US, Canada, UK, and Australia.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/i-help-coronavirus-covid-19","title":"How can I help others during coronavirus / COVID-19?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/people-can-get-children-faster-than-legally","slug":"people-can-get-children-faster-than-legally","ordinal":5,"title":"People can get children faster than legally","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-do-people-benefit-from-human-trafficking","title":"How do people benefit from human trafficking?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/genghis-khan-is-the-most-powerful-person-of-all-time","slug":"genghis-khan-is-the-most-powerful-person-of-all-time","ordinal":2,"title":"Genghis Khan is the most powerful person of all time","description":"This position names Genghis Khan the most powerful person in history. It argues he founded the largest contiguous empire ever, exercising absolute rule across Asia, and commanded one of the most formidable and feared militaries the world has ever seen.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/powerful-person-time","title":"Who is the most powerful person of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/there-is-no-war-on-christmas","slug":"there-is-no-war-on-christmas","ordinal":2,"title":"There is no war on Christmas","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-war-on-christmas","title":"What are the positions on \"the war on Christmas\"?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/5g-deployment-is-good","slug":"5g-deployment-is-good","ordinal":1,"title":"5G deployment is good","description":"This position catalogues the case for 5G deployment in the US. It argues that 5G is far faster than 4G with greater capacity and lower latency, and that this leap would unlock advanced technologies — from self-driving cars to smart infrastructure and connected industry.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-5g-technology","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of 5G technology in the US?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/taiwan-is-part-of-china","slug":"taiwan-is-part-of-china","ordinal":2,"title":"Taiwan is part of China","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-taiwans-political-status","title":"What is Taiwan's political status?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/henry-viiis-personality-changed-due-to-painful-leg-ulcers","slug":"henry-viiis-personality-changed-due-to-painful-leg-ulcers","ordinal":4,"title":"Henry VIII's personality changed due to painful leg ulcers","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-caused-henry-viiis-erratic-behaviour-later-in","title":"What caused Henry VIII's erratic behaviour later in life?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/election-strategy","slug":"election-strategy","ordinal":2,"title":"Election strategy","description":"Labour's election strategy was misguided. It wasted resources on trophy seats and failed to recognise the need to shore up campaigns in Labour's Northern heartlands.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/did-labour-lose-2019-uk-general-election","title":"Why did Labour lose the 2019 UK general election?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-red-tape-or-regulations","slug":"no-red-tape-or-regulations","ordinal":2,"title":"No red tape or regulations","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-do-people-benefit-from-human-trafficking","title":"How do people benefit from human trafficking?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/anti-zionism-is-the-same-as-anti-semitism","slug":"anti-zionism-is-the-same-as-anti-semitism","ordinal":1,"title":"Anti-Zionism is the same as anti-Semitism","description":"This position holds that anti-Zionism is the same as anti-Semitism. It argues anti-Zionism is a coded attack on Jews dressed in political language, that denying the Jewish people's right to self-determination is itself anti-Semitic, and that anti-Zionism is simply its modern form.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/anti-zionism-anti-semitism-thing","title":"Are anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism the same thing?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/boys-clubs-prevent-women-from-gaining-access","slug":"boys-clubs-prevent-women-from-gaining-access","ordinal":1,"title":"Boys clubs prevent women from gaining access","description":"This position holds that men are overrepresented in tech because 'boys' club' structures shut women out. It argues that social structures and networks, a male-dominated culture, and technology often designed by and for men combine to keep women out of software and tech work.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/men-overrepresented-tech","title":"Why are men overrepresented in tech?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-media","slug":"the-media","ordinal":7,"title":"The media","description":"This position blames the media for Labour's 2019 election defeat. It argues the mainstream press was unabashedly pro-Conservative, vilifying Jeremy Corbyn and his party, and that this relentlessly hostile coverage created an environment in which Labour could not win.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/did-labour-lose-2019-uk-general-election","title":"Why did Labour lose the 2019 UK general election?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-german-social-media-hate-speech-law-is-effective","slug":"the-german-social-media-hate-speech-law-is-effective","ordinal":2,"title":"The German social media hate speech law is effective","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-germanys-social-media-hate","title":"What are the positions on Germany's social media hate policy?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/homer-simpson-is-the-best-simpsons-character","slug":"homer-simpson-is-the-best-simpsons-character","ordinal":1,"title":"Homer Simpson is the best Simpsons character","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-is-best-simpsons-character","title":"Who is the best Simpsons character?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-our-society-is-becoming-more-egalitarian","slug":"yes-our-society-is-becoming-more-egalitarian","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, our society is becoming more egalitarian","description":"From #BLM to calls for UBI and climate justice, the younger generations are seeing and working to repair the inequities of the past, and in doing so making society more egalitarian.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-our-society-becoming-egalitarian","title":"Is our society becoming egalitarian?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/there-are-no-implications-to-kanye-west-running-for-president","slug":"there-are-no-implications-to-kanye-west-running-for-president","ordinal":3,"title":"There are no implications to Kanye West running for president","description":"Kanye has said he will run for office before, without following through. And were Ye to run, with just four months to go before the election, it's too late for him to have any meaningful impact.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/implications-kanye-west-running-for-president","title":"What are the implications of Kanye West running for President?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-sea-people-were-created-by-invaders-passing-through-the-balkans","slug":"the-sea-people-were-created-by-invaders-passing-through-the-balkans","ordinal":4,"title":"The Sea People were created by invaders passing through the Balkans","description":"Archaeological finds indicate turbulent events in the Balkans prior to the Bronze Age Collapse, possibly caused by movements of people from Eastern and Central Europe. Illyrian raiders may have filtered down into the Meditteranean displacing other groups in Greece and Anatolia, causing widespread banditry.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-were-sea-people-who-attacked-egypt-eastern","title":"Who were the Sea People who attacked Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age Collapse?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/existentialism-is-a-literary-phenomenon","slug":"existentialism-is-a-literary-phenomenon","ordinal":2,"title":"Existentialism is a literary phenomenon","description":"Existentialist themes have been explored and promoted in fictional works, such as novels and plays,  by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.  Existentialism as a literature movement manifests in such works.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-existentialism","title":"What is existentialism?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/zagreb","slug":"zagreb","ordinal":7,"title":"Zagreb","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-europes-most-misunderstood-capital-city","title":"What is Europe's most misunderstood capital city?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-moby-dick-is-not-worth-reading","slug":"no-moby-dick-is-not-worth-reading","ordinal":2,"title":"No, Moby-Dick is not worth reading","description":"This position holds that Moby-Dick is not worth reading. It argues that the novel is pompous, boring and often incomprehensible to the average reader — unnecessarily verbose and puzzling — and that it is no longer relevant to modern readers.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-moby-dick-worth-reading","title":"Is Moby-Dick worth reading?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-because-the-art-is-separate-from-the-artist","slug":"yes-because-the-art-is-separate-from-the-artist","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, because the art is separate from the artist","description":"We consume art because we appreciate the value of the art or the product itself, not because we like the artist. Most of the time, when people consume arts or products, they don't even know the people who have produced them.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-do-we-think-about-consuming-art-or-products-of","title":"Should we consume the art or products of people accused of sexual abuse?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-blm-organization-are-good","slug":"the-blm-organization-are-good","ordinal":1,"title":"The BLM organization are good","description":"This position holds that the Black Lives Matter organisation is a force for good. It argues that BLM brings vital attention to the unjust treatment of Black people, pushes back against white supremacy, and creates a forum for people to unite peacefully against racism.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-blm-organization-good-or-bad","title":"Is BLM (Black Lives Matter) good or bad?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/people-avoid-taxes","slug":"people-avoid-taxes","ordinal":3,"title":"People avoid taxes","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-do-people-benefit-from-human-trafficking","title":"How do people benefit from human trafficking?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-because-it-might-be-dangerous","slug":"no-because-it-might-be-dangerous","ordinal":4,"title":"No, because it might be dangerous","description":"Given that art is an expression of one's inner thoughts and feelings, an artist who has pedophilic tendencies probably reflects those emotions in their art as well. A consumer who is really into the artist could be influenced by their twisted minds.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-do-we-think-about-consuming-art-or-products-of","title":"Should we consume the art or products of people accused of sexual abuse?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/they-refer-to-different-concepts-but-both-are-damaging","slug":"they-refer-to-different-concepts-but-both-are-damaging","ordinal":3,"title":"They refer to different concepts but both are damaging","description":"This position holds that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are distinct concepts but both harm the Jewish community. It argues anti-Zionists are often also anti-Semites, that anti-Zionism can encourage anti-Semitism, and that the two frequently share the same language.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/anti-zionism-anti-semitism-thing","title":"Are anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism the same thing?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-coronavirus-is-having-a-positive-effect-on-global-warming","slug":"the-coronavirus-is-having-a-positive-effect-on-global-warming","ordinal":1,"title":"The coronavirus is having a positive effect on global warming","description":"Global warming has become a major issue as the years go by. Scientists are afraid that carbon emissions will cause degradation of the earth’s atmosphere and subject the planet to environmental catastrophe. Thankfully, the coronavirus has been aiding the efforts of stopping global warming.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-is-coronavirus-pandemic-affecting-global","title":"How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting global warming?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/donate-food-or-money-to-a-foodbank","slug":"donate-food-or-money-to-a-foodbank","ordinal":3,"title":"Donate food or money to a foodbank","description":"This position holds that donating food or money to a foodbank is a good way to help during the pandemic. It argues that pressure on jobs and the economy will push many below the breadline, and points to foodbanks across countries as a direct way to support the most vulnerable.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/i-help-coronavirus-covid-19","title":"How can I help others during coronavirus / COVID-19?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-marriage-is-not-an-outdated-custom","slug":"no-marriage-is-not-an-outdated-custom","ordinal":2,"title":"No, marriage is not an outdated custom","description":"This position holds that marriage is not an outdated custom. It argues that marriage remains a meaningful voluntary union expressing a couple's commitment to one another, and that married couples tend, on various measures, to be better off than those who do not marry.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/marriage-outdated-custom","title":"Is marriage an outdated custom?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/social-consequences","slug":"social-consequences","ordinal":3,"title":"Social consequences","description":"This position examines the social consequences of coronavirus for the European Union. It asks whether the shared experience of the pandemic will draw member nations closer together — the trauma forging a sense of common affinity — or instead harden national identities.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/coronavirus-affect-european-union","title":"How will the coronavirus affect the European Union?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-theocracies-have-many-good-points","slug":"yes-theocracies-have-many-good-points","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, theocracies have many good points","description":"This position holds that theocracies have many good points. It argues that grounding government in a shared religion creates unity and stability, removes the need for compromise, and makes for efficient rule — and notes that most major religions envisage a theocracy in their doctrine.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/theocracy-good","title":"Is theocracy good?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/it-is-an-irrelevant-debate-2","slug":"it-is-an-irrelevant-debate-2","ordinal":2,"title":"It is an irrelevant debate","description":"This position holds that debating a second Brexit referendum is irrelevant. It argues such a vote is simply not feasible—there is no time to hold one—and that what the country actually needs is a general election rather than another referendum on Brexit.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/options-second-brexit-referendum","title":"What are the options on a second Brexit referendum?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/armenia-and-azerbaijans-conflict-over-nagorno-karabakh-is-a-proxy-war-between-ru","slug":"armenia-and-azerbaijans-conflict-over-nagorno-karabakh-is-a-proxy-war-between-ru","ordinal":2,"title":"Armenia and Azerbaijan's conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh is a proxy war between Russia and Turkey","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-armenia-azerbaijan-fighting-over","title":"What are Armenia and Azerbaijan fighting over?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/rising-se-levels-on-the-torres-strait-is-about-discrimination","slug":"rising-se-levels-on-the-torres-strait-is-about-discrimination","ordinal":2,"title":"Rising se levels on the Torres Strait is about discrimination","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-debate-about-rising-ocean-levels-on-torres","title":"What is the debate about rising ocean levels on the Torres Strait Islanders homeland?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/kendrick-lamar-is-the-best-rapper","slug":"kendrick-lamar-is-the-best-rapper","ordinal":5,"title":"Kendrick Lamar is the best rapper","description":"With a talent to combine details of his life in rhyme, Kendrick's success from his albums is representative of uniqueness. He is versatile and forward in his creativity, making him the rap industry's best artist.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/best-rapper-time","title":"Who is the best rapper of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-sea-people-were-migrants-fleeing-famine","slug":"the-sea-people-were-migrants-fleeing-famine","ordinal":2,"title":"The Sea People were migrants fleeing famine.","description":"Difficult climatic conditions and evidence of famine has led some scholars to argue that environmental pressures,  particularly in Anatolia and the Levant, may have created the Sea People. Material culture and origin myths from Italy support this claim.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-were-sea-people-who-attacked-egypt-eastern","title":"Who were the Sea People who attacked Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age Collapse?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/we-should-find-a-better-referee","slug":"we-should-find-a-better-referee","ordinal":2,"title":"We should find a better referee","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-we-mute-microphones-find-better-referee-or","title":"Should we mute the microphones, find a better referee, or cancel them altogether?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-sea-people-were-mycenaean-greeks","slug":"the-sea-people-were-mycenaean-greeks","ordinal":1,"title":"The Sea People were Mycenaean Greeks","description":"According to Greek history the Mycenaeans carried out pirate raiding trips around the Mediterranean. Some of these seafaring Greeks became the Philistines, one of the groups potentially identified in the Egyptian sources.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-were-sea-people-who-attacked-egypt-eastern","title":"Who were the Sea People who attacked Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age Collapse?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-salafi-islam-is-not-compatible","slug":"no-salafi-islam-is-not-compatible","ordinal":2,"title":"No, Salafi Islam is not compatible","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/salafi-islam-compatible-secular-western-cultures","title":"Is Salafi Islam compatible with secular Western cultures?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-baby-boys-should-be-circumcised","slug":"yes-baby-boys-should-be-circumcised","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, baby boys should be circumcised","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-baby-boys-be-circumcised","title":"Should baby boys be circumcised?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/position-7","slug":"position-7","ordinal":4,"title":"個人への評価と報酬","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/shi-yan-suruwen-hua-nogan-hahe-ka-important-build","title":"実験する文化の肝は何か？ What is the most important to build a culture of experimentation?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-act-of-killing-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","slug":"the-act-of-killing-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","ordinal":7,"title":"The Act of Killing is the most controversial documentary","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-most-controversial-documentary-ever-made","title":"What is the most controversial documentary ever made?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/political-consequences","slug":"political-consequences","ordinal":2,"title":"Political consequences","description":"This position examines the political consequences of coronavirus for the European Union. It argues that how EU leaders communicate and make decisions will shape the bloc long after the virus is gone—from the symbolism of the Schengen shutdown to open disputes over the best response.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/coronavirus-affect-european-union","title":"How will the coronavirus affect the European Union?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/warsaw","slug":"warsaw","ordinal":5,"title":"Warsaw","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-europes-most-misunderstood-capital-city","title":"What is Europe's most misunderstood capital city?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/bowling-for-columbine-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","slug":"bowling-for-columbine-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","ordinal":4,"title":"Bowling for Columbine is the most controversial documentary","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-most-controversial-documentary-ever-made","title":"What is the most controversial documentary ever made?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/they-lost-because-of-lies","slug":"they-lost-because-of-lies","ordinal":8,"title":"They lost because of lies","description":"This position attributes Labour's 2019 defeat to lies — arguing the Conservatives lied far more than Labour did. It contends that Boris Johnson ran the 2019 campaign as he had the 2016 Brexit referendum, winning through misinformation rather than the strength of his case.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/did-labour-lose-2019-uk-general-election","title":"Why did Labour lose the 2019 UK general election?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/jeremy-corbyn","slug":"jeremy-corbyn","ordinal":4,"title":"Jeremy Corbyn","description":"Phil Wilson, the Labour candidate who succeeded Tony Blair in Sedgefield summed it up when he said \"the party's leadership went down like a lead balloon on the doorstep.\"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/did-labour-lose-2019-uk-general-election","title":"Why did Labour lose the 2019 UK general election?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/pat-jennings-was-the-greatest-tottenham-hotspur-goalkeeper-of-all-time","slug":"pat-jennings-was-the-greatest-tottenham-hotspur-goalkeeper-of-all-time","ordinal":1,"title":"Pat Jennings was the greatest Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper of all time","description":"Pat Jennings, who was Tottenham goalkeeper from 1964-65 to 1976-77 was dominant when goalkeepers received no protection from referees. Famous for his ability to command his penalty area, he was arguably as good with his feet as he was with his hands. All while subjected to the type of challenges that would be considered assault in the modern game.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-is-greatest-tottenham-hotspur-goalkeeper-of","title":"Who is the greatest Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-an-unamendable-constitution-is-democratic","slug":"no-an-unamendable-constitution-is-democratic","ordinal":2,"title":"No, an unamendable constitution is democratic","description":"This position holds that an unamendable constitution can be democratic. It argues fixed provisions reduce division, that voters keep the power to draft a wholly new constitution, and that — since democracy is about protecting rights, not just process — unamendability guards against a tyrant.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/unamendable-constitution-undemocratic","title":"Is an unamendable constitution undemocratic?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/jesus-was-an-apocalyptic-prophet","slug":"jesus-was-an-apocalyptic-prophet","ordinal":1,"title":"Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet","description":"This position holds that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. It argues that he frequently spoke in the language of apocalyptic thought, that his life fits the pattern, and that the awkwardness of a failed prophecy — unlikely to be invented — confirms he genuinely preached a coming end.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/was-jesus-apocalyptic-prophet","title":"Was Jesus an apocalyptic prophet?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/nations-are-modern-creations","slug":"nations-are-modern-creations","ordinal":2,"title":"Nations are modern creations","description":"This position holds that nations are modern creations. It argues they only emerged from the late eighteenth century amid sweeping political, social, and economic change, driven by Enlightenment ideas, industrialisation, and the rise of print capitalism rather than ancient roots.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/nation","title":"What is a Nation?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/rafael-nadal","slug":"rafael-nadal","ordinal":2,"title":"Rafael Nadal","description":"This position names Rafael Nadal the greatest tennis player of all time. It argues the 'King of Clay' dominated the French Open like no one before him while winning almost everything else, and that he did so against the toughest era of opposition the game has seen.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/greatest-tennis-player-time","title":"Who is the greatest tennis player of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-blm-organization-has-had-mixed-results","slug":"the-blm-organization-has-had-mixed-results","ordinal":3,"title":"The BLM organization has had mixed results","description":"The organization has both helped and harmed","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-blm-organization-good-or-bad","title":"Is BLM (Black Lives Matter) good or bad?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-election-day-should-be-a-national-holiday","slug":"yes-election-day-should-be-a-national-holiday","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, election day should be a national holiday","description":"The United States is one of the few democracies to vote on a weekday.  A free and fair election can not occur while voters are at work and in school. A national holiday is needed to enable everybody and anybody who can vote to do so.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-election-day-be-national-holiday","title":"Should election day be a national holiday?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-jack-had-to-die-to-save-rose-in-the-titanic","slug":"yes-jack-had-to-die-to-save-rose-in-the-titanic","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, Jack had to die to save Rose in the Titanic","description":"This position holds that Jack did have to die at the end of Titanic. It argues the freezing water would have killed him before any plan worked, that terror and cold prevented calm problem-solving, that the panel would sink under two, and that his death was a necessary artistic choice.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/did-jack-really-have-die-save-rose-titanic","title":"Did Jack really have to die to save Rose at the end of Titanic?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/anti-zionism-is-acceptable-anti-semitism-is-not","slug":"anti-zionism-is-acceptable-anti-semitism-is-not","ordinal":2,"title":"Anti-Zionism is acceptable; anti-Semitism is not.","description":"This position holds that anti-Zionism is acceptable while anti-Semitism is not. It argues anti-Semitism is bigotry against Jewish people, whereas anti-Zionism is a political stance on Israeli policy—rooted in international law and held by many Jews themselves.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/anti-zionism-anti-semitism-thing","title":"Are anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism the same thing?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-europe-can-afford-stand-up-to-china","slug":"yes-europe-can-afford-stand-up-to-china","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, Europe can afford stand up to China","description":"Europe, with its economic strength and strategic alliances, possesses the capacity to navigate and mitigate risks in confronting China's influence, leveraging its collective resources and political unity.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-europe-afford-stand-up-china","title":"Can Europe afford to stand up to China?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/public-perceptions-pressure-women-into-changing-their-surnames","slug":"public-perceptions-pressure-women-into-changing-their-surnames","ordinal":3,"title":"Public perceptions pressure women into changing their surnames","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-do-women-still-change-their-names","title":"Why do women still change their names?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-value-investing-is-superior-to-growth-investing","slug":"no-value-investing-is-superior-to-growth-investing","ordinal":2,"title":"No, value investing is superior to growth investing","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/growth-investing-superior-value-investing","title":"Is growth investing superior to value investing?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/standardized-tests-are-effective","slug":"standardized-tests-are-effective","ordinal":1,"title":"Standardized tests are effective","description":"This position holds that standardised tests are effective. It argues that they are the most effective nationwide tool for measuring student success, providing a consistent, comparable basis for assessment across schools — and opening up opportunities for students through that common yardstick.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/standardized-tests-effective","title":"Are standardized tests effective?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/india-has-opened-up-too-soon","slug":"india-has-opened-up-too-soon","ordinal":1,"title":"India has opened up too soon","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-does-india-have-so-many-covid-19-deaths","title":"Why does India have so many Covid-19 deaths?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/cancel-culture-is-a-myth","slug":"cancel-culture-is-a-myth","ordinal":2,"title":"Cancel culture is a myth","description":"This approach argues that society is always changing, and culture adapts with it. Cancel culture has not emerged from historical power relationships. It has grown out of internet culture, produced by changing public attitudes.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/think-about-cancel-culture","title":"How do we think about cancel culture?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/life-is-information-processing","slug":"life-is-information-processing","ordinal":2,"title":"Life is information processing","description":"Things that are living process information","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-life","title":"What is Life?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-there-should-be-tests-for-voting","slug":"yes-there-should-be-tests-for-voting","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, there should be tests for voting","description":"This position holds that there should be a test to vote. It argues that requiring voters to demonstrate some understanding of how politics works would make people think more seriously about their choice, reduce uninformed bias, and ultimately benefit the country.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/test-vote","title":"Should there be a test to vote?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/dream-interpretations-are-complete-hokum","slug":"dream-interpretations-are-complete-hokum","ordinal":1,"title":"Dream interpretations are complete hokum","description":"This position holds that dream interpretation is complete hokum. It argues that reading meaning into dreams is mere idiosyncrasy and guesswork — every supposed symbol means something different to each person — and that there is no scientific basis for it whatsoever.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/dream-interpretations-accurate","title":"Are dream interpretations accurate?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-soviet-union-killed-jfk","slug":"the-soviet-union-killed-jfk","ordinal":5,"title":"The Soviet Union killed JFK","description":"This position catalogues the theory that the Soviet Union was behind John F. Kennedy's assassination. It holds that Lee Harvey Oswald — who had defected to the USSR — acted as a Soviet agent, casting the killing as a Cold War operation. It runs counter to the official findings.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/killed-john-f-kennedy","title":"Who killed John F. Kennedy?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/dreams-are-informative-and-predictive","slug":"dreams-are-informative-and-predictive","ordinal":3,"title":"Dreams are informative and predictive","description":"This position holds that dreams are both informative and predictive. It argues that universal dream symbols carry meaning, that dreams can offer introspective insight, and—for some—that dreams serve as messages from God foretelling the future.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/dream-interpretations-accurate","title":"Are dream interpretations accurate?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/reading-is-better-in-private","slug":"reading-is-better-in-private","ordinal":2,"title":"Reading is better in private","description":"Reading a good book in private allows the reader to relax and get lost in a book. A reader can get lost in the pages of a book without having to worry about anything around them.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/where-is-best-place-read","title":"Where is the best place to read?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-polar-bears-will-not-become-extinct-in-the-future","slug":"no-polar-bears-will-not-become-extinct-in-the-future","ordinal":2,"title":"No, polar bears will not become extinct in the future","description":"Polar bears are a well-known animal that are commo representatives of artic regions. Recently, there is a belief that polar bears are in danger of becoming extinct soon. However, with the right plan, polar bears won’t be lost to time.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/will-polar-bears-become-extinct-in-future","title":"Will polar bears become extinct in the future?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/life-is-spiritual","slug":"life-is-spiritual","ordinal":3,"title":"Life is spiritual","description":"Things that are living have a spirit","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-life","title":"What is Life?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/eliminating-animal-products-is-the-best-way-to-lose-weight","slug":"eliminating-animal-products-is-the-best-way-to-lose-weight","ordinal":1,"title":"Eliminating animal products  is the best way to lose weight","description":"This position holds that eliminating animal products is the best way to lose weight. It argues that cutting out meat — through veganism, vegetarianism or flexitarianism — forces a shift toward more nutritionally dense, lower-calorie foods, making weight loss easier to sustain.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/best-diet-weight-loss","title":"What is the best diet for weight loss?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/rising-se-levels-on-the-torres-strait-is-about-climate-change","slug":"rising-se-levels-on-the-torres-strait-is-about-climate-change","ordinal":3,"title":"Rising se levels on the Torres Strait is about climate change","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-debate-about-rising-ocean-levels-on-torres","title":"What is the debate about rising ocean levels on the Torres Strait Islanders homeland?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/rising-se-levels-on-the-torres-strait-is-about-government-policy","slug":"rising-se-levels-on-the-torres-strait-is-about-government-policy","ordinal":1,"title":"Rising se levels on the Torres Strait is about government policy","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-debate-about-rising-ocean-levels-on-torres","title":"What is the debate about rising ocean levels on the Torres Strait Islanders homeland?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/notorious-b-i-g-is-the-best-rapper","slug":"notorious-b-i-g-is-the-best-rapper","ordinal":2,"title":"Notorious B.I.G. is the best rapper","description":"Distinctive flow, semi-autobiographical lyrics, and a true storyteller, Biggie took rap places that we didn't know it could go. He made the complex sound smooth and easy, difficult technique never getting in the way of the music.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/best-rapper-time","title":"Who is the best rapper of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/mrs-burns-is-the-best-simpsons-character","slug":"mrs-burns-is-the-best-simpsons-character","ordinal":2,"title":"Mrs. Burns is the best Simpsons character","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-is-best-simpsons-character","title":"Who is the best Simpsons character?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-refugee-crisis-has-led-to-a-rise-in-hate-crimes-in-germany","slug":"the-refugee-crisis-has-led-to-a-rise-in-hate-crimes-in-germany","ordinal":2,"title":"The refugee crisis has led to a rise in hate crimes in Germany","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-has-there-been-rise-in-hate-crimes-in-germany","title":"Why has there been a rise in hate crimes in Germany?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/novak-djokovic","slug":"novak-djokovic","ordinal":3,"title":"Novak Djokovic","description":"This position names Novak Djokovic the greatest tennis player of all time. It argues he arrived when the two winningest players ever were at their peak and beat them both, and that with the fewest gaps in his résumé he has already done enough to claim the title outright.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/greatest-tennis-player-time","title":"Who is the greatest tennis player of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/troy-mcclure-is-the-best-simpsons-character","slug":"troy-mcclure-is-the-best-simpsons-character","ordinal":8,"title":"Troy McClure is the best Simpsons character","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-is-best-simpsons-character","title":"Who is the best Simpsons character?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/we-should-cancel-microphones-all-together","slug":"we-should-cancel-microphones-all-together","ordinal":3,"title":"We should cancel microphones all together","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-we-mute-microphones-find-better-referee-or","title":"Should we mute the microphones, find a better referee, or cancel them altogether?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/there-is-no-rise-in-hate-crimes-they-are-just-being-reported-more","slug":"there-is-no-rise-in-hate-crimes-they-are-just-being-reported-more","ordinal":3,"title":"There is no rise in hate crimes, they are just being reported more","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-has-there-been-rise-in-hate-crimes-in-germany","title":"Why has there been a rise in hate crimes in Germany?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-ewoks-in-star-wars-are-hateable","slug":"the-ewoks-in-star-wars-are-hateable","ordinal":2,"title":"The Ewoks in Star Wars are hateable","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-ewoks-in-star-wars-lovable-or-hateable","title":"Are the Ewoks in Star Wars lovable or hateable?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/position-12","slug":"position-12","ordinal":1,"title":"逆説の文脈","description":"2019年HBRマッキンゼー賞の第1位はハーバード・ビジネス・レビュー（DHBR）2019年7月号の『創造的な組織は逆説に満ちている』であり、この論文では逆説の文脈が実験的で創造的な文化を育むと語っている。","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/shi-yan-suruwen-hua-nogan-hahe-ka-important-build","title":"実験する文化の肝は何か？ What is the most important to build a culture of experimentation?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/hs2-is-the-only-option","slug":"hs2-is-the-only-option","ordinal":2,"title":"HS2 is the only option","description":"This position holds that HS2, Britain's high-speed rail project, should be built rather than scrapped. It argues the line serves the national interest by freeing badly needed capacity on an overcrowded network, and is crucial to 'levelling up' the North by improving its connections.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-hs2-be-scrapped","title":"Should HS2 be scrapped?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-pure-evil-does-not-exist","slug":"no-pure-evil-does-not-exist","ordinal":2,"title":"No, \"pure evil\" does not exist","description":"This position holds that pure evil is a concept people have invented rather than something found in the world. On this view every act has a history that explains it, and the label marks where enquiry stopped rather than a kind of act.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-pure-evil-exist","title":"Does \"pure evil\" exist?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-ewoks-in-star-wars-are-lovable","slug":"the-ewoks-in-star-wars-are-lovable","ordinal":1,"title":"The Ewoks in Star Wars are lovable","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-ewoks-in-star-wars-lovable-or-hateable","title":"Are the Ewoks in Star Wars lovable or hateable?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-baby-boys-should-not-be-circumcised","slug":"no-baby-boys-should-not-be-circumcised","ordinal":2,"title":"No, baby boys should not be circumcised","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-baby-boys-be-circumcised","title":"Should baby boys be circumcised?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-mail-in-ballots-should-not-be-banned-in-the-2020-us-presidential-elections","slug":"no-mail-in-ballots-should-not-be-banned-in-the-2020-us-presidential-elections","ordinal":2,"title":"No, mail-in ballots should not be banned in the 2020 US Presidential elections.","description":"Proponents of mail in ballots often cite voter safety and increased turnout. They claim voting-by-mail is necessary to give everyone a voice during the Covid-19 pandemic.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-mail-in-ballots-be-banned-in-2020-us","title":"Should Mail-In ballots be banned in the 2020 US Elections?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/zurich","slug":"zurich","ordinal":6,"title":"Zurich","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-europes-most-misunderstood-capital-city","title":"What is Europe's most misunderstood capital city?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/mandarin-chinese-and-english-will-coexist","slug":"mandarin-chinese-and-english-will-coexist","ordinal":3,"title":"Mandarin Chinese and English will coexist","description":"This position holds that Mandarin and English will coexist as world languages rather than one displacing the other. It argues that no single language need dominate, and that the two will operate side by side internationally — making English-Mandarin bilingualism more valuable than ever.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/will-mandarin-replace-english-as-next-world","title":"Will Mandarin Chinese replace English as the next world language?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-ubi-is-a-bad-idea","slug":"no-ubi-is-a-bad-idea","ordinal":1,"title":"No, UBI is a bad idea","description":"This position holds that Universal Basic Income is a bad idea. It argues that UBI is financially irresponsible — its cost too steep to implement — that it could actually increase inequality, reduce the incentive to work, and undermine social cohesion, causing more problems than it solves.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/universal-basic-income-good-idea","title":"Is Universal Basic Income a good idea?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/titicut-follies-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","slug":"titicut-follies-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","ordinal":8,"title":"Titicut Follies is the most controversial documentary","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-most-controversial-documentary-ever-made","title":"What is the most controversial documentary ever made?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/henry-viiis-personality-changed-due-to-mental-illness","slug":"henry-viiis-personality-changed-due-to-mental-illness","ordinal":2,"title":"Henry VIII's personality changed due to mental illness","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-caused-henry-viiis-erratic-behaviour-later-in","title":"What caused Henry VIII's erratic behaviour later in life?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/dublin","slug":"dublin","ordinal":4,"title":"Dublin","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-europes-most-misunderstood-capital-city","title":"What is Europe's most misunderstood capital city?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/capturing-the-friedmans-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","slug":"capturing-the-friedmans-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","ordinal":5,"title":"Capturing the Friedmans is the most controversial documentary","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-most-controversial-documentary-ever-made","title":"What is the most controversial documentary ever made?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/ranked-choice-voting-is-the-best","slug":"ranked-choice-voting-is-the-best","ordinal":1,"title":"Ranked-choice voting is the best","description":"This position holds that ranked-choice voting is the best electoral system. It lets voters rank candidates by preference, with lower choices reallocated until someone wins a majority — which it argues produces the truest reflection of the majority's will and avoids wasted votes.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/which-is-best-voting-system","title":"Which is the best voting system?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/brexit","slug":"brexit","ordinal":3,"title":"Brexit","description":"This position attributes Labour's 2019 defeat to Brexit. It argues that in 'the Brexit election', Labour's confused, ill-defined policy failed to acknowledge the referendum result — losing it leave-voting heartlands and reflecting a deeper structural shift in the electorate.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/did-labour-lose-2019-uk-general-election","title":"Why did Labour lose the 2019 UK general election?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-online-dating-has-changed-relationships","slug":"yes-online-dating-has-changed-relationships","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, online dating has changed relationships","description":"This position holds that online dating has changed relationships in kind, because meeting through a search rather than a shared circle alters who people meet, what they know of each other beforehand and how easily either can leave.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-has-online-dating-changed-relationships","title":"How has online dating changed relationships?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-billionaires-should-pay-more-tax","slug":"yes-billionaires-should-pay-more-tax","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, billionaires should pay more tax","description":"This position holds that those with the greatest wealth should contribute a larger share, on the grounds that very large fortunes rest on public infrastructure and legal protection, and that revenue raised at the top costs the wider economy least.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-billionaires-paying-more-tax","title":"Should billionaires pay more tax?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-fortnite-is-bad-for-kids","slug":"yes-fortnite-is-bad-for-kids","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, Fortnite is bad for kids","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-fortnite-bad-for-kids","title":"Is Fortnite bad for kids?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-fortnite-is-not-bad-for-kids","slug":"no-fortnite-is-not-bad-for-kids","ordinal":2,"title":"No, Fortnite is not bad for kids","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-fortnite-bad-for-kids","title":"Is Fortnite bad for kids?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/india-took-the-herd-immunity-approach","slug":"india-took-the-herd-immunity-approach","ordinal":4,"title":"India took the herd-immunity approach","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-does-india-have-so-many-covid-19-deaths","title":"Why does India have so many Covid-19 deaths?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/we-as-a-society-are-resilient-and-will-be-able-to-apply-the-lessons-covid-19-has","slug":"we-as-a-society-are-resilient-and-will-be-able-to-apply-the-lessons-covid-19-has","ordinal":3,"title":"We, as a society, are resilient and will be able to apply the lessons COVID-19 has taught us to tackling the climate change crisis","description":"The pandemic has proven that there is still hope. We, as a society, are taking what we've learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and can apply those lessons to our fight against climate change.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-response-covid-19-tell-about-ability-cope","title":"What does the response to COVID-19 tell us about our ability to cope with climate change?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/serena-williams","slug":"serena-williams","ordinal":5,"title":"Serena Williams","description":"This position names Serena Williams as the greatest tennis player of all time. It argues that she dominated the sport more thoroughly than any rival, winning almost everything there was to win, and that she revolutionised tennis and changed it forever.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/greatest-tennis-player-time","title":"Who is the greatest tennis player of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/rod-laver","slug":"rod-laver","ordinal":4,"title":"Rod Laver","description":"This position names Rod Laver as the greatest tennis player of all time. It argues that the Australian legend achieved more in a single year than most players manage in a whole career, and that he remains the only man to complete a true calendar-year Grand Slam — twice.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/greatest-tennis-player-time","title":"Who is the greatest tennis player of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/nations-mean-coercion","slug":"nations-mean-coercion","ordinal":4,"title":"Nations mean coercion","description":"This position holds that nations are fundamentally tools of coercion — a means for elites to control the population. It argues that nationalism shades into illiberalism and imperialism, that 'the working men have no country', and that all states are ultimately instruments of coercive power.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/nation","title":"What is a Nation?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/its-a-pointless-question","slug":"its-a-pointless-question","ordinal":3,"title":"It's a pointless question","description":"This position holds that asking whether an unamendable constitution is undemocratic is a pointless question. It argues that states already bound by such a constitution have no alternative at this point — so debating its democratic merits changes nothing in practice.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/unamendable-constitution-undemocratic","title":"Is an unamendable constitution undemocratic?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/roger-federer","slug":"roger-federer","ordinal":1,"title":"Roger Federer","description":"This position names Roger Federer the greatest tennis player of all time. It argues the Swiss phenomenon set a standard his rivals are still chasing, remaining the most consistent player at the top of the game and shattering the men's record for Grand Slam titles.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/greatest-tennis-player-time","title":"Who is the greatest tennis player of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-blm-organization-are-bad","slug":"the-blm-organization-are-bad","ordinal":2,"title":"The BLM organization are bad","description":"This position argues that the Black Lives Matter organisation is bad. It holds that the damage and unrest linked to it outweigh its aims, and that critics brand it a 'neo-Marxist' or even terrorist group—characterisations that BLM and its supporters firmly reject.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-blm-organization-good-or-bad","title":"Is BLM (Black Lives Matter) good or bad?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/financial-benefit-for-those-involved-in-human-trafficking","slug":"financial-benefit-for-those-involved-in-human-trafficking","ordinal":1,"title":"Financial benefit for those involved in human trafficking","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-do-people-benefit-from-human-trafficking","title":"How do people benefit from human trafficking?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-election-day-should-not-be-a-national-holiday","slug":"no-election-day-should-not-be-a-national-holiday","ordinal":2,"title":"No, election day should not be a national holiday","description":"American does not need another national holiday.  It will simultaneously drain taxpayer dollars and hurt businesses who can not afford to pay their workers for time off.  At the end of the day, making election day a national holiday benefits nobody but Democratic politicians.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-election-day-be-national-holiday","title":"Should election day be a national holiday?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/people-can-get-sex-where-they-couldnt-legally-otherwise","slug":"people-can-get-sex-where-they-couldnt-legally-otherwise","ordinal":6,"title":"People can get sex where they couldn't legally otherwise","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-do-people-benefit-from-human-trafficking","title":"How do people benefit from human trafficking?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/people-can-get-organs-faster-than-legally","slug":"people-can-get-organs-faster-than-legally","ordinal":4,"title":"People can get organs faster than legally","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-do-people-benefit-from-human-trafficking","title":"How do people benefit from human trafficking?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-it-is-time-we-learned-to-live-with-coronavirus","slug":"yes-it-is-time-we-learned-to-live-with-coronavirus","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, it is time we learned to live with Coronavirus","description":"With no vaccine to combat the virus, we are left with only one option: Adapt and learn to live with the virus. Coronavirus isn't going away any time soon. We should get used to the changes in our daily lives which promote Coronavirus safety by wearing masks, practicing personal hygiene, and keeping social distance. Only by accepting Coronavirus' presence in our world will we be armed with the tools to combat it.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-it-time-we-learned-live-with-virus","title":"Is it time we learned to live with Coronavirus?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/women-see-changing-their-surnames-as-a-harmless-tradition","slug":"women-see-changing-their-surnames-as-a-harmless-tradition","ordinal":2,"title":"Women see changing their surnames as a harmless tradition","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-do-women-still-change-their-names","title":"Why do women still change their names?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/shale-is-a-viable-sustainable-business-model-given-improvements-in-technology-an","slug":"shale-is-a-viable-sustainable-business-model-given-improvements-in-technology-an","ordinal":3,"title":"Shale is a viable, sustainable business model given improvements in technology and prices","description":"This position holds that shale oil is a viable, sustainable business model given advances in technology and prices. It argues that drillers' rapid learning has pushed extraction costs below the market price of oil, creating jobs and driving US production to record highs.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/shale-oil-sustainable-business-model","title":"Is shale oil a sustainable business model?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/economic-consequences","slug":"economic-consequences","ordinal":1,"title":"Economic consequences","description":"This position examines the economic consequences of coronavirus for the EU. It argues that the pandemic is devastating economies, and that the bloc's cohesion will turn on its financial response — the Stability Mechanism and the ECB — even as divergent national responses heighten divisions.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/coronavirus-affect-european-union","title":"How will the coronavirus affect the European Union?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-there-is-a-social-media-bias","slug":"yes-there-is-a-social-media-bias","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, there is a social media bias","description":"This position holds that social media platforms systematically favour some viewpoints over others. Proponents point to opaque moderation and ranking decisions, the political and commercial interests of the companies, and the uneven enforcement of their own rules.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-there-social-media-bias","title":"Is there a social media bias?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-all-lives-matter-is-not-a-legitimate-protest-for-equality","slug":"no-all-lives-matter-is-not-a-legitimate-protest-for-equality","ordinal":2,"title":"No, All Lives Matter is not a legitimate protest for equality","description":"All Lives Matter is a movement to distract attention from inequalities faced by blacks. As UC Irvine Anthropology Professor Theo Goldberg explains: \"The universalizing politics of “All lives matter” is one of racial dismissal, ignoring, and denial.\"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-all-lives-matter-legitimate-protest","title":"Is All Lives Matter a legitimate protest for equality?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-there-shouldnt-be-a-test-to-vote","slug":"no-there-shouldnt-be-a-test-to-vote","ordinal":2,"title":"No, there shouldn't be a test to vote","description":"Tests to vote aren’t necessary. They take up too much time and effort from the voters. Plus, excluding voters who don’t pass the test will be discrimination. It’s not worth the effort and cost.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/test-vote","title":"Should there be a test to vote?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/shale-drilling-is-bad-for-the-environment-independent-of-any-poor-financial-outc","slug":"shale-drilling-is-bad-for-the-environment-independent-of-any-poor-financial-outc","ordinal":2,"title":"Shale drilling is bad for the environment, independent of any poor financial outcomes","description":"Shale oil destroys the landscape and leaves a large pockmarked surface polluted by chemicals.  The long run environmental problems of shale make it a poor business model, as communities are left to pick up the pieces.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/shale-oil-sustainable-business-model","title":"Is shale oil a sustainable business model?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/fearing-sitgmatisation-from-appearing-too-feminist-causes-women-to-change-their-","slug":"fearing-sitgmatisation-from-appearing-too-feminist-causes-women-to-change-their-","ordinal":1,"title":"Fearing sitgmatisation from appearing \"too feminist\" causes women to change their surnames","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-do-women-still-change-their-names","title":"Why do women still change their names?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-europe-cannot-afford-to-stand-up-to-china","slug":"no-europe-cannot-afford-to-stand-up-to-china","ordinal":2,"title":"No, Europe cannot afford to stand up to China","description":"Europe's economic interdependence with China and political fragmentation may limit its ability to effectively challenge China's global stance without risking significant economic and diplomatic fallout.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-europe-afford-stand-up-china","title":"Can Europe afford to stand up to China?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-cfs-me-is-a-real-illness","slug":"yes-cfs-me-is-a-real-illness","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, CFS/ME is a real illness","description":"This position holds that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME) is a real illness. It argues that the condition affects millions worldwide, is recognised by bodies such as the WHO, is increasingly supported by biological evidence including post-exertional malaise, and causes severe, documented suffering.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-me-real-illness","title":"Is Chronic fatigue syndrome (ME) a real illness?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/mahatma-gandhi-is-the-most-powerful-person-of-all-time","slug":"mahatma-gandhi-is-the-most-powerful-person-of-all-time","ordinal":5,"title":"Mahatma Gandhi is the most powerful person of all time","description":"This position names Mahatma Gandhi as the most powerful person of all time. It rests on a particular idea of power — the ability to influence minds — and argues that no one did this more effectively than Gandhi, who moved a nation without office or armies.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/powerful-person-time","title":"Who is the most powerful person of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-we-should-have-daylight-saving-time","slug":"yes-we-should-have-daylight-saving-time","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, we should have daylight saving time","description":"This position holds that we should keep daylight saving time. It argues that the practice has existed for so long without major harm that there is no good reason to abolish it now, and that shifting the clocks reduces energy usage and the pollution that comes with it.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/daylight-saving-time","title":"Should we have daylight saving time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-mafia-killed-jfk","slug":"the-mafia-killed-jfk","ordinal":3,"title":"The mafia killed JFK","description":"This position catalogues the theory that the mafia killed John F. Kennedy. It points to the Kennedy family's alleged organised-crime ties, to Robert Kennedy's crackdown on the mob, and to figures like Jack Ruby and Sam Giancana, casting the assassination as mafia retribution.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/killed-john-f-kennedy","title":"Who killed John F. Kennedy?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/emperor-ashoka-is-the-most-powerful-person-of-all-time","slug":"emperor-ashoka-is-the-most-powerful-person-of-all-time","ordinal":3,"title":"Emperor Ashoka is the most powerful person of all time","description":"This position names Emperor Ashoka the most powerful person in history. The third Maurya ruler, it argues he controlled the largest empire on the Indian subcontinent and a vast share of global GDP, helped spread Buddhism worldwide, and built an enduring legacy of influence.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/powerful-person-time","title":"Who is the most powerful person of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-we-should-phase-out-fossil-fuels","slug":"yes-we-should-phase-out-fossil-fuels","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, we should phase out fossil fuels","description":"This position holds that we should phase out fossil fuels. It argues that burning them drives global climate change, directly harms human health through pollution, and perpetuates environmental racism — concentrating the damage on the most vulnerable communities.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-we-phase-out-fossil-fuels","title":"Should we phase out fossil fuels?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/toxic-masculinity-means-that-men-are-less-willing-to-change-their-surnames","slug":"toxic-masculinity-means-that-men-are-less-willing-to-change-their-surnames","ordinal":4,"title":"Toxic masculinity means that men are less willing to change their surnames","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-do-women-still-change-their-names","title":"Why do women still change their names?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/lyndon-b-johnson-killed-jfk","slug":"lyndon-b-johnson-killed-jfk","ordinal":4,"title":"Lyndon B. Johnson killed JFK","description":"As vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson knew almost everything about JFK's political ideas and intentions. That combined with his unhappiness in his position as vice president makes him a suspect in the Kennedy assassination.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/killed-john-f-kennedy","title":"Who killed John F. Kennedy?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-fortnight-did-not-kill-the-app-store","slug":"no-fortnight-did-not-kill-the-app-store","ordinal":2,"title":"No, Fortnite did not kill the App Store","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/did-fortnite-kill-app-store-as-we-know-it","title":"Did Fortnite kill the App Store as we know it?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/history-is-not-important","slug":"history-is-not-important","ordinal":2,"title":"History is not important","description":"This position holds that history is not important — even a waste of time to study. It argues that dwelling on the past distracts from the present and future, that school history is mere rote memorisation of dates and facts, and that it does little to prepare students for their careers.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/history-important","title":"Is history important?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-the-balance-between-franchise-films-and-original-films-is-good","slug":"no-the-balance-between-franchise-films-and-original-films-is-good","ordinal":2,"title":"No, the balance between franchise films and original films is good.","description":"This position holds that the current balance between franchise films and original ones is fine. It argues that audiences genuinely want more of the characters they know and love, and that profitable franchises keep the film industry healthy enough to fund original work too.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/movie-industry-focus-remakes-sequels","title":"Should the movie industry focus less on  remakes and sequels?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-there-shouldnt-be-a-second-brexit-referendum","slug":"no-there-shouldnt-be-a-second-brexit-referendum","ordinal":1,"title":"No, there shouldn't be a second Brexit referendum","description":"This position holds that there should not be a second Brexit referendum. It argues that the public has already spoken in the first vote, that re-running it would undermine democracy by overturning a settled decision, and that another campaign would only deepen national division.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/options-second-brexit-referendum","title":"What are the options on a second Brexit referendum?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-there-many-problems-with-theocracies","slug":"no-there-many-problems-with-theocracies","ordinal":2,"title":"No, there many problems with theocracies","description":"This position holds that theocracies are deeply problematic. It argues that they function essentially as dictatorships, that alternative opinions are rarely tolerated within them, and that religious rule too often serves as an excuse for legitimised oppression.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/theocracy-good","title":"Is theocracy good?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-cia-killed-jfk","slug":"the-cia-killed-jfk","ordinal":2,"title":"The CIA killed JFK","description":"This position catalogues the theory that the CIA assassinated John F. Kennedy. It points to the agency's disagreements with the president, to gaps in the Warren Commission, and to oddities like the 'umbrella man' in the Zapruder film. It runs counter to the official finding.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/killed-john-f-kennedy","title":"Who killed John F. Kennedy?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/sanctuary-cities-are-bad","slug":"sanctuary-cities-are-bad","ordinal":2,"title":"Sanctuary cities are bad","description":"This position holds that sanctuary cities are bad. It argues they prevent the government from simply enforcing immigration law, that they blatantly disregard federal statutes, and that, by shielding undocumented residents, they encourage dangerous criminal behaviour.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/sanctuary-cities-good-bad","title":"Are sanctuary cities good or bad?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-more-films-with-original-concepts-should-be-made","slug":"yes-more-films-with-original-concepts-should-be-made","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, more films with original concepts should be made.","description":"This position holds that the movie industry should focus less on remakes and sequels and make more original films. It argues that the industry has grown short on originality and innovation, and that fresh, original ideas ultimately make for more entertaining and rewarding cinema.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/movie-industry-focus-remakes-sequels","title":"Should the movie industry focus less on  remakes and sequels?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-marriage-is-an-outdated-custom","slug":"yes-marriage-is-an-outdated-custom","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, marriage is an outdated custom","description":"This position holds that marriage is an outdated custom. It argues marriage is merely a legal piece of paper that does not measure how committed a couple truly is, that commitment can be shown without it, and that the government has no business being involved in relationships.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/marriage-outdated-custom","title":"Is marriage an outdated custom?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-ai-is-good-for-humanity","slug":"yes-ai-is-good-for-humanity","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, AI is good for humanity","description":"This position holds that artificial intelligence is on balance beneficial, because it extends human capability in medicine, science, education and ordinary work, and because the problems it raises are governable rather than inherent to the technology.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-ai-good-for-humanity","title":"Is AI good for humanity?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-fortnight-killed-the-app-store","slug":"yes-fortnight-killed-the-app-store","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, Fortnite killed the App Store","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/did-fortnite-kill-app-store-as-we-know-it","title":"Did Fortnite kill the App Store as we know it?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/south-african-youth-do-not-care-about-elections","slug":"south-african-youth-do-not-care-about-elections","ordinal":2,"title":"South African youth do not care about elections","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-are-south-african-youths-disillusioned-with","title":"Why are South African youths disillusioned with politics?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-german-social-media-hate-speech-law-is-flawed","slug":"the-german-social-media-hate-speech-law-is-flawed","ordinal":1,"title":"The German social media  hate speech law is flawed","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-germanys-social-media-hate","title":"What are the positions on Germany's social media hate policy?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/life-is-a-chemical-process","slug":"life-is-a-chemical-process","ordinal":1,"title":"Life is a chemical process","description":"Things that are living process chemical reactions","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-life","title":"What is Life?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/south-african-youth-feel-like-politics-do-not-effect-them","slug":"south-african-youth-feel-like-politics-do-not-effect-them","ordinal":3,"title":"South African youth feel like politics do not effect them","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-are-south-african-youths-disillusioned-with","title":"Why are South African youths disillusioned with politics?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/jay-z-is-the-best-rapper","slug":"jay-z-is-the-best-rapper","ordinal":1,"title":"Jay Z is the best rapper","description":"This position names Jay-Z as the greatest rapper of all time. It argues that he took rap from the streets into the boardroom — that his music and the business empire he built around it carried the genre to an entirely new level of cultural and commercial reach.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/best-rapper-time","title":"Who is the best rapper of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/weight-loss-doesnt-come-from-nutrient-measurements","slug":"weight-loss-doesnt-come-from-nutrient-measurements","ordinal":6,"title":"Weight loss doesn't come from nutrient measurements","description":"This position holds that weight loss does not come from counting and measuring nutrients. It argues there are many ways to lose weight that do not rest on nutritional metrics at all, pointing to approaches such as the raw food diet and the alkaline diet as alternatives.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/best-diet-weight-loss","title":"What is the best diet for weight loss?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/lowering-fat-intake-is-the-best-way-to-lose-weight","slug":"lowering-fat-intake-is-the-best-way-to-lose-weight","ordinal":4,"title":"Lowering fat intake is the best way to lose weight","description":"This position holds that lowering fat intake is the best way to lose weight. It argues the logic is straightforward—to lose body fat, you must first cut the fat in your food—pointing to ultra-low-fat diets as the most direct and effective route to shedding the pounds.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/best-diet-weight-loss","title":"What is the best diet for weight loss?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/principal-seymour-skinner-is-the-best-simpsons-character","slug":"principal-seymour-skinner-is-the-best-simpsons-character","ordinal":4,"title":"Principal Seymour Skinner is the best Simpsons character","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-is-best-simpsons-character","title":"Who is the best Simpsons character?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/tupac-shakur-is-the-best-rapper","slug":"tupac-shakur-is-the-best-rapper","ordinal":8,"title":"Tupac Shakur is the best rapper","description":"Shakur's poetic and motivational lyrics make him the most influential rapper of his time. He employed various techniques in producing sounds to deliver his unique artistry. His music addressed issues within the Black community as well as the stigma against them, which resonated with young audiences.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/best-rapper-time","title":"Who is the best rapper of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/chief-wiggum-is-the-best-simpsons-character","slug":"chief-wiggum-is-the-best-simpsons-character","ordinal":6,"title":"Chief Wiggum is the best Simpsons character","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-is-best-simpsons-character","title":"Who is the best Simpsons character?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/eminem-is-the-best-rapper","slug":"eminem-is-the-best-rapper","ordinal":3,"title":"Eminem is the best rapper","description":"His lyrics and style caught the ear of Dr. Dre, and soon would redefine what we were all listening to. Often shocking, Eminem had us questioning free speech and decency through his music.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/best-rapper-time","title":"Who is the best rapper of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/andre-3000-is-the-best-rapper","slug":"andre-3000-is-the-best-rapper","ordinal":7,"title":"André 3000 is the best rapper","description":"André 3000 is one of the most unique rappers to grace the mic. With critically acclaimed albums like Stankonia and Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and his ability to craft deep and meaningful songs over popular hip-hop beats, André 3000 has cemented his legacy as one of the best rappers of all time.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/best-rapper-time","title":"Who is the best rapper of all time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/lisa-simpson-is-the-best-simpsons-character","slug":"lisa-simpson-is-the-best-simpsons-character","ordinal":5,"title":"Lisa Simpson is the best Simpsons character","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-is-best-simpsons-character","title":"Who is the best Simpsons character?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/dark-matter-is-made-of-non-baryonic-matter","slug":"dark-matter-is-made-of-non-baryonic-matter","ordinal":2,"title":"Dark matter is made of non-Baryonic matter","description":"This position holds that dark matter is made of non-baryonic matter — not ordinary atoms but more exotic particles. It points to leading candidates such as axions and Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) as what the universe's unseen mass is likely composed of.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-dark-matter","title":"What is dark matter?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-the-theory-of-evolution-is-flawed-on-many-levels","slug":"no-the-theory-of-evolution-is-flawed-on-many-levels","ordinal":2,"title":"No, the theory of evolution is flawed on many levels","description":"The theory is full of holes and up against serious challenges it cannot overcome. For many learned scientists and philosophers, it is defunct. Darwin's theory cannot account for human intelligence and speech. The human mind is far too complex and so is human speech. Blind, random, directionless processes—the phenomenon of natural selection—can never produce the mind, human speech, the cell, or DNA. The mathematical, philosophical, and scientific flaws in Darwin's theory have already been elucidated.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-theory-of-evolution-true","title":"Is the theory of evolution by natural selection correct?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/kanye-west-will-split-the-democrat-vote","slug":"kanye-west-will-split-the-democrat-vote","ordinal":1,"title":"Kanye West will split the Democrat vote","description":"This position holds that Kanye West's 2020 presidential run would split the Democratic vote. It argues that he would draw away a slice of traditional Democratic voters — appealing to young Black Democrats — reducing the party's chances and, some suggest, helping return Trump to office.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/implications-kanye-west-running-for-president","title":"What are the implications of Kanye West running for President?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/kanye-west-will-split-the-republican-vote","slug":"kanye-west-will-split-the-republican-vote","ordinal":2,"title":"Kanye West will split the Republican vote","description":"This position holds that Kanye West's presidential run would split the Republican vote. It argues that he would draw away a portion of Republican-leaning voters, reducing their overall share — the mirror image of the claim that he would instead hurt the Democrats.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/implications-kanye-west-running-for-president","title":"What are the implications of Kanye West running for President?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/alien-life-would-threaten-some-but-not-all-religions","slug":"alien-life-would-threaten-some-but-not-all-religions","ordinal":3,"title":"Alien life would threaten some but not all religions","description":"Some religions can support the existence of extraterrestrials (or aliens) better than others. A religion’s ability to accommodate the existence of aliens would depend on how open that religion’s belief system is. If it is not, dealing with the idea will be difficult.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/alien-life-threat-religion","title":"Is alien life a threat to religion?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/position-3","slug":"position-3","ordinal":2,"title":"メンバーへのコーチングを行う必要がある","description":"今月号の『リーダーのコーチング能力を高める方法』にも書かれている。昨今の先行き不透明な状況に応じて、リーダーシップスタイルをコーチング重視に変えるべきと。","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/ridatoiushi-shi-ha-onraindewan-jie-dekirudarouka","title":"リーダーという仕事は、オンラインで完結できるだろうか？　Can the role of leader be completed online?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-we-need-reparations-for-slavery","slug":"yes-we-need-reparations-for-slavery","ordinal":2,"title":"Yes, we need reparations for slavery","description":"The effects of slavery are still felt today, with apparent effects on black Americans and communities. Reparations would help heal the lasting effects of slavery.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-there-be-reparations-for-slavery","title":"Should there be reparations for slavery?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-sea-people-were-an-emerging-anatolian-power","slug":"the-sea-people-were-an-emerging-anatolian-power","ordinal":3,"title":"The Sea People were an emerging Anatolian power","description":"The disturbances in this period started in the Hittite empire and may have emerged from a power struggle in the region. Based on the etymology, there is good reason to believe at least some of the Sea People came from Anatolia.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-were-sea-people-who-attacked-egypt-eastern","title":"Who were the Sea People who attacked Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age Collapse?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/we-should-mute-microphones","slug":"we-should-mute-microphones","ordinal":1,"title":"We should mute microphones","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-we-mute-microphones-find-better-referee-or","title":"Should we mute the microphones, find a better referee, or cancel them altogether?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-our-society-is-not-becoming-egalitarian","slug":"no-our-society-is-not-becoming-egalitarian","ordinal":2,"title":"No, our society is not becoming egalitarian","description":"Wealth inequity continues to grow, authoritarian rulers enforce social divides, war continues, and poverty abounds. There is progress in many parts of the world, but society is not becoming more egalitarian.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-our-society-becoming-egalitarian","title":"Is our society becoming egalitarian?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/kamala-harris","slug":"kamala-harris","ordinal":2,"title":"Kamala Harris","description":"This position holds that Kamala Harris is Joe Biden's best pick for Vice President. It notes the Democratic senator from California has long been a top contender for the role, and argues she is the most qualified candidate among those in the running for the job.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-should-joe-biden-pick-as-his-vice-president","title":"Who is Joe Biden's best pick as Vice President?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/milhouse-van-houten-is-the-best-simpsons-character","slug":"milhouse-van-houten-is-the-best-simpsons-character","ordinal":7,"title":"Milhouse Van Houten is the best Simpsons character","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/who-is-best-simpsons-character","title":"Who is the best Simpsons character?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/taiwan-is-a-sovereign-nation","slug":"taiwan-is-a-sovereign-nation","ordinal":1,"title":"Taiwan is a sovereign nation","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-taiwans-political-status","title":"What is Taiwan's political status?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/india-is-not-testing-enough-for-covid-19","slug":"india-is-not-testing-enough-for-covid-19","ordinal":3,"title":"India is not testing enough for Covid-19","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-does-india-have-so-many-covid-19-deaths","title":"Why does India have so many Covid-19 deaths?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/works-for-hs2-should-stop-immediately","slug":"works-for-hs2-should-stop-immediately","ordinal":1,"title":"Works for HS2 should stop immediately","description":"This position holds that work on HS2 should stop immediately. It argues the line will never be carbon neutral, that it destroys irreplaceable ancient woodland, that the money would be better spent upgrading existing railways, and that its costs have spiralled beyond justification.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-hs2-be-scrapped","title":"Should HS2 be scrapped?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/jesus-was-not-an-apocalyptic-prophet","slug":"jesus-was-not-an-apocalyptic-prophet","ordinal":2,"title":"Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet","description":"This position holds that Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet. It argues that many sources portray him otherwise, that the apocalyptic material was read back into the gospels by the early Church, and that Jesus was in fact preaching a 'realised eschatology' already present, not a coming end.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/was-jesus-apocalyptic-prophet","title":"Was Jesus an apocalyptic prophet?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-it-was-illegal","slug":"no-it-was-illegal","ordinal":1,"title":"No, it was illegal","description":"This position holds that Boris Johnson's 2019 prorogation of Parliament was illegal. It argues that the move was without legal precedent and breached the British constitution — that he effectively lied to the Queen — a view the UK Supreme Court went on to uphold.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/boris-johnsons-prorogue-parliament-legal","title":"Was Boris Johnson's move to prorogue parliament legal?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/it-depends-on-the-content-of-the-anime","slug":"it-depends-on-the-content-of-the-anime","ordinal":3,"title":"It depends on the content of the anime","description":"This position holds that whether to watch anime dubbed or subbed depends on the content. It argues some titles work better dubbed and others subbed—for instance, dubbing suits series set outside Japan, while subtitles preserve the original performance elsewhere.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/watch-anime-dubbed-subbed","title":"Should you watch anime dubbed or subbed?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-interdependence-theory-cannot-explain-the-geopolitical-system","slug":"no-interdependence-theory-cannot-explain-the-geopolitical-system","ordinal":2,"title":"No, interdependence theory cannot explain the geopolitical system","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-interdependence-theory-of-internatinoal","title":"Can interdependence theory of internatinoal relations explain the geopolitical system?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-dickens-was-a-social-progressive","slug":"yes-dickens-was-a-social-progressive","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, Dickens was a social progressive","description":"Dickens' focus in his novels and journalism was often on issues affecting the growing Victorian working classes, such as poor working conditions and an unjust legal system. Through this campaigning, he was able to attract significant public attention and helped improve living conditions for Londoners living in slums.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/charles-dickens-social-progressive","title":"Was Charles Dickens a social progressive?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-it-was-legal","slug":"yes-it-was-legal","ordinal":2,"title":"Yes, it was legal","description":"Parliament is the master of its own fate and as the leader of the majority party in parliament, Boris Johnson was well within his rights to bring the longest parliamentary session in history to a close.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/boris-johnsons-prorogue-parliament-legal","title":"Was Boris Johnson's move to prorogue parliament legal?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/legal-or-illegal-its-pointless","slug":"legal-or-illegal-its-pointless","ordinal":3,"title":"Legal or illegal, it's pointless","description":"Johnson doesn't command a majority in the House of Commons, therefore, any prorogation to outline his legislative agenda is pointless as it will never materialise.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/boris-johnsons-prorogue-parliament-legal","title":"Was Boris Johnson's move to prorogue parliament legal?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-interdependence-theory-can-explain-the-geopolitical-system","slug":"yes-interdependence-theory-can-explain-the-geopolitical-system","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, interdependence theory can explain the geopolitical system","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-interdependence-theory-of-internatinoal","title":"Can interdependence theory of internatinoal relations explain the geopolitical system?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-mail-in-ballots-should-be-banned-in-the-2020-us-elections","slug":"yes-mail-in-ballots-should-be-banned-in-the-2020-us-elections","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, mail-in ballots should be banned in the 2020 US Elections.","description":"Current President Donald Trump and his followers have openly advocated for the banning of mail in ballots in the 2020 elections for a variety of (unsubstantiated) reasons.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-mail-in-ballots-be-banned-in-2020-us","title":"Should Mail-In ballots be banned in the 2020 US Elections?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/earthlings-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","slug":"earthlings-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","ordinal":6,"title":"Earthlings is the most controversial documentary","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-most-controversial-documentary-ever-made","title":"What is the most controversial documentary ever made?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/there-is-a-war-on-christmas","slug":"there-is-a-war-on-christmas","ordinal":1,"title":"There is a war on Christmas","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-war-on-christmas","title":"What are the positions on \"the war on Christmas\"?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-the-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-were-not-justified","slug":"no-the-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-were-not-justified","ordinal":2,"title":"No, the bombings  of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not justified","description":"This position holds that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not justified. It argues they caused catastrophic civilian harm without actually forcing Japan's surrender — which it credits instead to the Soviet entry into the war — and were of dubious military necessity.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/bombings-hiroshima-nagasaki-justified","title":"Were the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-mandarin-will-become-the-next-world-language","slug":"yes-mandarin-will-become-the-next-world-language","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, Mandarin will become the next world language","description":"This position holds that Mandarin Chinese will replace English as the world's lingua franca. It argues that China's rising economic and cultural power makes learning Mandarin an increasing necessity, and that Beijing is actively spreading its influence through the language.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/will-mandarin-replace-english-as-next-world","title":"Will Mandarin Chinese replace English as the next world language?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/it-depends-how-ubi-is-funded","slug":"it-depends-how-ubi-is-funded","ordinal":3,"title":"It depends how UBI is funded","description":"This position holds that whether UBI is a good idea depends entirely on how it is funded. It maps the divide: right-wing versions favour a basic income that replaces the welfare state, left-wing versions fund it through tax rises alongside welfare, and others would means-test it.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/universal-basic-income-good-idea","title":"Is Universal Basic Income a good idea?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-the-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-were-justified","slug":"yes-the-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-were-justified","ordinal":1,"title":"Yes, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified","description":"This position holds that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. It accepts the heavy civilian cost but argues they served the greater good — Truman's reasoning that the bombs ended the war swiftly, sparing the far greater casualties an invasion would have brought.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/bombings-hiroshima-nagasaki-justified","title":"Were the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/luxembourg","slug":"luxembourg","ordinal":1,"title":"Luxembourg","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-europes-most-misunderstood-capital-city","title":"What is Europe's most misunderstood capital city?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/india-is-densely-populated","slug":"india-is-densely-populated","ordinal":2,"title":"India is densely populated","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-does-india-have-so-many-covid-19-deaths","title":"Why does India have so many Covid-19 deaths?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/jesus-camp-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","slug":"jesus-camp-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","ordinal":1,"title":"Jesus Camp is the most controversial documentary","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-most-controversial-documentary-ever-made","title":"What is the most controversial documentary ever made?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/henry-viiis-personality-changed-due-to-syphilus","slug":"henry-viiis-personality-changed-due-to-syphilus","ordinal":3,"title":"Henry VIII's personality changed due to syphilus","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-caused-henry-viiis-erratic-behaviour-later-in","title":"What caused Henry VIII's erratic behaviour later in life?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/henry-viiis-personality-changed-due-to-a-head-injury-while-jousting","slug":"henry-viiis-personality-changed-due-to-a-head-injury-while-jousting","ordinal":1,"title":"Henry VIII's personality changed due to a head injury while jousting","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-caused-henry-viiis-erratic-behaviour-later-in","title":"What caused Henry VIII's erratic behaviour later in life?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/zoo-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","slug":"zoo-is-the-most-controversial-documentary","ordinal":2,"title":"Zoo is the most controversial documentary","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-most-controversial-documentary-ever-made","title":"What is the most controversial documentary ever made?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/brussels","slug":"brussels","ordinal":3,"title":"Brussels","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-europes-most-misunderstood-capital-city","title":"What is Europe's most misunderstood capital city?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/budapest","slug":"budapest","ordinal":8,"title":"Budapest","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-europes-most-misunderstood-capital-city","title":"What is Europe's most misunderstood capital city?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/executive-powers-article-ii-section-2-3","slug":"executive-powers-article-ii-section-2-3","ordinal":1,"title":"Executive Powers (Article II, Section 2 & 3)","description":"This position groups the core executive powers the Constitution vests in the president under Article II: nominating cabinet members, judges and officers with Senate consent, issuing executive orders, and organising the federal bureaucracy to see that the laws are faithfully executed.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-powers-does-president-have","title":"What powers are vested in the Executive Branch?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/legislative-powers-article-ii-section-3","slug":"legislative-powers-article-ii-section-3","ordinal":2,"title":"Legislative Powers (Article II, Section 3)","description":"This position groups the legislative powers the Constitution gives the president under Article II, Section 3: vetoing bills passed by Congress, delivering State of the Union addresses to recommend measures, and convening or adjourning Congress in the circumstances the Constitution specifies.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-powers-does-president-have","title":"What powers are vested in the Executive Branch?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/winner-takes-all-is-the-best-voting-system","slug":"winner-takes-all-is-the-best-voting-system","ordinal":4,"title":"\"Winner-takes-all\" is the best voting system","description":"This position holds that 'winner-takes-all' is the best voting system, giving all of a region's representation to the candidate with the most votes. It argues this is the most efficient, straightforward method, avoiding the complications of ranked-choice or approval voting.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/which-is-best-voting-system","title":"Which is the best voting system?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-we-should-not-have-daylight-saving-time","slug":"no-we-should-not-have-daylight-saving-time","ordinal":2,"title":"No, we should not have daylight saving time","description":"This position holds that daylight saving time should be scrapped, arguing the costs outweigh the benefits of an outdated practice. It contends that clock-changing disrupts religious observance, favours some industries over others, and no longer serves its original purpose.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/daylight-saving-time","title":"Should we have daylight saving time?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-manifesto","slug":"the-manifesto","ordinal":1,"title":"The manifesto","description":"This position attributes Labour's 2019 election defeat to its manifesto. Unlike the well-received 2017 version, it argues the 2019 programme was ill-conceived—too radical, poorly prepared, and trying to be all things to all voters at once.","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/did-labour-lose-2019-uk-general-election","title":"Why did Labour lose the 2019 UK general election?"}},{"type":"position","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/paris","slug":"paris","ordinal":2,"title":"Paris","description":"","created_at":"2026-05-18T17:33:16.863884+00:00","question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-europes-most-misunderstood-capital-city","title":"What is Europe's most misunderstood capital city?"}}],"arguments":[{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/trade-has-to-be-paid-for-so-what-leaves-as-imports-returns-as-demand","slug":"trade-has-to-be-paid-for-so-what-leaves-as-imports-returns-as-demand","title":"Trade has to be paid for, so what leaves as imports returns as demand","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue from the accounting rather than from any claim about how industries fare. Purchases from abroad have to be settled, and the funds used to settle them come back as purchases of exports, as investment, or as claims that are eventually exercised one way or the other. Proponents argue that this constrains the whole picture: a country cannot import on a sustained basis without something flowing in the other direction, so demand lost to foreign suppliers reappears as demand for domestic output.\n\nThe mechanism is that the return flow employs people even when it is not obvious which people. If the funds buy exports, the employment is in exporting industries. If they are invested, the employment is in whatever the investment builds and operates. If they are held as claims, the holder is forgoing current purchases in favour of later ones, and the employment arrives later. Proponents argue that in each case the composition of employment shifts while its level is ","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:33:39.347965+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/free-trade-has-no-effect-on-jobs","title":"Free trade has no effect on jobs"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-does-free-trade-affect-jobs","title":"How does free trade affect jobs?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-number-of-jobs-is-set-by-demand-and-the-size-of-the-workforce-not-by-the-pat","slug":"the-number-of-jobs-is-set-by-demand-and-the-size-of-the-workforce-not-by-the-pat","title":"The number of jobs is set by demand and the size of the workforce, not by the pattern of trade","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the dispute between the other two rests on a shared mistake, namely treating the quantity of employment as something determined by which industries exist. Proponents hold that total employment is governed by how much spending there is in the economy, how many people are available and willing to work, and the policy settings that act on both. Trade changes what people are employed doing; it does not change how many of them there are.\n\nThe mechanism is that the constraints operate at a different level from the one trade acts on. If spending supports a given volume of activity, labour released from one sector is drawn into whatever else that spending is directed at, and the adjustment shows up in the composition of employment rather than its level. Proponents argue this is why economies with very open trade and economies with very closed trade are found at similar levels of employment, and why employment within a single economy moves with the cycle a","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:33:39.201215+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/free-trade-has-no-effect-on-jobs","title":"Free trade has no effect on jobs"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-does-free-trade-affect-jobs","title":"How does free trade affect jobs?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-jobs-lost-and-the-jobs-gained-are-not-in-the-same-places-or-open-to-the-same","slug":"the-jobs-lost-and-the-jobs-gained-are-not-in-the-same-places-or-open-to-the-same","title":"The jobs lost and the jobs gained are not in the same places or open to the same people","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position accept that trade creates work somewhere and argue that this is not an answer to the objection. A net figure is a comparison between two totals, and nobody experiences a total. Proponents argue that what matters for employment is whether the particular people who lost work can obtain the particular work that is created, and that the two rarely coincide in either place or kind.\n\nThe mechanism is mismatch on two dimensions at once. Geographically, contracting industries are often concentrated in places built around them, where the plant was the reason the town existed, while expanding activities cluster where markets, finance and skilled labour already are. Moving is expensive, housing elsewhere is dearer precisely because it is where the work is, and a worker's assets are usually tied up in a house whose value falls when the local employer closes. In terms of skill, the work created typically requires training the displaced worker does not have and cannot eas","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:33:38.772742+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/free-trade-destroys-jobs","title":"Free trade destroys jobs"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-does-free-trade-affect-jobs","title":"How does free trade affect jobs?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/exposure-to-lower-cost-production-closes-the-industries-that-cannot-match-it","slug":"exposure-to-lower-cost-production-closes-the-industries-that-cannot-match-it","title":"Exposure to lower-cost production closes the industries that cannot match it","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the immediate and least disputable effect of opening a market is competitive pressure on whoever was supplying it. A producer facing a rival that can make the same good for less has a narrow set of options: cut costs, which usually means employing fewer people; accept lower margins until it cannot; or close. Proponents argue that each of these paths reduces employment in that industry, and that this is not a transitional cost but the intended mechanism of the policy.\n\nThe mechanism proponents emphasise is that cost advantages often cannot be matched by effort. Where a rival's advantage rests on lower wages, different regulatory burdens, cheaper energy or state support, no amount of improvement by the domestic producer closes the gap, because the gap is not about how well the work is done. Proponents argue this distinguishes trade competition from ordinary competition between domestic firms, where rivals operate under the same wage floor and the sa","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:33:38.62568+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/free-trade-destroys-jobs","title":"Free trade destroys jobs"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-does-free-trade-affect-jobs","title":"How does free trade affect jobs?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/cheaper-inputs-and-cheaper-goods-release-spending-that-employs-people-elsewhere","slug":"cheaper-inputs-and-cheaper-goods-release-spending-that-employs-people-elsewhere","title":"Cheaper inputs and cheaper goods release spending that employs people elsewhere","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the employment effect of trade is easiest to miss because most of it does not occur in the industries that trade. When imported components and materials cost less, the firms that use them have lower costs; when imported goods cost less, households spend less to obtain the same things. Proponents argue that the money not spent does not disappear, and that wherever it goes it supports work.\n\nThe mechanism has two branches. For producers, cheaper inputs lower the cost of the finished product, which supports either a larger volume sold or funds that can be invested in capacity, and both require labour. For households, the saving is released into other spending: a family paying less for clothing and appliances has more for services, housing, education and local businesses, which are labour-intensive activities and often cannot be imported at all. Proponents argue this is why the benefits of trade show up as broad and diffuse employment rather than as a","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:33:38.234073+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/free-trade-creates-jobs","title":"Free trade creates jobs"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-does-free-trade-affect-jobs","title":"How does free trade affect jobs?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/access-to-a-larger-market-lets-a-producer-grow-beyond-what-domestic-demand-would","slug":"access-to-a-larger-market-lets-a-producer-grow-beyond-what-domestic-demand-would","title":"Access to a larger market lets a producer grow beyond what domestic demand would support","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position begin from the constraint that a closed market places on any producer. However good a firm's product, the number of customers available to it is fixed by the size of the population that can legally buy it, and once that market is saturated growth stops. Proponents argue that removing the barrier removes the ceiling, and that firms which can sell abroad hire to meet the additional orders.\n\nThe mechanism proponents point to is scale. Many kinds of production carry heavy fixed costs that are only worth bearing if enough units are sold to spread them, which means some goods cannot be made economically for a small market at all. Opening trade enlarges the market a producer faces, which makes those investments viable, and the investments themselves require workers to build and operate. Proponents argue this is why export industries tend to be among the larger employers in the economies that have them, and why firms lobby for access rather than against it.\n\nPropone","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:33:38.005906+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/free-trade-creates-jobs","title":"Free trade creates jobs"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-does-free-trade-affect-jobs","title":"How does free trade affect jobs?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-dilemmas-of-persuasion-are-visible-and-visible-dilemmas-get-governed","slug":"the-dilemmas-of-persuasion-are-visible-and-visible-dilemmas-get-governed","title":"The dilemmas of persuasion are visible, and visible dilemmas get governed","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the ethical problems of persuasion, though real, are the kind that societies notice and act on, whereas the problems of argumentation are not. Because persuasion is openly understood as an attempt at influence, it attracts scepticism, conventions about disclosure, expectations that interests be declared, and standing suspicion of anyone who is good at it. Proponents argue this does not eliminate the problems but keeps them under management, which is the most that can be asked of any practice.\n\nThe mechanism is that scrutiny follows acknowledged power. A practice that admits it is trying to move people invites the question of who is paying for it and what they want, and that question gets asked routinely. A practice that presents itself as the pursuit of truth through reasons does not invite it, so the interests of the person reasoning stay unexamined. Proponents argue the result is that the characteristic abuses of argumentation, such as the selec","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:30:56.022439+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-persuasion-has-fewer-ethical-dilemmas-than-argumentation","title":"No, Persuasion has fewer ethical dilemmas than Argumentation"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-persuasion-present-more-ethical-dilemmas-than","title":"Does Persuasion present more ethical dilemmas than Argumentation?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/argumentations-claim-to-neutrality-is-the-part-that-does-the-hidden-work","slug":"argumentations-claim-to-neutrality-is-the-part-that-does-the-hidden-work","title":"Argumentation's claim to neutrality is the part that does the hidden work","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the decisive ethical variable is whether the audience knows what is being attempted, and that on this measure persuasion is the more honest of the two. An avowed persuader announces an interest in moving people. The audience knows it, discounts accordingly, and remains on guard. Argumentation presents itself as the mere laying out of reasons, and proponents argue that this presentation is itself a technique, and the most effective one available.\n\nThe mechanism is the lowering of the audience's defences. Scrutiny is expensive and people apply it where they expect influence. Told that someone is trying to convince them, they examine what is said. Told that they are being walked through the reasoning, they attend to the steps and not to the selection, which is where the work has been done. Proponents argue that the arguer's choice of what to include, what to count as obvious and which objection to treat as marginal shapes the conclusion more than any","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:30:55.707269+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-persuasion-has-fewer-ethical-dilemmas-than-argumentation","title":"No, Persuasion has fewer ethical dilemmas than Argumentation"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-persuasion-present-more-ethical-dilemmas-than","title":"Does Persuasion present more ethical dilemmas than Argumentation?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/no-reasoning-reaches-anyone-without-the-means-of-persuasion-attached-to-it","slug":"no-reasoning-reaches-anyone-without-the-means-of-persuasion-attached-to-it","title":"No reasoning reaches anyone without the means of persuasion attached to it","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the comparison the question invites cannot be made, because there is no instance of argumentation that is not also an instance of persuasion. A reason has to be expressed to reach anyone, and expression involves a choice of words, an order, a tone, a length and an occasion. Each of those choices affects whether the reason persuades, and none of them is part of the reason itself.\n\nThe mechanism is that the logical content and the delivery cannot be separated in practice. The same valid argument convinces when stated clearly and fails when stated obscurely; it lands when the audience is rested and bounces when they are harried; it carries differently from a speaker they trust than from one they do not. Proponents argue that an arguer who ignores all of this will convince nobody, and that an arguer who attends to it is doing exactly what a persuader does. The practices are therefore not two things to be weighed against each other but one activity des","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:30:55.40444+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-the-ethical-dilemmas-are-the-same","title":"No, the ethical dilemmas are the same"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-persuasion-present-more-ethical-dilemmas-than","title":"Does Persuasion present more ethical dilemmas than Argumentation?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/both-are-attempts-to-change-another-persons-mind-and-the-dilemmas-follow-from-th","slug":"both-are-attempts-to-change-another-persons-mind-and-the-dilemmas-follow-from-th","title":"Both are attempts to change another person's mind, and the dilemmas follow from that alone","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the ethical questions in play arise from the attempt to alter what someone else thinks, and that both practices make that attempt. Whether the instrument is a reason or an appeal, one party is trying to leave another party believing something they did not believe before, and every question worth asking about honesty, manipulation, respect and consent arises at that point rather than later.\n\nThe mechanism proponents identify is that argumentation involves choices which are themselves persuasive and which carry the familiar ethical risks. Someone constructing an argument decides which reasons to present and which to omit, how much weight to give an objection, where to begin, what to treat as common ground and what to leave unstated. None of these choices is dictated by logic, all of them affect the outcome, and each can be made candidly or with an eye to what will land. Proponents argue the arguer therefore faces the same temptations as the persuade","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:30:55.25026+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-the-ethical-dilemmas-are-the-same","title":"No, the ethical dilemmas are the same"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-persuasion-present-more-ethical-dilemmas-than","title":"Does Persuasion present more ethical dilemmas than Argumentation?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/techniques-that-work-by-going-around-a-persons-judgement-treat-them-as-a-mechani","slug":"techniques-that-work-by-going-around-a-persons-judgement-treat-them-as-a-mechani","title":"Techniques that work by going around a person's judgement treat them as a mechanism","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the characteristic resources of persuasion operate below the level at which a person can assess them. Timing, repetition, the order in which things are mentioned, the fear or flattery attached to an option, the company the proposal is seen in: these change what people conclude without ever presenting themselves as reasons. Proponents argue that this is what generates the distinctive ethical problem, because the subject is not in a position to weigh what is acting on them.\n\nThe mechanism is the removal of the one safeguard that argumentation leaves in place. When a reason is offered, the person can examine it, find it wanting and decline it, and the arguer's influence runs entirely through that examination. When an effect is produced by repetition or by the arrangement of alternatives, there is nothing for the person to examine, and declining is not an option they can exercise because they cannot see what to decline. Proponents argue this is why th","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:30:54.853984+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-persuasion-presents-more-ethical-dilemmas-than-argumentation","title":"Yes, Persuasion presents more ethical dilemmas than Argumentation"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-persuasion-present-more-ethical-dilemmas-than","title":"Does Persuasion present more ethical dilemmas than Argumentation?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/persuasion-is-indifferent-to-whether-the-belief-it-produces-is-true","slug":"persuasion-is-indifferent-to-whether-the-belief-it-produces-is-true","title":"Persuasion is indifferent to whether the belief it produces is true","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position begin from the different conditions under which the two practices count as having succeeded. An argument succeeds when its reasons support its conclusion; if the reasons are bad the argument has failed, whatever effect it had on anyone. Persuasion succeeds when the audience moves. Proponents argue that this difference in success conditions is the source of the extra ethical weight, because only one of the two practices is answerable to the truth of what it leaves behind.\n\nThe mechanism is that an answerable practice carries its own correction. A person committed to argumentation must care whether their premises hold, because a false premise defeats them on their own terms; the standard they have accepted does the policing. A person committed to persuasion has accepted a standard that is satisfied by a change of mind however produced, so nothing internal to the activity requires the belief to be sound. Proponents argue the ethical questions then arrive from o","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:30:54.674397+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-persuasion-presents-more-ethical-dilemmas-than-argumentation","title":"Yes, Persuasion presents more ethical dilemmas than Argumentation"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-persuasion-present-more-ethical-dilemmas-than","title":"Does Persuasion present more ethical dilemmas than Argumentation?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-word-does-work-that-neither-conviction-nor-sacrifice-can-do-on-its-own","slug":"the-word-does-work-that-neither-conviction-nor-sacrifice-can-do-on-its-own","title":"The word does work that neither conviction nor sacrifice can do on its own","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this account argue from what the term is needed for. There are already words for a person who holds a belief under pressure and for a person who gives their life for someone else: the first is steadfast, the second is a hero. Proponents argue that if martyrdom meant either of these it would be redundant, and that the reason it survives alongside them is that it marks something neither captures, namely a death that goes on to function as an argument.\n\nThe mechanism is that such a death changes the situation of those still arguing. It supplies a case that cannot be answered in the ordinary way, since the person is no longer available to be refuted and what they refused is now fixed. It raises the cost of continuing the pressure, because the pressure has produced a death that others can point to. And it gives a cause a focus that abstract claims cannot provide. Proponents argue this is why the deaths remembered as martyrdoms are so consistently the ones that were useful to a","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:27:56.502676+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/dying-to-further-a-cause-makes-a-martyr","title":"Dying to further a cause makes a martyr"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-makes-martyr","title":"What makes a martyr?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/martyrdom-is-a-status-conferred-afterwards-by-the-people-the-death-moves","slug":"martyrdom-is-a-status-conferred-afterwards-by-the-people-the-death-moves","title":"Martyrdom is a status conferred afterwards by the people the death moves","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this account observe that nobody becomes a martyr by their own decision. A person may hold a conviction, refuse to recant and die for it, and be forgotten entirely; no title attaches, because titles are given rather than taken. Proponents argue that this points to where the concept actually lives, which is in the response of those who come after rather than in anything internal to the person who died.\n\nThe mechanism is that the word marks a function the death performs for a cause. A death that is taken up, recounted and used becomes a reference point: it makes the cause visible, binds those who hold it, and imposes a cost on whoever brought the death about. That is what the designation records. Proponents argue this explains features the other accounts leave unexplained, including why martyrdom is always attributed retrospectively, why the same death is a martyrdom to one community and nothing of the kind to another, and why the title can be granted long afterwards to som","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:27:56.338804+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/dying-to-further-a-cause-makes-a-martyr","title":"Dying to further a cause makes a martyr"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-makes-martyr","title":"What makes a martyr?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/conviction-can-be-held-at-no-cost-to-anyone-so-belief-alone-cannot-be-the-criter","slug":"conviction-can-be-held-at-no-cost-to-anyone-so-belief-alone-cannot-be-the-criter","title":"Conviction can be held at no cost to anyone, so belief alone cannot be the criterion","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this account press a difficulty for the view that sincere belief is what matters. Beliefs are held by everyone, including incompatible ones, and holding one strongly enough to die for it is a measure of intensity rather than of anything else. Proponents argue that if conviction were the criterion, the title would be distributed according to how fervently people happened to feel, which is not how it is distributed and not what anyone means to be praising.\n\nThe mechanism of the objection is that belief is self-contained. A conviction can be maintained in private, cost nothing, touch no one, and still be perfectly sincere. Dying for it adds a price but does not change its direction: the person has spent their life on something internal to them. Proponents argue this is why a death undertaken for a conviction that serves no one strikes most people as a waste rather than a sacrifice, and why the accounts that move us are the ones where somebody else was in the picture.\n\nPropon","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:27:56.027999+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/dying-for-others-makes-a-martyr","title":"Dying for others makes a martyr"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-makes-martyr","title":"What makes a martyr?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/what-is-honoured-in-a-martyr-is-the-cost-borne-so-that-others-would-not-bear-it","slug":"what-is-honoured-in-a-martyr-is-the-cost-borne-so-that-others-would-not-bear-it","title":"What is honoured in a martyr is the cost borne so that others would not bear it","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this account argue that the honour attached to the word is moral rather than epistemic, and that it tracks a benefit to other people. A death that spares others, protects them, or takes on what would otherwise have fallen to them is recognisably the paradigm; a death that helps nobody is at best a private matter, however sincerely it was undertaken.\n\nThe mechanism proponents identify is substitution. There is a burden, it is going to fall somewhere, and one person takes it so that others do not. This is what gives the act its moral weight, and proponents argue it is the only element in the various accounts that can do so. Conviction cannot: holding a belief firmly is a fact about a person and carries no obligation on anyone else to admire it. Advancing a cause cannot either, since causes may be bad and their advancement no credit to anyone. A cost knowingly absorbed on another's behalf is good independently of what either party believed.\n\nProponents add that this account ","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:27:55.857116+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/dying-for-others-makes-a-martyr","title":"Dying for others makes a martyr"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-makes-martyr","title":"What makes a martyr?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-test-the-title-has-always-applied-is-whether-the-person-could-have-escaped-b","slug":"the-test-the-title-has-always-applied-is-whether-the-person-could-have-escaped-b","title":"The test the title has always applied is whether the person could have escaped by recanting","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this account point to the structure that recurs wherever martyrdom is discussed: the person is offered a way out, and the way out is to abandon the belief. The offer may be formal or implicit, but its presence is what gives the case its shape. Proponents argue this is not a historical accident but the content of the concept, because the offer is what makes the death attributable to the conviction rather than to the circumstances.\n\nThe mechanism is a counterfactual test, and it is unusually clean. Ask whether the person would have lived had they given up the belief. If the answer is yes and they did not give it up, the belief is the cause of the death in the only sense that matters for the title. If the answer is no, because the death was coming regardless, then whatever else is true the belief did not bring it about. Proponents argue this is why the refusal is always the part of the story that gets told, and why accounts of martyrdom dwell on the moment of the offer rathe","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:27:55.496361+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/dying-for-something-you-believe-in-makes-a-martyr","title":"Dying for something you believe in makes a martyr"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-makes-martyr","title":"What makes a martyr?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-death-the-person-did-not-accept-for-a-belief-is-a-tragedy-rather-than-a-martyr","slug":"a-death-the-person-did-not-accept-for-a-belief-is-a-tragedy-rather-than-a-martyr","title":"A death the person did not accept for a belief is a tragedy rather than a martyrdom","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this account begin by noting that the word has to distinguish something, and that the obvious contrast is with the ordinary victim. People die in accidents, in epidemics and at the hands of others constantly, and none of this is called martyrdom however undeserved it was. Proponents argue the feature that separates the cases is not the manner of the death or its scale but the presence of a conviction the person held and would not set aside.\n\nThe mechanism is that martyrdom describes a relation between a person and what they believed, not merely an event that happened to them. A death becomes a martyrdom when the belief is what brought it about and when the person accepted it on those terms. That is why the title can be refused: a person who was killed for something they had never held, or who was given no choice in the matter at all, is mourned rather than honoured, and the honour would seem misplaced precisely because there was no conviction for it to attach to.\n\nPropone","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:27:55.286743+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/dying-for-something-you-believe-in-makes-a-martyr","title":"Dying for something you believe in makes a martyr"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-makes-martyr","title":"What makes a martyr?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/an-account-of-pleasure-should-start-from-the-cases-nobody-disputes","slug":"an-account-of-pleasure-should-start-from-the-cases-nobody-disputes","title":"An account of pleasure should start from the cases nobody disputes","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this account is methodological. Proponents observe that the plainest and least contested examples of pleasure are all sensual: warmth after cold, rest after exertion, food when hungry, touch, the first mouthful of something cool. Nobody argues about whether these are pleasures. The contested cases are the ones further out, such as whether a satisfied ambition or a vindicated opinion is pleasant in the same sense. Proponents argue that a sound account explains the clear cases first and derives the doubtful ones from them, rather than beginning with the hard cases and stretching the concept to cover the easy ones.\n\nThe mechanism they propose for the derivation is extension by resemblance. The further pleasures are called pleasures because they share the structure of the bodily cases: a want or lack, an occasion that meets it, and a felt change in the person. The resemblance is close enough that the same word is used across them in ordinary speech without any sense o","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:24:42.923344+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/getting-sensual-gratification","title":"Getting sensual gratification"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-pleasure","title":"What is pleasure?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/every-pleasure-is-a-felt-state-and-feeling-happens-in-the-body","slug":"every-pleasure-is-a-felt-state-and-feeling-happens-in-the-body","title":"Every pleasure is a felt state, and feeling happens in the body","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this account argue that whatever else is true of pleasure, it is something a person feels, and that feeling is not an abstract relation but a condition of the organism. Ask where a pleasure is and the honest answers are bodily ones: an ease in the chest, a loosening of the shoulders, a warmth, a quickening. Proponents argue that this is not incidental colouring but the pleasure itself, and that accounts which make pleasure a relation between a person and a satisfied want have quietly left out the only part that is actually experienced.\n\nThe mechanism proponents point to is that the sensual register is what distinguishes pleasure from mere approval. A person can judge that something is good, that it is what they wanted, and that they are fortunate to have it, and feel nothing. That state has a name, and the name is not pleasure. What converts the judgement into pleasure is the arrival of the felt component. Where it is absent, as in the achievement that lands flat, the per","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:24:42.773046+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/getting-sensual-gratification","title":"Getting sensual gratification"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-pleasure","title":"What is pleasure?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/absorption-is-pleasant-while-nothing-at-all-is-being-obtained","slug":"absorption-is-pleasant-while-nothing-at-all-is-being-obtained","title":"Absorption is pleasant while nothing at all is being obtained","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this account concerns the pleasures that occur with no object in view. Proponents point to the state of being caught up in something: a conversation that runs longer than intended, a game played without caring who wins, a piece of music followed closely, work that stops feeling like work. These episodes are among the most reliably pleasant experiences people report, and while they are going on there is nothing the person is trying to get.\n\nThe mechanism proponents identify is that the pleasure is a feature of the activity rather than of any result it produces. Absorption has no completion condition. There is no point at which the conversation has been had or the music obtained, and the person is not waiting for one. If the pleasure were the satisfaction of a desire it should arrive at the end, when whatever was wanted is finally in hand. Instead it is distributed across the middle and ends when the activity does, which is the profile of a quality rather than of a ","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:24:42.454671+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/being-amused-or-enjoying-yourself","title":"Being amused or enjoying yourself"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-pleasure","title":"What is pleasure?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/getting-what-you-want-often-brings-no-pleasure-which-shows-the-two-come-apart","slug":"getting-what-you-want-often-brings-no-pleasure-which-shows-the-two-come-apart","title":"Getting what you want often brings no pleasure, which shows the two come apart","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this account begin from a familiar disappointment. A person works for years towards something they wanted, obtains it exactly as specified, and feels almost nothing. Nothing has gone wrong with the getting; the desire was real and it was satisfied. What is missing is the enjoyment, and its absence is precisely what makes the episode worth remarking on. Proponents argue that an account identifying pleasure with satisfied desire has no room for this, since on that account the pleasure would already have been delivered along with the thing.\n\nThe mechanism they point to is that wanting and enjoying are separate capacities which usually travel together and sometimes do not. Wanting orients a person towards something not yet had. Enjoying is a quality of what is being had now. Because people mostly want what they go on to enjoy, the two look like one thing, and they come apart only in the cases where the prediction fails: the achievement that lands flat, the holiday endured rat","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:24:42.298368+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/being-amused-or-enjoying-yourself","title":"Being amused or enjoying yourself"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-pleasure","title":"What is pleasure?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/pleasure-can-be-taken-in-things-that-carry-no-pleasant-sensation-at-all","slug":"pleasure-can-be-taken-in-things-that-carry-no-pleasant-sensation-at-all","title":"Pleasure can be taken in things that carry no pleasant sensation at all","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this account is that pleasure is reported in cases where there is no agreeable feeling to be found. Proponents of this account point to the pleasure of finishing a long and thoroughly unpleasant task, of being proved right in an argument, of learning something one had been curious about, or of seeing a rival fail. Something in each case is plainly pleasant, and yet none of it feels like warmth or sweetness. If the pleasure were a sensation, it should be possible to say where it is.\n\nThe mechanism proponents offer unifies these cases. In each, something the person wanted has been obtained: the task finished, the point conceded, the curiosity met, the rival's advantage removed. Nothing else is common to them. The sensations differ wildly and in several cases are absent altogether, while the relation to desire holds in every instance. Proponents argue that an account should be built on the feature the cases share rather than on the one that varies.\n\nProponents add th","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:24:41.967106+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/getting-what-you-want","title":"Getting what you want"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-pleasure","title":"What is pleasure?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-same-event-is-pleasant-or-not-depending-only-on-whether-it-was-wanted","slug":"the-same-event-is-pleasant-or-not-depending-only-on-whether-it-was-wanted","title":"The same event is pleasant or not depending only on whether it was wanted","description":null,"body":"If pleasure were a property of events, the same event would be pleasant for everyone who underwent it. Proponents of this account point out that it plainly is not. A long afternoon of rain delights the gardener and ruins the picnic; a crowded room is a pleasure to one guest and an ordeal to the next; silence is restful or unbearable depending on who is sitting in it. The events are identical. What varies is what the person wanted.\n\nThe mechanism proponents identify is straightforward once stated. Pleasure on this account is not a thing added to an experience but a relation between the experience and the person having it, namely that the experience gives them what they were after. This explains the variation without needing a separate story for each case, and it explains the direction of the variation too: the better the fit between what arrived and what was wanted, the greater the pleasure, which is why a long-held wish met exactly is more pleasant than a passing whim indulged.\n\nPropon","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:24:41.75563+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/getting-what-you-want","title":"Getting what you want"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-pleasure","title":"What is pleasure?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/treating-an-emotion-as-a-task-to-be-completed-turns-difficulty-into-failure","slug":"treating-an-emotion-as-a-task-to-be-completed-turns-difficulty-into-failure","title":"Treating an emotion as a task to be completed turns difficulty into failure","description":null,"body":"A second argument for the self-imposed account concerns what happens when feelings are brought under the logic of achievement. Proponents argue that the characteristic move of toxic positivity, as experienced from inside, is to treat an emotional state as something the person is responsible for producing, in the way they are responsible for finishing a piece of work.\n\nThe mechanism is a recursion, and it is what makes the pattern self-sustaining. Once a good mood is a task, a bad mood is an unfinished task, and the ordinary response to an unfinished task is to feel bad about it. That second feeling is itself a failure by the same standard, and so is the third. Proponents argue this is why people describe the experience as a trap rather than merely as strain: each attempt to comply generates new material for the same judgement, so effort makes matters worse rather than better. Grief at a loss becomes evidence of insufficient gratitude, which becomes evidence of a bad character, which is","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:20:32.246719+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/toxic-positivity-occurs-when-individuals-put-insane-pressure-on-themselves-to-ig","title":"Toxic positivity occurs when individuals put insane pressure on themselves to ignore difficult emotions"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/when-does-good-attitude-become-toxic-positivity","title":"When does a good attitude become toxic positivity?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-strictest-enforcer-of-relentless-cheerfulness-is-usually-the-person-themselv","slug":"the-strictest-enforcer-of-relentless-cheerfulness-is-usually-the-person-themselv","title":"The strictest enforcer of relentless cheerfulness is usually the person themselves","description":null,"body":"This account locates toxic positivity inside the person rather than between people. Proponents argue that by the time an expectation of constant good cheer has any real grip, it no longer needs an external enforcer; the person has taken over the enforcement, and does it more thoroughly than any observer could.\n\nThe mechanism is ordinary internalisation. Expectations absorbed from a culture do not stay in the places they came from. They operate as the standard against which a person judges their own conduct, including conduct no one else can see. Proponents argue this is why the pattern survives in solitude. A person alone with a difficult feeling, with no audience and nobody to disapprove, can still meet it with the verdict that they should not be having it, that other people manage, that the feeling is a weakness being indulged. No shaming is required, because the shaming has been installed.\n\nProponents add that this account explains the severity. An external norm is applied intermitt","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:20:32.111439+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/toxic-positivity-occurs-when-individuals-put-insane-pressure-on-themselves-to-ig","title":"Toxic positivity occurs when individuals put insane pressure on themselves to ignore difficult emotions"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/when-does-good-attitude-become-toxic-positivity","title":"When does a good attitude become toxic positivity?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/shaming-distress-makes-the-sufferer-answerable-for-other-peoples-discomfort","slug":"shaming-distress-makes-the-sufferer-answerable-for-other-peoples-discomfort","title":"Shaming distress makes the sufferer answerable for other people's discomfort","description":null,"body":"A second argument for locating toxic positivity in shame concerns where responsibility ends up. Distress is uncomfortable to witness, and proponents of this account argue that a positivity norm resolves that discomfort in one particular direction: by treating the person in difficulty as the party at fault for having introduced it.\n\nThe mechanism is a transfer. The witness's unease is real, and it has to go somewhere. Where the norm permits, it is discharged onto the sufferer in the form of disapproval, which may be as mild as a change of subject or as explicit as a reproach for being negative. Either way the sufferer learns that their feeling has become a social offence as well as a private difficulty. Proponents argue this is the specific cruelty of the pattern: it does not merely fail to help, it adds a charge. The person must now manage both the original trouble and the knowledge that disclosing it damaged their standing.\n\nProponents argue the transfer is usually invisible to the pe","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:20:31.778498+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/toxic-positivity-occurs-when-people-are-shamed-for-not-being-positive-all-the-ti","title":"Toxic positivity occurs when people are shamed for not being positive all the time"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/when-does-good-attitude-become-toxic-positivity","title":"When does a good attitude become toxic positivity?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/positivity-turns-toxic-at-the-point-where-it-stops-being-offered-and-starts-bein","slug":"positivity-turns-toxic-at-the-point-where-it-stops-being-offered-and-starts-bein","title":"Positivity turns toxic at the point where it stops being offered and starts being required","description":null,"body":"On this account the distinguishing feature is enforcement. An outlook that is offered can be declined, and declining it costs nothing; an outlook that is expected cannot be declined without cost. Proponents of this account argue that the word toxic earns its place only once the second condition holds, because that is the point at which a person's own assessment of their situation stops governing what they are able to say about it.\n\nThe mechanism is familiar from any norm backed by a penalty. Where visible distress reliably attracts disapproval, the rational response is not to resolve the distress but to stop making it visible. People learn which answers to the question of how they are doing pass without comment, and give those answers. The feeling is unchanged; only the reporting changes. Proponents argue this is why the harm compounds in settings with the strongest positivity norms, such as workplaces that treat morale as a performance measure or communities where gratitude is an arti","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:20:31.610969+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/toxic-positivity-occurs-when-people-are-shamed-for-not-being-positive-all-the-ti","title":"Toxic positivity occurs when people are shamed for not being positive all the time"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/when-does-good-attitude-become-toxic-positivity","title":"When does a good attitude become toxic positivity?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/what-makes-the-comfort-fail-is-the-withdrawal-of-standing-not-the-optimism","slug":"what-makes-the-comfort-fail-is-the-withdrawal-of-standing-not-the-optimism","title":"What makes the comfort fail is the withdrawal of standing, not the optimism","description":null,"body":"A difficulty for any account of toxic positivity is that the offending phrases are also the ordinary vocabulary of comfort. Look on the bright side, this will pass, you are stronger than you think: these are said constantly, and most of the time they help. Proponents of this account argue that the variable is not the content of the phrase but whether the feeling it addresses has been granted standing first.\n\nGranting standing is a small and specific act. It means conceding that the feeling is an intelligible response to the situation, that a reasonable person in those circumstances might have it, and that it is the person's own to report. Once that is conceded, optimism arrives as an addition: things are hard, and here is a reason to think they will improve. Without it, the same optimism arrives as a replacement: things are not hard, and your sense that they are is the problem to be solved.\n\nProponents argue this explains why the experience of being on the receiving end is so distincti","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:20:31.305074+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/toxic-positivity-occurs-when-you-deny-the-legitimacy-of-bad-feelings","title":"Toxic positivity occurs when you deny the legitimacy of bad feelings"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/when-does-good-attitude-become-toxic-positivity","title":"When does a good attitude become toxic positivity?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-feeling-treated-as-a-mistake-can-no-longer-be-used-as-information","slug":"a-feeling-treated-as-a-mistake-can-no-longer-be-used-as-information","title":"A feeling treated as a mistake can no longer be used as information","description":null,"body":"Emotions on this account are not merely unpleasant sensations but reports about a person's circumstances. Fear reports a threat, anger reports a boundary crossed, grief reports a loss that mattered. Proponents of this account argue that such reports can be inaccurate and still be worth reading, in the way a faulty instrument is worth examining rather than smashing. What distinguishes toxic positivity from ordinary encouragement is that it rules the report out of order before it has been read.\n\nThe mechanism is a loss of usable information. When a feeling is met with the claim that there is nothing to feel, the person is placed in a position where acting on the feeling requires first disputing the judgement of whoever denied it. Most people will not do that, particularly when the denial comes from someone they trust or depend on. So the feeling is not resolved but shelved, and whatever it was reporting goes unexamined. The threat is not checked, the boundary is not restated, the loss is","created_at":"2026-10-16T01:20:31.056071+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/toxic-positivity-occurs-when-you-deny-the-legitimacy-of-bad-feelings","title":"Toxic positivity occurs when you deny the legitimacy of bad feelings"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/when-does-good-attitude-become-toxic-positivity","title":"When does a good attitude become toxic positivity?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/wider-access-is-the-opposite-of-death","slug":"wider-access-is-the-opposite-of-death","title":"Wider access is the opposite of death","description":null,"body":"A second argument concerns who can now watch what. Opponents observe that for most of the medium's history access was determined by geography and programming: what played locally, when it played, and whether a given town had anywhere showing anything but the week's major release. Opponents argue that the great majority of films ever made were, for the great majority of people, simply unavailable, and that film culture was accordingly the property of those living near a repertory house or a city.\n\nThe mechanism opponents emphasise is that availability creates audiences. A person who can watch the history of the medium from anywhere can develop the taste that once required a particular address, and opponents argue that this is why serious interest in film now appears in places that had no access to it before. They add that the same conditions support work made outside the traditional centres, since a film from a small industry can now reach viewers abroad without needing a distributor wi","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:30:27.638638+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-cinema-is-not-dead","title":"No, cinema is not dead"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cinema-dead","title":"Is cinema dead?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-medium-with-new-work-and-a-living-audience-is-not-dead","slug":"a-medium-with-new-work-and-a-living-audience-is-not-dead","title":"A medium with new work and a living audience is not dead","description":null,"body":"The case against begins with what would have to be true for cinema to be dead. Opponents argue that a dead art form is one in which no significant new work is made, no audience seeks it out, and the practice survives only as history: something studied rather than done. Opponents argue that none of this describes film. New work is produced continuously and in every register, audiences are large and argumentative, careers are built in it, and the question of what a good film is remains a live dispute rather than a settled matter.\n\nThe mechanism opponents emphasise is the difference between a medium and its delivery. Opponents argue that the history of the art is a history of changing arrangements: silent to sound, black and white to colour, nitrate to digital, repertory houses to multiplexes, each of which was announced as the end and each of which turned out to be a change of means. Where the film is watched is, on this account, of the same kind as what it is projected from, and no prev","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:30:27.436482+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-cinema-is-not-dead","title":"No, cinema is not dead"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cinema-dead","title":"Is cinema dead?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/what-is-made-now-is-content-and-content-is-a-different-thing","slug":"what-is-made-now-is-content-and-content-is-a-different-thing","title":"What is made now is content, and content is a different thing","description":null,"body":"A second argument concerns how the work is commissioned. Proponents argue that a medium is shaped by what its funders are trying to achieve, and that the aim has changed. Where a film once had to persuade people to leave their homes and buy a ticket, which meant being worth the journey, proponents argue that the work is now commissioned to fill a catalogue and retain a subscription, which is a different objective with different consequences.\n\nThe mechanism proponents emphasise is the disappearance of the individual work. Retaining a subscriber rewards volume, familiarity and series that continue, and proponents argue that it penalises the self contained film that says what it has to say and ends, because such a film gives the viewer a natural moment to stop paying. Proponents argue the result is visible in what gets funded: recognisable properties, extensions of things that already exist, and work measured by completion rates rather than by whether it was worth seeing.\n\nProponents argu","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:30:27.031399+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-cinema-is-dead","title":"Yes, cinema is dead"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cinema-dead","title":"Is cinema dead?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-theatre-was-the-form-and-the-audience-has-left-it","slug":"the-theatre-was-the-form-and-the-audience-has-left-it","title":"The theatre was the form, and the audience has left it","description":null,"body":"The case that cinema is dead turns on what the word named. Proponents argue that cinema was never simply moving pictures; it was a specific arrangement in which strangers sat together in the dark, in front of an image larger than themselves, unable to pause, skip, check a phone or leave without cost. Proponents argue that this arrangement was not incidental to the art but constitutive of it: the length of a shot, the use of silence, the slow build and the withheld reveal all assume an audience that cannot escape.\n\nThe mechanism proponents emphasise is that the form shaped the work. Directors made films for conditions they could count on, and proponents argue that when those conditions go, the work changes to suit what replaced them. A film made in the expectation of being watched in instalments, on a small screen, against the competition of a phone, is built differently: it explains more, waits less, front loads incident and avoids anything a distracted viewer might miss. Proponents ar","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:30:26.866211+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-cinema-is-dead","title":"Yes, cinema is dead"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cinema-dead","title":"Is cinema dead?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/it-teaches-children-that-their-school-expects-to-be-attacked","slug":"it-teaches-children-that-their-school-expects-to-be-attacked","title":"It teaches children that their school expects to be attacked","description":null,"body":"A second argument concerns what the arrangement communicates. Opponents argue that a school is not merely a building where children happen to be but the institution in which they learn what ordinary life is like, and that the physical environment teaches alongside the curriculum. A visible armed presence, encountered daily for years, tells a child that the place where they spend their childhood is understood by adults to be a likely site of lethal violence.\n\nThe mechanism opponents describe is habituation. They argue that a measure presented as exceptional becomes, to a child who has never known its absence, simply how the world is, and that this has effects the measure's advocates do not count: a generalised expectation of danger, the normalisation of armed authority in civilian spaces, and the lesson that the response to a social problem is to add a weapon to it. Opponents argue that these are formative rather than incidental, because the audience is young and the exposure is continu","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:28:32.162529+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-schools-should-not-have-armed-security-guards","title":"No, schools should not have armed security guards"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-schools-have-armed-security-guards","title":"Should schools have armed security guards?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/adding-a-gun-to-a-school-adds-the-dangers-a-gun-brings","slug":"adding-a-gun-to-a-school-adds-the-dangers-a-gun-brings","title":"Adding a gun to a school adds the dangers a gun brings","description":null,"body":"The case against begins with what is actually introduced. Opponents argue that stationing an armed guard places a loaded weapon inside a building full of children every day, for years, against the possibility of an event that may never occur there. Opponents argue that the weapon's presence has its own consequences which do not depend on an attack happening: it can be mishandled, discharged accidentally, left unsecured, or taken, and each of these is a route to a child being shot that did not exist before.\n\nThe mechanism opponents emphasise is the ratio between exposure and occasion. The guard is armed on every ordinary day, and opponents argue that ordinary days are when the realistic risks occur: a fight that escalates because a weapon is present, a pupil in crisis who is met with a drawn gun, a misidentification in a corridor, a scuffle in which the weapon is reached for. Opponents argue that these outcomes are not hypothetical in the way the attack is hypothetical, because they ari","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:28:32.00111+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-schools-should-not-have-armed-security-guards","title":"No, schools should not have armed security guards"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-schools-have-armed-security-guards","title":"Should schools have armed security guards?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-school-is-the-one-public-place-left-undefended","slug":"a-school-is-the-one-public-place-left-undefended","title":"A school is the one public place left undefended","description":null,"body":"A second argument proceeds from consistency. Proponents observe that the protection of buildings is not ordinarily a contested question: where a place holds many people and could plausibly be attacked, it is given controlled entry, cameras, trained staff and an armed response. Proponents argue that this is the settled practice for banks, stadiums, transport hubs, legislatures and the offices of the people who make education policy, and that no one describes it as militarising those places.\n\nThe mechanism proponents emphasise is the signal an exception sends. Proponents argue that an attacker selecting a target weighs, among other things, how long they will be able to act, and that a publicly advertised absence of armed response is therefore a selection criterion rather than a neutral fact. On this account the question is not whether schools should become fortresses, which proponents say they should not, but whether the one category of building full of the people least able to protect t","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:28:31.69932+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-schools-should-have-armed-security-guards","title":"Yes, schools should have armed security guards"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-schools-have-armed-security-guards","title":"Should schools have armed security guards?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-harm-happens-in-the-minutes-before-an-armed-response-arrives","slug":"the-harm-happens-in-the-minutes-before-an-armed-response-arrives","title":"The harm happens in the minutes before an armed response arrives","description":null,"body":"The case for armed guards in schools rests on the structure of the event it is meant to address. Proponents argue that an attack on a school is decided in a short interval: the time between the first shot and the arrival of someone able to stop it. During that interval an attacker faces no opposition, and proponents argue that everything which determines how many people are hurt happens inside it. Calling for help does not shorten the interval; having someone already present does.\n\nThe mechanism proponents emphasise is proximity rather than firepower. An armed officer on site is not expected to win a gun battle but to interrupt one, because an attacker who must deal with return fire stops advancing through classrooms, and proponents argue that interruption is what saves people even where the officer is outmatched. Proponents add that the same presence can deter before anything begins, since an attacker choosing a target has reason to prefer a place where no one will shoot back, and tha","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:28:31.536166+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-schools-should-have-armed-security-guards","title":"Yes, schools should have armed security guards"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-schools-have-armed-security-guards","title":"Should schools have armed security guards?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/abolishing-the-category-would-not-remove-the-differences-it-organises","slug":"abolishing-the-category-would-not-remove-the-differences-it-organises","title":"Abolishing the category would not remove the differences it organises","description":null,"body":"A second argument concerns what would actually change. Opponents argue that the social category of gender is not free standing: it organises facts about bodies, reproduction, physical difference and the division of care work that would persist whatever vocabulary a society used. On this account abolishing the category would leave those facts in place with no agreed way of talking about them, and opponents argue that societies do not respond to the absence of a word by ceasing to notice the thing.\n\nThe mechanism opponents describe is informal reconstruction. Where an official category is removed and the underlying differences remain salient, people improvise replacements, and opponents argue that improvised classifications are typically worse than explicit ones: they are unwritten, locally variable, unaccountable and impossible to legislate against. A pregnancy protection, a provision for care responsibilities, a measure against harassment or a rule about pay comparison all require nami","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:28:31.218474+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-the-world-would-not-be-better-without-gender","title":"No, the world would not be better without gender"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/would-world-be-better-without-gender","title":"Would the world be better without gender?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/gender-is-something-people-claim-not-only-something-imposed-on-them","slug":"gender-is-something-people-claim-not-only-something-imposed-on-them","title":"Gender is something people claim, not only something imposed on them","description":null,"body":"The case against begins with a distinction between a constraint and a description. Opponents argue that gender in ordinary life is not only an expectation handed to people but a way people understand and present themselves, and that the two are easy to conflate because the same word covers both. The expectations are imposed; the self understanding is held. Opponents argue that a proposal to abolish the category does not distinguish between them, and so would remove something many people rely on in order to remove something many people resent.\n\nThe mechanism opponents emphasise is the role of vocabulary in recognition. To be recognised as something, there has to be a word for it, and opponents argue that the people with the most at stake in the existence of gender as a category are precisely those who have had to insist on their own: those whose gender was denied, dismissed or legally refused, and whose claim was made in exactly these terms. Abolishing the category would not grant that ","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:28:31.043274+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-the-world-would-not-be-better-without-gender","title":"No, the world would not be better without gender"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/would-world-be-better-without-gender","title":"Would the world be better without gender?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/hierarchy-needs-a-category-to-rank-and-this-is-the-one-most-used","slug":"hierarchy-needs-a-category-to-rank-and-this-is-the-one-most-used","title":"Hierarchy needs a category to rank, and this is the one most used","description":null,"body":"A second argument moves from constraint to hierarchy. Proponents observe that unequal treatment requires a classification to operate on, because people cannot be treated differently as groups unless they are first sorted into groups. Gender, they argue, is among the most widely used sorting devices in human societies: it has been the basis on which property, inheritance, suffrage, legal standing, pay, credit and authority were distributed, and proponents argue that in each case the classification came first and the justification afterwards.\n\nThe mechanism proponents emphasise is that reform leaves the sorting in place. Each inequality can be addressed on its own terms, and many have been, but proponents argue that as long as the category remains available it continues to supply the material for new distinctions as old ones are dismantled. On this account the pattern repeats because the classification is durable while any particular rule attached to it is not, so prohibiting discriminat","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:28:30.681706+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-the-world-would-be-better-without-gender","title":"Yes, the world would be better without gender"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/would-world-be-better-without-gender","title":"Would the world be better without gender?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-category-that-assigns-roles-in-advance-constrains-everyone-it-sorts","slug":"a-category-that-assigns-roles-in-advance-constrains-everyone-it-sorts","title":"A category that assigns roles in advance constrains everyone it sorts","description":null,"body":"The case that the world would be better without gender begins with what the category does rather than with what it is. Proponents argue that gender functions as a set of expectations attached to people before they have chosen anything: which work is suitable, which emotions may be shown, who is presumed competent to lead and who is presumed to care for others, how a body should look, what a voice should sound like. These expectations are enforced not mainly by law but by the ordinary machinery of approval and ridicule, which proponents argue is the more effective enforcement because it operates everywhere and continuously.\n\nThe mechanism proponents emphasise is pre assignment. A person sorted into a category at birth inherits a script written before they existed, and proponents argue that every such script is a restriction, including the ones that look flattering. Those expected to be stoic lose permission to grieve; those expected to be nurturing lose standing to be ambitious; those w","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:28:30.438282+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-the-world-would-be-better-without-gender","title":"Yes, the world would be better without gender"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/would-world-be-better-without-gender","title":"Would the world be better without gender?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-work-is-asked-for-and-often-done-by-the-people-it-serves","slug":"the-work-is-asked-for-and-often-done-by-the-people-it-serves","title":"The work is asked for, and often done by the people it serves","description":null,"body":"A second argument concerns who actually wants and performs the work. Opponents argue that the picture of a foreign agency arriving uninvited does not describe most of the sector. Governments solicit partners for programmes they cannot fund; communities approach organisations with requests; and a large share of the organisations in question are themselves domestic, founded and staffed by nationals of the countries they work in, with foreign funding as one source among several.\n\nThe mechanism opponents emphasise is agency on the receiving side. They argue that treating recipients as acted upon rather than acting is the characteristic error of the neocolonial framing, and that it is contradicted by what the sector contains: national staff running programmes, local organisations choosing which funders to approach and on what terms, campaigns directed against their own governments and against foreign donors alike, and communities refusing projects they judge useless. Opponents argue that a ","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:24:33.79332+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-ngos-are-not-a-form-of-neocolonialism","title":"No, NGOs are not a form of neocolonialism"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-ngos-form-of-neocolonialism","title":"Are NGOs a form of neocolonialism?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/colonialism-was-rule-and-these-organisations-rule-nothing","slug":"colonialism-was-rule-and-these-organisations-rule-nothing","title":"Colonialism was rule, and these organisations rule nothing","description":null,"body":"The case against the comparison begins with what colonialism was. Opponents argue that it was a system of rule: territory held by force, sovereignty transferred, law imposed, taxation levied, labour compelled and resistance suppressed by arms. Each element involved the legal and physical power to make people do things against their will. Opponents argue that a nongovernmental organisation possesses none of these powers. It cannot legislate, tax, conscript, imprison or hold territory, and it operates only where a sovereign government permits it to register and work.\n\nThe mechanism opponents stress is revocability. Host states routinely regulate the sector, require registration, restrict foreign funding, audit activities, refuse permits and expel organisations outright, and opponents argue that a relationship which the weaker party can end by administrative decision is not a relationship of rule. They add that programmes are in practice negotiated with ministries and local partners, who ","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:24:33.652914+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-ngos-are-not-a-form-of-neocolonialism","title":"No, NGOs are not a form of neocolonialism"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-ngos-form-of-neocolonialism","title":"Are NGOs a form of neocolonialism?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-parallel-service-state-weakens-the-state-it-works-beside","slug":"a-parallel-service-state-weakens-the-state-it-works-beside","title":"A parallel service state weakens the state it works beside","description":null,"body":"A second argument concerns what the sector does to government. Proponents observe that where nongovernmental organisations deliver health care, schooling, water or relief, they are performing the functions by which a state ordinarily earns its legitimacy. Proponents argue that this creates a substitution: citizens look to the organisation rather than the ministry, the ministry loses the pressure that would have forced it to improve, and the political relationship between a population and its own government is replaced by a relationship with an agency no one elected.\n\nThe mechanism proponents describe also runs through personnel and pay. The sector recruits the trained administrators, clinicians and engineers a poor state most needs, and can offer conditions a ministry cannot match, so the capacity to govern is drawn out of public institutions into bodies answering abroad. Proponents argue the result is a state progressively less able to do the things it is judged on, in a cycle where e","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:24:33.358381+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-ngos-are-a-form-of-neocolonialism","title":"Yes, NGOs are a form of neocolonialism"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-ngos-form-of-neocolonialism","title":"Are NGOs a form of neocolonialism?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/whoever-supplies-the-money-sets-the-agenda","slug":"whoever-supplies-the-money-sets-the-agenda","title":"Whoever supplies the money sets the agenda","description":null,"body":"The case that nongovernmental organisations constitute a form of neocolonialism begins with the direction in which money flows and the direction in which accountability runs. Proponents of this view argue that an organisation funded from abroad must satisfy its funders, and that funders set priorities, define what counts as success, require particular forms of reporting and renew support on the basis of results they recognise. The effect, proponents argue, is that the agenda of work done in a country is determined substantially outside it.\n\nThe mechanism proponents emphasise is selection rather than coercion. No one compels a community to accept a programme it does not want, but the programmes available are those that attracted funding, and proponents argue that this quietly removes the question of local priority from the process. A village that needs a road may receive a workshop, because workshops are fundable and roads are not; local organisations learn to describe their work in the","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:24:33.192733+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-ngos-are-a-form-of-neocolonialism","title":"Yes, NGOs are a form of neocolonialism"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-ngos-form-of-neocolonialism","title":"Are NGOs a form of neocolonialism?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/taxing-accumulated-wealth-taxes-the-capital-that-creates-employment","slug":"taxing-accumulated-wealth-taxes-the-capital-that-creates-employment","title":"Taxing accumulated wealth taxes the capital that creates employment","description":null,"body":"A second argument concerns what large fortunes consist of. Opponents argue that a billionaire's wealth is overwhelmingly not money held in reserve but ownership of productive things: shares in operating companies, stakes in new ventures, property, plant and loans. Taxing the fortune therefore does not reduce a pile of unspent cash; it requires the sale or encumbrance of those holdings, and opponents argue that the buyer and the use the assets are put to afterwards are not improvements on what was there before.\n\nThe mechanism opponents emphasise is the supply of patient capital. New firms are funded by people able to risk money they do not need and to wait years for a return, and opponents argue that this is a function very few can perform, since it requires both surplus and tolerance for loss. Reducing the stock of such capital reduces the number of ventures that get started, and because the firms that are never founded are invisible, opponents argue the cost is systematically underest","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:24:32.829205+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-billionaries-should-not-pay-more-tax","title":"No, billionaires should not pay more tax"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-billionaires-paying-more-tax","title":"Should billionaires pay more tax?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-revenue-is-announced-and-not-collected-because-the-base-can-move","slug":"the-revenue-is-announced-and-not-collected-because-the-base-can-move","title":"The revenue is announced and not collected, because the base can move","description":null,"body":"The case against rests first on what is actually collectible. Opponents argue that a tax is not a sum of money but an attempt to take one, and that the attempt succeeds only where the person and the asset can be reached. Very large fortunes are the holdings most able to move: residence can be changed, assets can be held through entities in other jurisdictions, income can be deferred or converted into forms the law treats differently, and the advice required to do all of this is affordable at that level and nowhere else.\n\nThe mechanism opponents describe is a gap between the announced rate and the realised yield. A higher headline rate applies only to what remains within reach, and opponents argue that the response to raising it is not greater payment but greater avoidance, relocation and restructuring. On this account such taxes raise less than projected while imposing real costs: enforcement effort, litigation, the departure of enterprises along with their owners, and a tax code made ","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:24:32.650879+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-billionaries-should-not-pay-more-tax","title":"No, billionaires should not pay more tax"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-billionaires-paying-more-tax","title":"Should billionaires pay more tax?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/revenue-taken-from-the-top-costs-the-rest-of-the-economy-least","slug":"revenue-taken-from-the-top-costs-the-rest-of-the-economy-least","title":"Revenue taken from the top costs the rest of the economy least","description":null,"body":"A second argument is about where a given amount of revenue can be raised with the least damage. Proponents observe that a tax reduces whatever activity it falls on, and argue that the relevant question for any tax is what the money would otherwise have done. Taxing a modest income reduces spending on necessities and may push a household below what it needs to function; taxing a very large fortune reduces holdings that were not going to be spent at all, because consumption at that level has long since been satisfied and the surplus is held as assets.\n\nProponents argue the mechanism runs through demand. Money in the hands of ordinary households circulates: it is spent, becomes someone else's income, and is spent again. Money accumulated at the top largely does not circulate in that way, and proponents argue that moving it into public spending or into the hands of lower earners therefore raises total activity rather than lowering it. On this account the claim that higher taxes at the top ","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:24:32.217169+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-billionaires-should-pay-more-tax","title":"Yes, billionaires should pay more tax"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-billionaires-paying-more-tax","title":"Should billionaires pay more tax?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/very-large-fortunes-depend-on-public-goods-the-fortune-did-not-pay-for","slug":"very-large-fortunes-depend-on-public-goods-the-fortune-did-not-pay-for","title":"Very large fortunes depend on public goods the fortune did not pay for","description":null,"body":"The case for higher taxes at the top begins with how large fortunes are actually made. Proponents argue that no business of any scale operates without courts that enforce its contracts, police that protect its premises, roads and ports that carry its goods, a currency that holds its value, patent and property law that secures its claims, and a population educated and healthy enough to work for it and buy from it. These are public goods, paid for collectively, and proponents argue that the larger the enterprise the more heavily it draws on them.\n\nThe inference proponents draw is about proportion rather than punishment. If the conditions that make great wealth possible are publicly provided, then a contribution scaled to the benefit received is not a penalty but a bill, and proponents argue that the very largest fortunes are the clearest case of a benefit that outruns what was paid for it. They add that much of such a fortune typically consists of appreciation in the value of assets rath","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:24:31.964136+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-billionaires-should-pay-more-tax","title":"Yes, billionaires should pay more tax"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-billionaires-paying-more-tax","title":"Should billionaires pay more tax?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/it-is-being-deployed-faster-than-anyone-can-judge-whether-it-is-safe","slug":"it-is-being-deployed-faster-than-anyone-can-judge-whether-it-is-safe","title":"It is being deployed faster than anyone can judge whether it is safe","description":null,"body":"A second argument concerns pace. Opponents observe that the ordinary way societies establish whether something is safe is slow: trials, inspection, published evidence, adversarial review, liability for failure, and revision after harm. Each of these mechanisms assumes that the thing being assessed stays still long enough to be assessed. Opponents argue that this technology does not, because capability changes between the start of an evaluation and its publication, and because systems are released to the public as a means of development rather than after it.\n\nThe mechanism opponents emphasise is irreversibility. A medicine can be withdrawn and a vehicle recalled, but a system released at scale has already been copied, built upon and woven into hiring, credit, policing, education and the public information supply by the time any judgement about it could be reached. Opponents argue that the costs of an error therefore fall on people who neither chose the exposure nor could have known abou","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:20:53.678091+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-ai-is-not-good-for-humanity","title":"No, AI is not good for humanity"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-ai-good-for-humanity","title":"Is AI good for humanity?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/it-concentrates-power-in-the-hands-of-whoever-owns-the-systems","slug":"it-concentrates-power-in-the-hands-of-whoever-owns-the-systems","title":"It concentrates power in the hands of whoever owns the systems","description":null,"body":"The case against begins with ownership. Opponents argue that building a capable system requires computing resources, data and capital on a scale available only to a few firms and states, and that this is not an incidental feature of the present moment but a structural property of the technology. Where earlier tools could be made and improved by many hands, these cannot, so the capability accrues to whoever can afford to build it.\n\nThe mechanism opponents describe is leverage. A technology that substitutes for human cognitive labour transfers the value of that labour from the many who performed it to the few who own the substitute, and does so across every sector at once rather than one industry at a time. Opponents argue that this is a transfer of bargaining power as much as of income: a workforce whose skills can be replicated loses the leverage that made wages and conditions negotiable, and a public whose information, hiring, credit and policing decisions run through systems it canno","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:20:53.512856+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-ai-is-not-good-for-humanity","title":"No, AI is not good for humanity"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-ai-good-for-humanity","title":"Is AI good for humanity?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-dangers-are-matters-of-governance-and-governance-is-something-humanity-does","slug":"the-dangers-are-matters-of-governance-and-governance-is-something-humanity-does","title":"The dangers are matters of governance, and governance is something humanity does","description":null,"body":"A second argument concedes the risks and disputes what follows from them. Proponents observe that every powerful technology has arrived with a plausible case that it would prove catastrophic, and that the historical response has not been abandonment but the construction of institutions: rules about who may build, standards for what may be sold, liability for harm, inspection, licensing and the slow accumulation of professional norms. Proponents argue that the harms attributed to artificial intelligence are of exactly this governable type.\n\nThe distinction they draw is between a harm inherent in a technology and a harm arising from how it is deployed. Surveillance, manipulation, concentrated ownership, biased decisions and labour displacement are all consequences of choices about use, and proponents argue that each has an existing regulatory analogue: data protection, advertising rules, competition law, anti discrimination requirements and labour policy. The technology does not determin","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:20:53.221032+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-ai-is-good-for-humanity","title":"Yes, AI is good for humanity"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-ai-good-for-humanity","title":"Is AI good for humanity?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/artificial-intelligence-extends-what-human-beings-are-able-to-do","slug":"artificial-intelligence-extends-what-human-beings-are-able-to-do","title":"Artificial intelligence extends what human beings are able to do","description":null,"body":"The case that artificial intelligence is good for humanity rests first on capability. Proponents argue that the recurring pattern of beneficial technology is the extension of a human faculty beyond its natural limit: writing extended memory, the lens extended sight, the engine extended strength. Artificial intelligence extends the faculties of pattern recognition, inference and language, and proponents argue that these are the faculties on which almost every form of human progress depends, so extending them raises the ceiling on all of it at once.\n\nThe mechanism proponents emphasise is the removal of scarcity in expert attention. Diagnosis, legal explanation, tutoring, translation and technical advice have always been limited by the number of trained people available and the cost of their time, which is why most of the world has gone without them. Proponents argue that a competent system can supply such attention at a cost approaching nothing per use, and that the people who gain most ","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:20:53.08578+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-ai-is-good-for-humanity","title":"Yes, AI is good for humanity"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-ai-good-for-humanity","title":"Is AI good for humanity?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-day-that-licenses-costume-and-accent-is-not-respect","slug":"a-day-that-licenses-costume-and-accent-is-not-respect","title":"A day that licenses costume and accent is not respect","description":null,"body":"A second argument concerns what the occasion licenses rather than what it sells. Opponents argue that the day as widely kept supplies an annual permission to wear a culture as a costume: to put on the hat, adopt the accent, perform the stereotype and treat the whole of it as festivity. The objection is not that participants intend harm, which most do not, but that the effect does not depend on intention. A performance of a people, repeated publicly once a year, teaches the watching audience that the people are a type.\n\nOpponents argue that the mechanism is cumulative. Each individual instance looks harmless and is defended as fun, while the aggregate produces a settled public image of a community as a set of props. Members of that community then meet the image rather than being met themselves, and have the choice of either laughing along or being told they cannot take a joke. On this account the occasion does not merely fail to produce respect; it actively manufactures the caricature t","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:20:52.793997+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-cinco-de-mayo-should-not-be-celebrated-in-the-usa","title":"No, Cinco de Mayo should not be celebrated in the USA"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-cinco-de-mayo-be-celebrated-in-usa","title":"Should Cinco de Mayo be celebrated in the USA?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/what-is-celebrated-in-america-is-a-sales-promotion-not-a-heritage","slug":"what-is-celebrated-in-america-is-a-sales-promotion-not-a-heritage","title":"What is celebrated in America is a sales promotion, not a heritage","description":null,"body":"The case against begins with a distinction between an occasion and its American version. Opponents argue that the day as kept in the United States was built largely by drink marketing, which found in it a licence to sell and supplied the imagery, the slogans and the reason to go out. On this account the thing being celebrated is not Mexican heritage at all but a commercial event that borrowed a Mexican name, and the question of whether to celebrate it is therefore not a question about respecting a culture.\n\nThe mechanism opponents describe is substitution. Once a promotion establishes what a day looks like, that becomes the day for most of the public, and the heritage content it displaced has no route back. Opponents argue this is visible in what the occasion now consists of for the majority who mark it, which is an evening of discounted drinks rather than any engagement with the history or the community the name belongs to. A heritage observance that has been emptied in this way, they","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:20:52.585473+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-cinco-de-mayo-should-not-be-celebrated-in-the-usa","title":"No, Cinco de Mayo should not be celebrated in the USA"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-cinco-de-mayo-be-celebrated-in-usa","title":"Should Cinco de Mayo be celebrated in the USA?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/shared-celebration-is-how-a-culture-stops-being-foreign-to-the-people-around-it","slug":"shared-celebration-is-how-a-culture-stops-being-foreign-to-the-people-around-it","title":"Shared celebration is how a culture stops being foreign to the people around it","description":null,"body":"A second argument concerns what celebration does between communities rather than within one. Proponents observe that unfamiliarity is what makes a population easy to treat as alien, and that the ordinary cure for unfamiliarity is contact: eating the food, hearing the music, learning a few words, standing in the same street as people whose families came from somewhere else. A public occasion creates that contact at scale and without anyone having to seek it out.\n\nProponents argue that the mechanism is participation rather than information. A lecture on Mexican history reaches those already interested; a street festival reaches the neighbour who came for the food and leaves having spent an afternoon among people he would otherwise never meet. Over time this is how a culture moves from foreign to familiar in a receiving society, and proponents note that the observances of earlier immigrant communities followed exactly this path, from suspicion through curiosity to a day the whole country ","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:20:52.167805+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-cinco-de-mayo-should-be-celebrated-in-the-usa","title":"Yes, Cinco de Mayo should be celebrated in the USA"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-cinco-de-mayo-be-celebrated-in-usa","title":"Should Cinco de Mayo be celebrated in the USA?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-day-that-marks-a-communitys-heritage-belongs-in-the-country-where-that-communi","slug":"a-day-that-marks-a-communitys-heritage-belongs-in-the-country-where-that-communi","title":"A day that marks a community's heritage belongs in the country where that community lives","description":null,"body":"The case for celebrating Cinco de Mayo in the United States begins with who lives there. Mexican Americans are among the country's largest and longest settled communities, in many regions predating the border that now separates the two countries. Proponents argue that public holidays are one of the few mechanisms by which a society formally acknowledges the communities inside it, and that a calendar which marks some heritages and not others is making a statement about who counts as fully American.\n\nThe mechanism proponents point to is recognition rather than instruction. A day on the public calendar changes what institutions do: schools mention it, employers notice it, local government marks it, and the children of the community see their inheritance treated as part of the national story rather than as a private matter to be kept at home. Proponents argue that this is the ordinary function of heritage observance in a country whose population came from many places, and that the alternat","created_at":"2026-10-15T01:20:51.939459+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-cinco-de-mayo-should-be-celebrated-in-the-usa","title":"Yes, Cinco de Mayo should be celebrated in the USA"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-cinco-de-mayo-be-celebrated-in-usa","title":"Should Cinco de Mayo be celebrated in the USA?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/charisma-is-a-label-applied-to-winners-after-the-fact","slug":"charisma-is-a-label-applied-to-winners-after-the-fact","title":"Charisma is a label applied to winners after the fact","description":null,"body":"A second argument that charisma does not influence campaigns is about the concept rather than the evidence. Proponents of this position argue that charisma has no agreed content: it is not defined in advance, cannot be measured independently of the response it is supposed to explain, and is attributed to candidates of entirely opposed manners, the warm and the austere, the fluent and the halting alike. A term applicable to any style of presentation, they argue, identifies no property of the candidate; it names the fact that some audience responded, which is the thing requiring explanation rather than the explanation itself.\n\nThe second observation is that the response varies with the audience and the moment. The same performance is described as commanding by those already inclined to the candidate's side and as hectoring by those who are not, and a manner that appeals in one period can be unelectable in the next. Proponents argue that this is what one would expect if the perceived qual","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:42:27.593229+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-charisma-does-not-influence-political-campaigns","title":"No, charisma does not influence political campaigns"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-charisma","title":"Does charisma influence political campaigns?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/party-loyalty-economic-conditions-and-the-electorates-make-up-account-for-the-re","slug":"party-loyalty-economic-conditions-and-the-electorates-make-up-account-for-the-re","title":"Party loyalty, economic conditions and the electorate's make-up account for the result","description":null,"body":"Those who hold that charisma does not influence political campaigns argue that the outcome is largely determined before anyone takes the stage. On this account most voters identify with one side and vote accordingly contest after contest, which fixes the bulk of the result; among the remainder the dominant influences are conditions such as whether earnings are rising, whether the incumbents have been in office long enough to be blamed for things, and whether the country is at war. Proponents argue that outcomes can be anticipated reasonably well from these conditions alone, with nothing in the account about the candidates' personal qualities, and that a factor adding little once conditions are known is not doing much work.\n\nThe second argument concerns the composition of the electorate. Proponents point out that who turns out, and in what proportions, is shaped by registration rules, the location of polling places, how competitive the contest is thought to be and the strength of local ","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:42:27.396535+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-charisma-does-not-influence-political-campaigns","title":"No, charisma does not influence political campaigns"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-charisma","title":"Does charisma influence political campaigns?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-same-party-and-the-same-programme-do-better-or-worse-depending-on-who-carrie","slug":"the-same-party-and-the-same-programme-do-better-or-worse-depending-on-who-carrie","title":"The same party and the same programme do better or worse depending on who carries them","description":null,"body":"A second argument for the influence of charisma rests on variation that policy cannot explain. Proponents point out that parties run on broadly the same programme from one contest to the next while changing their leader, and that their fortunes move with the change; that a party can be led to an unexpected victory and then, with the platform intact, to defeat under a successor; and that candidates of the same party in comparable places, standing on identical commitments, perform differently in ways their local organisations notice and discuss. If the programme is held constant and the result moves, proponents argue, the moving part is the person presenting it.\n\nThe second strand concerns what a compelling candidate makes possible. Proponents argue that charisma does much of its work indirectly: it recruits volunteers, draws donations from people who would not otherwise give, produces the crowds and clips that fill coverage without being paid for, and lifts turnout among supporters who ","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:42:27.088926+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-charisma-influences-political-campaigns","title":"Yes, charisma influences political campaigns"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-charisma","title":"Does charisma influence political campaigns?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/voters-deciding-with-little-information-rely-on-impressions-of-the-candidate","slug":"voters-deciding-with-little-information-rely-on-impressions-of-the-candidate","title":"Voters deciding with little information rely on impressions of the candidate","description":null,"body":"Those who hold that charisma influences political campaigns start from how much voters actually know. Following policy in detail is costly and most people have other demands on their time, so proponents argue that voters reasonably economise: rather than comparing programmes, they form a judgement about whether a candidate seems competent, honest and like someone who understands people in their situation. Those judgements are formed from manner, voice, bearing, fluency under pressure and the ability to hold attention, which is what charisma consists of. On this account personal appeal is not a distraction from the decision; for many voters it is the main information they are working with.\n\nThe second argument is that campaigns behave as though this were true, and campaigns have strong incentives to be right. Proponents point out that enormous effort goes into the candidate's appearances rather than their documents: debate preparation, interview coaching, the choice of settings and crow","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:42:26.933053+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-charisma-influences-political-campaigns","title":"Yes, charisma influences political campaigns"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-charisma","title":"Does charisma influence political campaigns?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/what-a-child-eats-belongs-to-the-family-and-the-line-cannot-be-drawn-anyway","slug":"what-a-child-eats-belongs-to-the-family-and-the-line-cannot-be-drawn-anyway","title":"What a child eats belongs to the family, and the line cannot be drawn anyway","description":null,"body":"A second argument against a ban concerns authority and definition. Proponents of this position hold that decisions about a child's ordinary daily life, including what they eat, belong to the people raising them, and that the state's warrant to intervene arises with neglect or harm rather than with a dietary preference it disapproves of. Birthday cake, chips after a match, sweets from a grandparent and a takeaway at the end of a hard week are part of family and cultural life, and proponents argue that a prohibition treating these as matters for enforcement misunderstands what it would be regulating.\n\nThe practical difficulty is definition. There is no stable category of junk food: the term covers products differing widely in sugar, salt, fat and processing, and any workable line will cut across foods nobody considers harmful while leaving others untouched. Proponents argue that drawing it requires either a threshold rule that manufacturers immediately reformulate around, or a list that ","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:42:26.603749+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-junk-food-should-not-be-banned-for-children","title":"No, junk food should not be banned for children"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-junk-food-be-banned-for-children","title":"Should junk food be banned for children?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/prohibition-teaches-nothing-and-children-have-to-learn-to-moderate-intake","slug":"prohibition-teaches-nothing-and-children-have-to-learn-to-moderate-intake","title":"Prohibition teaches nothing, and children have to learn to moderate intake","description":null,"body":"Those who oppose banning junk food for children argue that the aim is a child who can regulate their own eating, and that prohibition is a poor method of producing one. On this account the skill in question is judgement about quantity and frequency, and judgement is acquired by practice with guidance: being given an occasional treat, learning what portion is reasonable, noticing how one feels after too much, and making the choice oneself under supervision. A child who has simply never been allowed such food has had no practice at any of this, and proponents argue that they tend to meet it without any habits of moderation at exactly the point when nobody is supervising them.\n\nThe second strand concerns what prohibition does to desire. Proponents argue that restriction reliably increases the appeal of what is restricted, particularly for children, and that food loaded with significance as forbidden and transgressive is more attractive than food which is simply ordinary. Secrecy follows, ","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:42:26.453186+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-junk-food-should-not-be-banned-for-children","title":"No, junk food should not be banned for children"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-junk-food-be-banned-for-children","title":"Should junk food be banned for children?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-restriction-takes-the-burden-off-families-least-able-to-carry-it","slug":"a-restriction-takes-the-burden-off-families-least-able-to-carry-it","title":"A restriction takes the burden off families least able to carry it","description":null,"body":"A second argument for a ban concerns who bears the burden of the alternative. Proponents point out that the usual alternative, educating children and expecting parents to supervise, places a continuous daily obligation on every household, and that households do not have equal capacity to meet it. A parent working long or irregular hours, without a kitchen or the money for fresh ingredients, or without the time to argue at every shop counter, is not in the same position as one who has all three. On this account leaving the matter to parental vigilance produces an outcome that tracks income and spare time rather than anyone's convictions about diet, which is why the harms concentrate among the least advantaged.\n\nA restriction, by contrast, works once rather than daily. Proponents argue that removing such products from schools, nurseries, hospitals and children's facilities, and ending their marketing to children, changes the default for every child at the same time, without requiring any","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:42:26.114181+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-junk-food-should-be-banned-for-children","title":"Yes, junk food should be banned for children"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-junk-food-be-banned-for-children","title":"Should junk food be banned for children?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/children-cannot-weigh-long-term-dietary-risk-so-the-choice-is-not-theirs-to-make","slug":"children-cannot-weigh-long-term-dietary-risk-so-the-choice-is-not-theirs-to-make","title":"Children cannot weigh long-term dietary risk, so the choice is not theirs to make","description":null,"body":"The case for banning junk food for children rests on who is making the choice and on what basis. Proponents argue that a dietary choice trades a certain pleasure now against a diffuse risk decades away, and that the capacity to weigh that trade develops slowly; a young child does not discount the future at all. Societies already act on this reasoning elsewhere, withholding alcohol, tobacco, gambling, driving and binding contracts from children, not because their preferences do not matter but because consent to a long-term risk requires some grasp of the risk. Proponents argue that food engineered to be maximally palatable belongs in the same category.\n\nThe second strand concerns what children are actually choosing against. On this account the products are formulated by well-resourced manufacturers to maximise consumption, advertised directly to children through the media they use, placed at a child's eye level in shops, and sold with toys and characters attached. A preference formed un","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:42:25.930702+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-junk-food-should-be-banned-for-children","title":"Yes, junk food should be banned for children"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-junk-food-be-banned-for-children","title":"Should junk food be banned for children?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/people-and-societies-do-in-fact-learn-and-the-record-shows-it","slug":"people-and-societies-do-in-fact-learn-and-the-record-shows-it","title":"People and societies do in fact learn, and the record shows it","description":null,"body":"A second argument against repetition is that learning demonstrably occurs. Proponents point to practices once widespread that are now rare or abolished: public execution as entertainment, the ownership of persons, duelling, the deliberate shunning of plague victims, the exclusion of most of the population from any say in government. In each case the change followed argument, campaigning and the accumulation of experience about consequences, and in each case it has largely held. Proponents argue that a world in which history simply repeated would show these things returning on schedule, and that it does not.\n\nThe second strand concerns deliberate institution-building. After major failures, societies have constructed machinery specifically to prevent recurrence: deposit guarantees and banking supervision after financial collapse, disease surveillance and reporting obligations after epidemics, written constitutions and courts able to strike down legislation after arbitrary rule, inquiries","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:56.997156+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-history-does-not-repeat-itself","title":"No, history does not repeat itself"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/do-you-think-history-repeats-itself","title":"Does History repeat itself ?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-conditions-never-recur-because-knowledge-technology-and-institutions-accumul","slug":"the-conditions-never-recur-because-knowledge-technology-and-institutions-accumul","title":"The conditions never recur, because knowledge, technology and institutions accumulate","description":null,"body":"Those who hold that history does not repeat itself argue that the premise of recurrence fails where it matters. For an outcome to repeat, the conditions producing it must recur, and on this account they do not: the stock of knowledge is larger each time, the available technology is different, the institutions are different, and the participants know about the earlier episode. A famine in a society with grain reserves, forecasting and road transport is not a recurrence of a famine without them; an epidemic met with sanitation and vaccines is a different event from one met without; a financial panic in a system with a lender of last resort behaves differently from one without. Proponents argue that the superficial resemblance of outcomes conceals inputs that are never the same twice.\n\nThe second argument is that the apparent pattern is supplied by the observer. Any period contains wars, financial crises, epidemics and leaders who overreach, so a pattern defined loosely enough to cover th","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:56.864337+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-history-does-not-repeat-itself","title":"No, history does not repeat itself"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/do-you-think-history-repeats-itself","title":"Does History repeat itself ?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/generational-turnover-means-hard-lessons-have-to-be-learned-again-from-scratch","slug":"generational-turnover-means-hard-lessons-have-to-be-learned-again-from-scratch","title":"Generational turnover means hard lessons have to be learned again from scratch","description":null,"body":"A second argument that history repeats itself turns on who is in the room. Proponents point out that the people who paid for a disaster are not the people making decisions a few decades later. Experience of a currency collapse, an occupation, an epidemic or a war is held in the bodies of those who lived through it and governs their behaviour for the rest of their lives; it does not transfer to their grandchildren, who hold the same events as information rather than as caution. Proponents argue that the institutions built in the aftermath of a catastrophe are therefore dismantled, on average, by the first generation with no memory of what they were for.\n\nThe mechanism is reinforced by the rewards available. Safeguards are costly and their benefit is invisible while they are working, so there is always a case for relaxing them, and whoever relaxes them is usually rewarded before the consequences arrive. Proponents argue that this produces a predictable cycle: crisis, protective rules, a ","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:56.581757+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-history-repeats-itself","title":"Yes, history repeats itself"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/do-you-think-history-repeats-itself","title":"Does History repeat itself ?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-same-configurations-of-condition-keep-producing-the-same-outcomes","slug":"the-same-configurations-of-condition-keep-producing-the-same-outcomes","title":"The same configurations of condition keep producing the same outcomes","description":null,"body":"The case that history repeats itself rests on the recurrence of conditions rather than of events. Proponents accept that no two situations are identical in detail and argue that this misses the claim. What recurs, on their account, is a configuration: a state that borrows beyond what it can service, an elite that exempts itself from the costs it imposes, a population whose expectations outrun what it receives, a rival power rising faster than the arrangements built to contain it. Where those configurations appear, the outcomes that follow are drearily familiar, and proponents argue that this is because the pressures involved are structural rather than accidental.\n\nThe second element is human constancy. People discount distant costs against immediate ones, prefer the explanation that flatters them, follow those around them, and do not willingly surrender advantages. Institutions are built to constrain these tendencies and are staffed by people subject to them, so over long enough period","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:56.44188+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-history-repeats-itself","title":"Yes, history repeats itself"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/do-you-think-history-repeats-itself","title":"Does History repeat itself ?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/there-is-no-mechanism-by-which-an-unmade-future-could-be-read","slug":"there-is-no-mechanism-by-which-an-unmade-future-could-be-read","title":"There is no mechanism by which an unmade future could be read","description":null,"body":"A second argument that fortune-telling does not work is about principle rather than evidence. The claim being made, on this account, is that information about events which have not occurred is available now to a person sitting in a room. Proponents of this position argue that nothing known about the world supplies a route by which that could happen: future events leave no traces in the present, cards and tea leaves have no connection to anyone's circumstances, and the positions of the planets bear no relation to a birth beyond a coincidence of timing. A claim with no candidate mechanism is not thereby false, but proponents argue that it should be held to a correspondingly high evidential standard, and that the standard has not been met.\n\nThe second observation concerns the structure of the predictions themselves. Readings are characteristically unfalsifiable: hedged, undated, and phrased so that several outcomes count as fulfilment. Where a prediction is specific enough to be wrong, pr","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:56.133046+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-fortune-telling-does-not-work","title":"No, fortune telling does not work"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-fortune-telling-work","title":"Does fortune telling work?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-accuracy-clients-report-is-produced-by-well-understood-features-of-the-readi","slug":"the-accuracy-clients-report-is-produced-by-well-understood-features-of-the-readi","title":"The accuracy clients report is produced by well-understood features of the reading itself","description":null,"body":"Those who hold that fortune-telling does not work argue that the reported accuracy has an explanation which does not require the future to be legible. A reading is built largely from statements that fit almost anyone: that the client is more sensitive than others realise, that there is an unresolved matter with an older relative, that a change is coming which they have been putting off. Listeners supply the particulars themselves, matching the statement to their own circumstances, and remember the fit as the reader's achievement. Misses disappear in the same movement, because a statement that fails to land is simply passed over and is not what anyone recalls afterwards.\n\nThe second mechanism is information the reader actually has. Appearance, clothing, accent, age, a wedding ring, the state of the hands, whatever the client volunteers while answering, and which guesses produce a flicker of recognition all narrow the field quickly, and skilled readers phrase guesses as questions and kee","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:55.987356+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-fortune-telling-does-not-work","title":"No, fortune telling does not work"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-fortune-telling-work","title":"Does fortune telling work?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-reading-does-the-work-people-actually-seek-it-out-for-whatever-its-source","slug":"a-reading-does-the-work-people-actually-seek-it-out-for-whatever-its-source","title":"A reading does the work people actually seek it out for, whatever its source","description":null,"body":"A second case for fortune-telling sets the question of foresight aside and defends the practice by what it does for those who use it. Proponents argue that a client arriving with a decision already half-made, a grief not spoken about, or a fear they cannot name, leaves a reading with that material arranged: the possibilities laid out, the thing they had been avoiding said aloud by someone else, and a reason to act. The reading supplies what proponents describe as structured attention from a stranger, at low cost, with no diagnosis attached and no record kept, which on this account is a service otherwise hard to obtain.\n\nProponents point to how the practice is actually used in support of this. Clients commonly return, which suggests they are getting something they value; they choose readers by reputation and leave those they find unhelpful; and much of what they ask about concerns not the distant future but what to do next about a relationship, a job or a family. A practice sustained by","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:55.694609+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-fortune-telling-works","title":"Yes, fortune telling works"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-fortune-telling-work","title":"Does fortune telling work?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/clients-and-practitioners-report-readings-more-accurate-than-guessing-would-prod","slug":"clients-and-practitioners-report-readings-more-accurate-than-guessing-would-prod","title":"Clients and practitioners report readings more accurate than guessing would produce","description":null,"body":"The case made for fortune-telling rests first on reported experience. Practitioners and their clients describe readings in which specific and apparently unguessable things were named: a dead relative's occupation, an illness not yet diagnosed, a decision the client had told nobody about. Proponents hold that accounts of this kind are numerous, that they come from people with nothing to gain by reporting them, and that many of those reporting them were sceptical beforehand. On this account a phenomenon attested that widely, across many cultures and over a very long period, deserves investigation rather than dismissal, and the persistence of the practice is itself the thing to be explained.\n\nThe second element is a proposed mechanism, and proponents offer more than one. Some hold that information about future events is in principle available and that certain people are unusually sensitive to it, in the way that some people have unusual pitch discrimination or spatial memory. Others make ","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:55.532592+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-fortune-telling-works","title":"Yes, fortune telling works"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/does-fortune-telling-work","title":"Does fortune telling work?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/cinema-is-built-for-consumption-rather-than-for-contemplation","slug":"cinema-is-built-for-consumption-rather-than-for-contemplation","title":"Cinema is built for consumption rather than for contemplation","description":null,"body":"A second argument that cinema is not art concerns the kind of attention it is built to receive. Proponents of this position argue that a film arrives complete, moves at a speed the viewer does not set, and is designed to be absorbed in a single sitting without pause or re-reading. A painting can be stood in front of for an hour; a book can be put down, gone back over, read against itself. A film, on this view, does the interpretive work for the audience by choosing what is seen and when, which leaves the viewer following rather than attending, and discourages the slow, active, repeatable engagement that proponents take to be constitutive of an encounter with art.\n\nThe second strand concerns what the medium is for. Proponents argue that cinema was commercial from its origins, developed as a fairground and music-hall attraction, and has always been priced, timed and located for mass consumption. What it sells is diversion: a few hours out of one's own life, with the discomforts resolved ","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:55.078353+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-cinema-is-not-art","title":"No, cinema is not art"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cinema-art","title":"Is cinema art?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/what-a-film-finally-looks-like-is-decided-by-financing-scheduling-and-audience-t","slug":"what-a-film-finally-looks-like-is-decided-by-financing-scheduling-and-audience-t","title":"What a film finally looks like is decided by financing, scheduling and audience testing","description":null,"body":"Those who deny that cinema is art direct attention away from the techniques and towards the conditions under which films are made. A feature film is an industrial product: financed on a projection of return, cast partly for the audience a performer brings, shot to a schedule set by the cost of each day, cut to a length that permits a given number of showings, tested on preview audiences and recut where they respond badly, and released on a date chosen against competitors. Proponents argue that where these are the decisive constraints, the finished object is not the realisation of anyone's vision but the output of a process designed to maximise receipts.\n\nThe second point concerns authorship. Art, on this view, involves an intention carried through into a work. A film is made by many hundreds of people under contract, with authority over final changes resting with those who put up the money, and with the person usually credited as its author frequently overruled. Proponents argue that a","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:54.930986+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-cinema-is-not-art","title":"No, cinema is not art"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cinema-art","title":"Is cinema art?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/films-do-the-things-we-have-no-other-word-for-but-art","slug":"films-do-the-things-we-have-no-other-word-for-but-art","title":"Films do the things we have no other word for but art","description":null,"body":"A second argument proceeds from what films do to the people who watch them. Proponents point out that a particular vocabulary is reserved for a narrow class of experiences: being changed by something, seeing a familiar thing newly, grasping something about other people that could not have been put as a proposition, returning to a work years later and finding it different because we are. That vocabulary is not ordinarily used of amusements. It is used of novels, paintings, buildings and music, and it is used, by audiences with no theoretical interest in the question, of films.\n\nProponents argue that this is not loose talk, because the mechanism is open to inspection. A film can hold a viewer in another person's position for two hours, giving them that person's information, sightlines and rhythm, and can then withdraw the position to show what it concealed. It can set an image against a sound so that neither means what it would mean alone. It can make a viewer complicit in something and ","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:54.629598+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-cinema-is-art","title":"Yes, cinema is art"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cinema-art","title":"Is cinema art?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/film-makes-the-same-kind-of-choices-painting-and-music-make-and-for-the-same-rea","slug":"film-makes-the-same-kind-of-choices-painting-and-music-make-and-for-the-same-rea","title":"Film makes the same kind of choices painting and music make, and for the same reasons","description":null,"body":"The case that cinema is art begins with what is actually decided when a film is made. Where the camera stands, what is in focus and what is left soft, how long a shot runs before it cuts, what the frame excludes, which take of a performance is kept, what the sound does underneath a silence: none of this is settled by the subject being filmed, and each choice changes what a viewer feels and understands. Proponents argue that this is exactly what composition in painting and phrasing in music consist of, the selection of means in order to produce an effect, and that a practice built entirely out of such choices is an art form on any ordinary definition.\n\nThe second argument is that film has the features by which art is usually recognised. It has a history of styles and movements that argue with one another; it has formal problems that practitioners work on across decades, such as how to show time passing or a thought occurring; it supports criticism that can be right or wrong about a work","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:37:54.422694+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-cinema-is-art","title":"Yes, cinema is art"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cinema-art","title":"Is cinema art?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/much-of-the-apparent-complexity-is-supplied-by-the-observer-rather-than-the-sign","slug":"much-of-the-apparent-complexity-is-supplied-by-the-observer-rather-than-the-sign","title":"Much of the apparent complexity is supplied by the observer rather than the signal","description":null,"body":"A second argument that animal communication is simple concerns the reliability of the readings rather than the animals. Proponents argue that people are strongly disposed to attribute intention and meaning to behaviour, including to machines and to weather, and that this disposition operates most powerfully on the species we live alongside. Where an animal's response happens to suit the moment, observers tend to record communication; where it does not, they tend to record noise. On this account the richness attributed to signalling systems often reflects an observer's ability to construct a meaning rather than any content the signal carried.\n\nThe second strand concerns mechanisms that mimic understanding. Animals are acutely sensitive to posture, gaze, tension, timing and the small movements that precede action, and proponents argue that much of what is taken for conversation is this reading of cues, by the animals and by the people watching them. An animal responding appropriately may","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:31:38.319622+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/animal-communication-is-not-very-complex","title":"Animal communication is not very complex"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-complex-is-animal-communication","title":"How complex is animal communication?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/richer-looking-signals-still-convey-states-and-trigger-responses-rather-than-ref","slug":"richer-looking-signals-still-convey-states-and-trigger-responses-rather-than-ref","title":"Richer-looking signals still convey states and trigger responses rather than referring","description":null,"body":"Those who hold that animal communication is not very complex accept most of the observations and dispute what follows from them. Their central distinction is between a signal that carries information and a system that can say things. A call which reliably differs with the kind of predator carries information, in the sense that a listener who responds to it does better; but on this account the mechanism is an inherited link between a stimulus, a call and an escape behaviour, with nothing in between that resembles a thought about a predator. Proponents argue that treating such links as reference describes what an observer can infer rather than what the animal is doing.\n\nThe evidence they rest on is what the systems cannot do. Animal signalling, on this view, is bounded: each species has a small inventory, the inventory does not grow within a lifetime, individuals do not coin new signals for new situations, and nothing in the system allows a signaller to describe something absent, to ask,","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:31:38.144591+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/animal-communication-is-not-very-complex","title":"Animal communication is not very complex"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-complex-is-animal-communication","title":"How complex is animal communication?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/signalling-turns-out-to-be-as-complex-as-the-problems-a-species-has-to-solve","slug":"signalling-turns-out-to-be-as-complex-as-the-problems-a-species-has-to-solve","title":"Signalling turns out to be as complex as the problems a species has to solve","description":null,"body":"A second case for complexity reasons from function. Signalling exists to solve problems, and proponents argue that many species face problems that cannot be solved with a small fixed set of signals. Animals living in large groups with stable relationships must keep track of who is related to whom, who outranks whom and who has reciprocated, and they coordinate movement, defence, foraging and the care of young across those relationships. Some recognise individuals by voice and address them differently; some recruit particular others to particular tasks; some withhold or alter signals depending on who is listening. A system able to do that, on this account, is doing considerably more than announcing an internal state.\n\nThe second strand is methodological. Proponents argue that estimates of complexity have risen steadily as the means of measuring improved. Signals below and above human hearing, in chemical traces, in vibration through soil and water, and in movement too fast for the eye, ","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:31:37.855169+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/animal-communication-is-very-complex","title":"Animal communication is very complex"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-complex-is-animal-communication","title":"How complex is animal communication?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/animal-signals-can-be-about-things-in-the-world-not-just-broadcasts-of-a-state","slug":"animal-signals-can-be-about-things-in-the-world-not-just-broadcasts-of-a-state","title":"Animal signals can be about things in the world, not just broadcasts of a state","description":null,"body":"Those who hold that animal communication is very complex begin by distinguishing two things a signal can do. It can express the state of the sender, as a cry of pain does, or it can be about something in the world, as a word is. Proponents argue that the second is well attested in other species: there are animals whose alarm calls differ according to the kind of predator and whose listeners respond differently to each, taking to the trees for one and scanning the ground for another, without having seen the predator themselves. On this account the listener is getting information about the world rather than merely catching the caller's agitation, and that is reference rather than expression.\n\nSecond, proponents point to structure above the level of the single signal. There are species whose calls are combined into sequences, where the combination carries a meaning the parts do not have separately and where the order matters. There are others whose signals are learned rather than inherite","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:31:37.709519+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/animal-communication-is-very-complex","title":"Animal communication is very complex"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-complex-is-animal-communication","title":"How complex is animal communication?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/rights-attaching-to-descent-rather-than-to-persons-sit-badly-with-equality-befor","slug":"rights-attaching-to-descent-rather-than-to-persons-sit-badly-with-equality-befor","title":"Rights attaching to descent rather than to persons sit badly with equality before the law","description":null,"body":"A second argument against collective land rights concerns the structure of a legal system rather than economics. Proponents of this position hold that a state should deal with its residents as individuals holding the same rights, and that a title attaching to descent creates two classes of citizen: those whose claims to land follow from ancestry and those whose follow from purchase, occupation or grant. On this account the difficulty is not that one group is favoured but that the principle generalises badly, since any group able to establish prior occupancy can advance the same claim, and a system of rights indexed to lineage has no obvious stopping point.\n\nThe practical objections follow from the same point. Proponents argue that collective claims require the state to adjudicate who belongs to the people in question, which puts public authorities in the business of ruling on ancestry and membership, and that overlapping claims between neighbouring peoples are left without a common sta","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:31:37.359169+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/indigenous-people-should-not-have-rights-to-their-collective-land","title":"Indigenous people should not have rights to their collective land"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-indigenous-peoples","title":"What are the positions on indigenous people's collective rights to their native lands?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/title-vested-in-a-group-leaves-its-individual-members-unable-to-use-what-they-li","slug":"title-vested-in-a-group-leaves-its-individual-members-unable-to-use-what-they-li","title":"Title vested in a group leaves its individual members unable to use what they live on","description":null,"body":"Those who oppose collective rights to land argue from the position of the individual inside the group. Where title is held by a people rather than by persons, a resident cannot mortgage the house they built, borrow against the land they farm, pass a defined holding to a child, or leave the community and take the value of their share with them. Proponents of this position argue that these are not incidental administrative problems but the main channels through which ordinary families accumulate wealth everywhere else, and that closing them off imposes a cost that falls on the poorest members rather than on the leadership.\n\nThe second argument concerns who decides. Collective title has to be administered by some body, and that body acquires the power to allocate housing, to grant or refuse the use of land, and to negotiate with outsiders. Proponents argue that this concentrates considerable power in local institutions while leaving the individual member with weak recourse: a dispute over","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:31:37.179084+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/indigenous-people-should-not-have-rights-to-their-collective-land","title":"Indigenous people should not have rights to their collective land"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-indigenous-peoples","title":"What are the positions on indigenous people's collective rights to their native lands?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/breaking-collective-holdings-into-individual-parcels-has-functioned-as-a-route-t","slug":"breaking-collective-holdings-into-individual-parcels-has-functioned-as-a-route-t","title":"Breaking collective holdings into individual parcels has functioned as a route to dispossession","description":null,"body":"A second argument for collective rights looks at what has happened when land held by a people is converted into parcels held by persons. Proponents argue that the conversion follows a predictable sequence. Parcels are allotted, often smaller and poorer than the range they replace; land declared surplus is opened to outside buyers; the allottees, holding ground they cannot work at that scale and facing taxes, debts and cash needs, sell to neighbours who can; and within a generation or two the territory is largely in other hands, with the former holders landless and the paperwork entirely in order. On this account individualisation has operated less as a reform than as a mechanism of transfer, which is why proposals to repeat it are treated with suspicion.\n\nThe second point concerns bargaining position. A community negotiating with a government or a mining company over ground it holds as a people can refuse, can insist on conditions, and can hold out across changes of leadership, because","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:31:36.849171+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/indigenous-people-should-have-collective-rights-to-their-native-lands","title":"Indigenous people should have collective rights to their native lands"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-indigenous-peoples","title":"What are the positions on indigenous people's collective rights to their native lands?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/collective-title-matches-the-way-the-land-is-actually-held-and-used","slug":"collective-title-matches-the-way-the-land-is-actually-held-and-used","title":"Collective title matches the way the land is actually held and used","description":null,"body":"Those who hold that Indigenous peoples should have collective rights to their native lands begin from the mismatch between individual title and the way such lands are used. Grazing range, hunting and fishing grounds, seasonal routes, water sources and sites of ceremony are used by a whole community in rotation and in common, and they do not divide cleanly into separate parcels. Proponents argue that imposing individual ownership on that pattern does not translate an existing right into a new form but dissolves it, because the parcel each person receives is useless for the practices that depended on access to the whole.\n\nThe second strand concerns continuity. On this account the thing being protected is not only a resource but a people: a language, a body of law and knowledge, and a set of obligations that are learned and practised on particular ground. If title is held individually and can be sold piece by piece, the land can pass out of the community within a generation under ordinary","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:31:36.633415+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/indigenous-people-should-have-collective-rights-to-their-native-lands","title":"Indigenous people should have collective rights to their native lands"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-positions-on-indigenous-peoples","title":"What are the positions on indigenous people's collective rights to their native lands?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/rejecting-development-leaves-the-poorest-with-nothing-better-in-its-place","slug":"rejecting-development-leaves-the-poorest-with-nothing-better-in-its-place","title":"Rejecting development leaves the poorest with nothing better in its place","description":null,"body":"A second argument against the false-promise view concerns what follows from accepting it. If the promise is false, proponents of this position ask, what is offered instead? Mass poverty is not a stable baseline that a country can comfortably choose to remain at; it means children dying of treatable illness, work that wears bodies out early, and no reserve against drought, illness or a bad harvest. Every arrangement that has actually lifted large populations out of that condition has involved more productive work, more energy, more industry and more exchange with other countries. Proponents argue that a position calling that process illusory owes an account of some other route, and that no demonstrated alternative has been put forward.\n\nThey also press on whose interests the argument serves. On this view, telling poorer countries that convergence is unavailable sits comfortably with the interests of countries that would rather not face new industrial competitors, and with a strand of ri","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:26:16.363292+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-economic-development-is-not-a-false-promise-for-developing-countries","title":"No, economic development is not a false promise for developing countries"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-economic-development-false-promise-for","title":"Is economic development a false promise for developing countries?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/poorer-countries-have-in-fact-raised-incomes-health-and-schooling-by-developing","slug":"poorer-countries-have-in-fact-raised-incomes-health-and-schooling-by-developing","title":"Poorer countries have in fact raised incomes, health and schooling by developing","description":null,"body":"Those who reject the false-promise view argue that the question is empirical and that the record answers it. Within living memory, countries that were among the poorest in the world have industrialised, moved from exporting raw materials to exporting manufactures and then to higher-value production, and lifted very large populations out of subsistence. On this account the measures that matter most to people living in poverty, such as how many children survive infancy, how long adults live, whether girls are schooled and whether households have electricity and clean water, have improved markedly across most of the poorer world, not only in the few countries usually named as success stories.\n\nThe second move is to explain the failures without conceding the structure. Where development has stalled, proponents argue, the causes are identifiable and local: war, predatory government, dependence on a single commodity, or policy that protected incumbents rather than building capability. Those ","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:26:16.205705+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-economic-development-is-not-a-false-promise-for-developing-countries","title":"No, economic development is not a false promise for developing countries"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-economic-development-false-promise-for","title":"Is economic development a false promise for developing countries?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/universal-growth-to-rich-country-living-standards-runs-into-ecological-limits","slug":"universal-growth-to-rich-country-living-standards-runs-into-ecological-limits","title":"Universal growth to rich-country living standards runs into ecological limits","description":null,"body":"A second case for the false-promise position sets aside trade and finance and looks at physical limits. The development on offer, proponents argue, is defined by the consumption of the countries that industrialised first: their energy use, materials throughput, diets, housing and mobility. If every country reached those levels by the same means, the demands on land, water, minerals and the atmosphere would far exceed what the planet supplies. The promise is therefore not merely hard to keep; on this reading it cannot be kept for everyone at once, which is what makes it misleading to offer to everyone.\n\nProponents add that the resulting constraints fall on the countries that have not yet developed. The atmosphere's capacity to absorb emissions has largely been used by the early industrialisers, so poorer countries are now asked to grow without the cheap fossil energy their predecessors relied on, and to do it while absorbing the harvest failures, heat and storms that earlier growth help","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:26:15.88377+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-economic-development-is-a-false-promise-for-developing-countries","title":"Yes, economic development is a false promise for developing countries"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-economic-development-false-promise-for","title":"Is economic development a false promise for developing countries?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-terms-on-which-poorer-countries-trade-keep-them-supplying-inputs-to-someone-","slug":"the-terms-on-which-poorer-countries-trade-keep-them-supplying-inputs-to-someone-","title":"The terms on which poorer countries trade keep them supplying inputs to someone else's industry","description":null,"body":"Those who call development a false promise begin with the position poorer countries occupy in the world economy rather than with their policies. On this account, a country that exports raw materials and imports finished goods is locked into the part of production where competition is fiercest and margins thinnest. Many producers sell much the same crop or ore, so none can set a price; the buyers are few and can. Earnings therefore swing with commodity markets, which makes long-term public investment hard to plan and easy to interrupt, while the value added by processing, design and distribution accrues elsewhere.\n\nThe second strand concerns the conditions attached to finance. Proponents argue that when poorer countries borrow to industrialise, the terms typically require them to open markets, cut public spending and keep their currencies attractive to lenders, which is the opposite of the protection, cheap credit and state direction that today's rich economies used while their own indu","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:26:15.748826+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-economic-development-is-a-false-promise-for-developing-countries","title":"Yes, economic development is a false promise for developing countries"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-economic-development-false-promise-for","title":"Is economic development a false promise for developing countries?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/no-durable-alternative-to-male-public-authority-has-emerged-anywhere-on-its-own","slug":"no-durable-alternative-to-male-public-authority-has-emerged-anywhere-on-its-own","title":"No durable alternative to male public authority has emerged anywhere on its own","description":null,"body":"A second argument for inevitability turns on the absence of stable alternatives. Proponents point out that the counterfactual is testable in a rough way: across the whole range of human societies, some should by chance have settled into durable female public authority. On this account almost none did. There are societies that trace descent through mothers, that hold land in female lines, that accord women considerable domestic and ritual power, and in these, proponents argue, formal public authority still tended to rest with men. If male dominance were one option among several, the record should show the others persisting somewhere, and it does not.\n\nThe mechanism proposed is the one that distinguishes the sexes in reproduction. Because a mother always knows which children are hers and a father does not, men who wanted their effort and property to reach their own offspring had an interest in controlling women's sexual lives, while women had no symmetrical interest. Once any society beg","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:26:15.454069+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/patriarchy-was-inevitable","title":"Patriarchy was inevitable"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/was-patriarchy-invented-or-inevitable","title":"Was patriarchy invented or inevitable?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/male-dominance-recurs-across-nearly-every-society-which-is-what-a-natural-tenden","slug":"male-dominance-recurs-across-nearly-every-society-which-is-what-a-natural-tenden","title":"Male dominance recurs across nearly every society, which is what a natural tendency looks like","description":null,"body":"The case for inevitability starts from near-universality. Human societies have differed in almost every other respect, in language, religion, subsistence, descent and the form of their households, and yet the pattern of men holding disproportionate public authority recurs through nearly all of them. Proponents argue that when an arrangement appears independently in populations separated by oceans and millennia, the explanation is unlikely to be cultural transmission or local invention. Something in the common conditions of human life is doing the work.\n\nThose conditions, on this view, are not mysterious. Pregnancy, birth and prolonged nursing fall on women and tie them for years to the care of dependent infants, while the tasks that generate public standing in most pre-industrial economies, such as herding, long-distance trade, hunting, raiding and war, reward sustained absence and physical force. Proponents argue that a division of labour organised around that asymmetry will concentra","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:26:15.261925+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/patriarchy-was-inevitable","title":"Patriarchy was inevitable"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/was-patriarchy-invented-or-inevitable","title":"Was patriarchy invented or inevitable?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/an-arrangement-that-has-to-be-enforced-against-resistance-is-a-human-settlement-","slug":"an-arrangement-that-has-to-be-enforced-against-resistance-is-a-human-settlement-","title":"An arrangement that has to be enforced against resistance is a human settlement, not a law of nature","description":null,"body":"A second case for invention rests on enforcement. Arrangements that follow from nature do not need to be compelled: no society has had to legislate that people breathe or that infants are born helpless. Male dominance, by contrast, has been written into law, scripture and custom in extraordinary detail, through rules about who may own, inherit, testify, divorce, be educated, enter a trade or appear in public. Proponents of this position argue that the sheer volume of that apparatus is evidence against inevitability. A settlement that must be enforced against resistance is one people could refuse, and the enforcement exists because some of them did.\n\nThe record of that resistance is the second strand. On this account there have always been women who held property, led households, taught, ruled or fought, and the usual response was not to discover that they could not, but to prohibit them from doing so again. Restrictions tightened and loosened; they were argued over, defended on changin","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:26:14.897126+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/patriarchy-was-invented","title":"Patriarchy was invented"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/was-patriarchy-invented-or-inevitable","title":"Was patriarchy invented or inevitable?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/patriarchy-varies-too-much-across-societies-to-be-a-fact-of-nature","slug":"patriarchy-varies-too-much-across-societies-to-be-a-fact-of-nature","title":"Patriarchy varies too much across societies to be a fact of nature","description":null,"body":"Those who hold that patriarchy was invented begin from variation. If male dominance followed directly from human nature, it would look much the same wherever people live. What the historical and ethnographic record instead shows, on this account, is enormous variety: societies that trace descent through mothers and societies that trace it through fathers, societies where women hold land and societies where they cannot, societies with women in religious and political authority and societies that bar them from both. Where an arrangement differs that widely from place to place, proponents argue, it is a social institution rather than a biological outcome.\n\nThe second move is to identify the institutions that do the work. On this view patriarchy is bound up with heritable property, with the household as a unit of production, and with rules of marriage and descent that pass wealth through men. Once property must be handed down a line, control over whose children count as heirs becomes valua","created_at":"2026-10-14T01:26:14.65411+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/patriarchy-was-invented","title":"Patriarchy was invented"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/was-patriarchy-invented-or-inevitable","title":"Was patriarchy invented or inevitable?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/writing-history-means-composing-a-story-and-a-story-requires-a-point-of-view","slug":"writing-history-means-composing-a-story-and-a-story-requires-a-point-of-view","title":"Writing history means composing a story, and a story requires a point of view","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns the form history takes. Proponents of this position argue that a history is not a list of established facts but a narrative that explains, and that explanation requires choices no evidence can settle. A chronicle of everything that happened would be unreadable and would explain nothing, so the historian must select, arrange, compress and connect.\n\nProponents argue that each of those operations is an interpretation. Deciding that one event caused another, rather than merely preceding it, is a judgement about how societies work. Deciding how much space a episode receives tells the reader how much it mattered. Calling a leader cautious rather than indecisive, or a revolt a rebellion rather than an uprising, settles a question of evaluation inside a word that looks descriptive. Proponents argue that such words cannot be avoided, because a history written entirely in neutral vocabulary would convey no account of anything, and the available vocabulary comes loade","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:15.558281+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/history-cannot-be-written-objectively","title":"History cannot be written objectively"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-history-be-written-objectively","title":"Can history be written objectively?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-decisive-choices-are-made-before-any-method-is-applied","slug":"the-decisive-choices-are-made-before-any-method-is-applied","title":"The decisive choices are made before any method is applied","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the defence of historical objectivity concentrates on the wrong stage of the work. Methods for handling evidence are real and valuable, but proponents argue they only operate once a historian has decided what to write about, which records to consult and where the story begins and ends. Those decisions come first, cannot be derived from the evidence, and determine far more about the resulting account than any later procedure.\n\nProponents argue that each of them carries a judgement. Choosing a subject asserts that it mattered more than the subjects not chosen. Choosing a starting point determines what appears as a cause and what appears as mere background, so an account of a conflict that opens with the invasion tells a different story from one that opens a generation earlier, with both resting on the same documents. Deciding whose experience belongs in the narrative settles whether an event was a settlement or a dispossession. Proponents argue that","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:15.412843+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/history-cannot-be-written-objectively","title":"History cannot be written objectively"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-history-be-written-objectively","title":"Can history be written objectively?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-winners-are-not-the-only-ones-who-write-and-the-accounts-check-each-other","slug":"the-winners-are-not-the-only-ones-who-write-and-the-accounts-check-each-other","title":"The winners are not the only ones who write, and the accounts check each other","description":null,"body":"The second argument addresses the saying that history is written by the victors. Proponents of this position argue that whatever force this had in the past, it does not describe how history is now produced, and that treating it as a settled truth is itself a failure of scepticism.\n\nProponents argue that the losers of almost every conflict also write, and are read. Defeated nations produce their own historians, exiles and emigrants publish abroad, the descendants of the conquered research their own past, and foreign scholars with no stake in either side examine both. They add that the records are not controlled by one party either: archives are captured, opened by later governments, leaked, preserved in third countries and increasingly digitised, so a national account can be checked against material its own authorities never expected anyone to see.\n\nProponents argue that this plurality is what makes objectivity achievable in practice rather than merely in principle. Where several tradit","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:15.126379+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/history-can-be-written-objectively","title":"History can be written objectively"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-history-be-written-objectively","title":"Can history be written objectively?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/objectivity-is-a-method-not-a-claim-to-have-no-point-of-view","slug":"objectivity-is-a-method-not-a-claim-to-have-no-point-of-view","title":"Objectivity is a method, not a claim to have no point of view","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the case against objective history usually attacks a definition no historian uses. The objection assumes that writing objectively would mean writing from nowhere, with no background, nationality or sympathies, which is plainly impossible. Proponents argue that objectivity in history means something different and achievable: a discipline of procedures designed to catch the errors a historian's own position would otherwise produce.\n\nThose procedures, on this account, are specific and testable. A claim must rest on evidence that can be cited and inspected by someone who disagrees. Sources are assessed for who produced them, for whom and with what interest. Where the record is thin or contradictory, the uncertainty is stated rather than smoothed over. Counter-evidence is addressed rather than omitted, and work is submitted to specialists who have every professional incentive to find what is wrong with it. Proponents argue that a historian who follows ","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:14.955638+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/history-can-be-written-objectively","title":"History can be written objectively"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-history-be-written-objectively","title":"Can history be written objectively?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/well-made-objects-are-still-being-produced-in-greater-numbers-than-ever-before","slug":"well-made-objects-are-still-being-produced-in-greater-numbers-than-ever-before","title":"Well-made objects are still being produced, in greater numbers than ever before","description":null,"body":"The second argument disputes the factual picture rather than the definition. Proponents of this position argue that the claim we no longer make durable goods compares the worst of today's output with the best of the past, and that this comparison only looks convincing because of what did not survive.\n\nProponents argue that the solid furniture, fine glass and good silver which reached us from earlier centuries were expensive items owned by a small minority, and that the cheap, flimsy and makeshift goods the majority actually used have simply vanished. On this account the past did produce disposable things in quantity; they are absent from the antique shop precisely because they were disposable. Comparing them with today's inexpensive goods, proponents argue, shows that the proportion of durable to disposable manufacture may not have changed much at all.\n\nThey add that durable goods are plainly still being made. Proponents argue that craftspeople, specialist manufacturers and premium pro","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:14.663952+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-we-have-not-stopped-creating-antiques","title":"No, we have not stopped creating antiques"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/have-we-stopped-creating-antiques","title":"Have we stopped creating antiques?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/what-counts-as-an-antique-is-decided-later-by-the-people-who-come-to-want-it","slug":"what-counts-as-an-antique-is-decided-later-by-the-people-who-come-to-want-it","title":"What counts as an antique is decided later, by the people who come to want it","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the question contains a mistake about how antiques come into being. Nobody manufactures an antique. An antique is an ordinary object that has grown old and has then been found interesting by people who did not make it and were not its original market, and proponents argue that this means the category is defined after the fact and cannot be judged from inside the present.\n\nProponents argue that the record on this point is consistent and unflattering to confident predictions. The objects now most sought after were, in their own day, unremarkable or actively disdained: kitchen equipment, advertising signage, factory furniture, printing blocks, shop fittings and machinery kept only because nobody had thrown it away. Proponents argue that the people who owned them would have been astonished to hear they were producing collectables, and that each generation has in turn assumed that the mass-produced goods surrounding it were too common and too cheap to ","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:14.490197+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-we-have-not-stopped-creating-antiques","title":"No, we have not stopped creating antiques"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/have-we-stopped-creating-antiques","title":"Have we stopped creating antiques?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/what-used-to-be-an-heirloom-is-now-a-file-that-belongs-to-nobody","slug":"what-used-to-be-an-heirloom-is-now-a-file-that-belongs-to-nobody","title":"What used to be an heirloom is now a file that belongs to nobody","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns the objects that have ceased to be objects at all. Proponents of this position argue that a great many of the things previous generations handed down were ordinary possessions whose physical existence was incidental to their purpose: records, photograph albums, letters, books, cards, maps and the accumulated paper of a life. These were kept not because anyone intended an heirloom but because they existed and had to be put somewhere.\n\nProponents argue that the equivalents today have no physical existence to be kept. Music is a subscription, photographs sit on a service, letters are messages in an account, and documents are files. They add that the difference is not merely that these take up no space but that they are frequently not owned: access depends on a company continuing to operate and on a password nobody else has, and when the account lapses the contents do not pass to anyone the way a shoebox of photographs did. Proponents argue that this is why fam","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:14.169687+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-we-have-stopped-creating-antiques","title":"Yes, we have stopped creating antiques"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/have-we-stopped-creating-antiques","title":"Have we stopped creating antiques?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/an-object-has-to-survive-to-become-an-antique-and-we-now-build-things-not-to","slug":"an-object-has-to-survive-to-become-an-antique-and-we-now-build-things-not-to","title":"An object has to survive to become an antique, and we now build things not to","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that becoming an antique is a matter of physical survival before it is a matter of taste. An object has to last long enough to become old, which means it has to be made of materials that endure and in a way that allows repair. Proponents argue that the furniture, tools and household goods which reached us from earlier generations did so because they were built from solid timber, metal and glass, joined by methods a later owner could take apart, and made in the expectation of being mended rather than replaced.\n\nProponents argue that the goods we now produce are built on the opposite assumption. Particle board, moulded plastic, glued joints and sealed assemblies are cheaper and perfectly adequate for the years an object is expected to be wanted, but they are not repairable and they do not age into anything. A chair that cannot be re-covered or re-glued is thrown out when it fails, and proponents argue that an object thrown out at the end of its usefulnes","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:13.931087+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-we-have-stopped-creating-antiques","title":"Yes, we have stopped creating antiques"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/have-we-stopped-creating-antiques","title":"Have we stopped creating antiques?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/people-will-not-choose-to-spend-their-working-lives-alone-at-home","slug":"people-will-not-choose-to-spend-their-working-lives-alone-at-home","title":"People will not choose to spend their working lives alone at home","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns what people want rather than what firms can measure. Proponents of this position argue that the enthusiasm for working from home was formed under conditions that made the office unattractive and the home the only safe place to be, and that the preference has not held up as those conditions receded.\n\nProponents argue that the costs of working alone are real and cumulative. Work supplies a large share of most adults' social contact, and the colleagues people see daily are where many friendships and relationships begin. A home that is also an office offers no boundary between the two, so the working day expands to fill the evening and there is nowhere that is not work. And the arrangement is unequally available: proponents argue that a spare room in a quiet house makes remote work pleasant, while a shared flat, a small home with children in it, or a kitchen table makes it a daily imposition, and the people in the second situation are generally those with the l","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:13.548474+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-hybrid-work-is-not-the-way-of-the-future","title":"No, 'hybrid work' is not the way of the future"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-hybrid-work-way-of-future","title":"Is ‘hybrid’ work the way of the future?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/dispersed-teams-run-down-a-stock-of-trust-they-cannot-replenish","slug":"dispersed-teams-run-down-a-stock-of-trust-they-cannot-replenish","title":"Dispersed teams run down a stock of trust they cannot replenish","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that distributed work performed well during the period of restriction for a reason that does not generalise. The teams doing it already knew each other. They had shared histories, established trust, and a working knowledge of who to ask about what, all of it accumulated in person. On this account what was being measured was not whether distributed work functions but how long an organisation can coast on relationships formed before it dispersed.\n\nProponents argue that the capacities a workplace depends on are learned in ways a scheduled call cannot reproduce. A new employee learns the job by overhearing it, by noticing how a difficult conversation is handled, by asking a question too small to justify a meeting, and by being corrected quickly and informally. Proponents argue that a remote arrangement removes all of this and replaces it with a calendar, so new staff take far longer to become capable and some never acquire the judgement that would have com","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:13.371891+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-hybrid-work-is-not-the-way-of-the-future","title":"No, 'hybrid work' is not the way of the future"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-hybrid-work-way-of-future","title":"Is ‘hybrid’ work the way of the future?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/firms-that-insist-on-full-attendance-lose-staff-to-those-that-do-not","slug":"firms-that-insist-on-full-attendance-lose-staff-to-those-that-do-not","title":"Firms that insist on full attendance lose staff to those that do not","description":null,"body":"The second argument treats the question as one about competition for workers rather than about preference. Proponents of this position argue that where employers differ on a condition of employment that workers value highly, the condition does not stay optional for long, because the firms offering it recruit from the firms that do not.\n\nProponents argue that the arithmetic favours flexibility unusually strongly. Time saved commuting is time returned to the worker without the employer paying for it, which makes it an unusually cheap thing to offer. It is valued most by the people employers most want to keep, including experienced staff with children, people who cannot easily move house, and workers with disabilities for whom a daily commute is the hardest part of the job. And it widens the pool a firm can hire from, since a role that does not require daily attendance can be filled by someone two hours away who would never have applied otherwise.\n\nThey add that the pressure operates thro","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:12.979502+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-hybrid-work-is-the-way-of-the-future","title":"Yes, 'hybrid work' is the way of the future"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-hybrid-work-way-of-future","title":"Is ‘hybrid’ work the way of the future?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-pandemic-did-not-create-remote-work-it-only-ended-the-argument-against-it","slug":"the-pandemic-did-not-create-remote-work-it-only-ended-the-argument-against-it","title":"The pandemic did not create remote work, it only ended the argument against it","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the capability for distributed work was assembled long before anyone was obliged to use it. Fast domestic internet, laptops, video calling, shared document storage and messaging platforms were all in place and in daily use, and a sizeable number of people already worked from home some or all of the time. What was missing, they argue, was not technology but permission, because managers doubted that work done out of sight was work done at all.\n\nProponents argue that the pandemic settled that doubt by running the experiment at a scale no firm would have chosen. Entire organisations worked remotely, and their output was observed rather than speculated about. Some kinds of work turned out to suffer, particularly anything depending on improvisation among people who did not already know each other, while a great deal of ordinary professional work turned out to be unaffected. On this account the lasting change is not a habit acquired under restriction but","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:55:12.717502+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-hybrid-work-is-the-way-of-the-future","title":"Yes, 'hybrid work' is the way of the future"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-hybrid-work-way-of-future","title":"Is ‘hybrid’ work the way of the future?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/treating-the-bar-as-a-night-out-turns-somebody-elses-refuge-into-a-spectacle","slug":"treating-the-bar-as-a-night-out-turns-somebody-elses-refuge-into-a-spectacle","title":"Treating the bar as a night out turns somebody else's refuge into a spectacle","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns conduct rather than numbers. Proponents of this position argue that a recognisable pattern has developed in which groups of straight visitors treat a gay bar as a destination with a theme, and that this changes what the venue is for the people who depend on it. The complaint, they argue, is not about the presence of straight people in general but about arriving as an audience.\n\nProponents argue the specifics are familiar to regular patrons: large groups that come to watch rather than to take part, photographs taken of other customers, comments on how brave or fabulous the place is, and the assumption that the staff and patrons are there to provide a memorable evening. They add that a particular version of this involves groups who have booked the bar for a celebration and treat its patrons as part of the entertainment hired for the night. On this account the problem is that a refuge and a curiosity cannot occupy the same room, and the patrons who came for th","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:16:00.468438+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-straight-people-should-not-go-to-gay-bars","title":"No, straight people should not go to gay bars"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-straight-people-go-gay-bars","title":"Should straight people go to gay bars?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-point-of-the-venue-is-one-room-where-its-own-patrons-are-the-majority","slug":"the-point-of-the-venue-is-one-room-where-its-own-patrons-are-the-majority","title":"The point of the venue is one room where its own patrons are the majority","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that a gay bar is not a bar that happens to have gay customers but a room built around a reversal. Everywhere else, its patrons are the minority and have to judge, on arriving, how safe it is to hold a partner's hand or say who they spent the weekend with. Proponents argue that the value of the venue lies in being the one place where that calculation is not necessary, and that this depends on who is in the room rather than on the sign above the door.\n\nOn this account the quality is fragile in a specific way. Proponents argue that a handful of straight customers changes nothing, but that once a substantial share of the room is straight the default flips back: a patron scanning the bar can no longer assume the person they approach is likely to be interested, and the reassurance of being surrounded by people like oneself is gone. They add that the shift is not caused by anyone behaving badly, which is why appeals to good intentions miss the point. It foll","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:16:00.304825+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-straight-people-should-not-go-to-gay-bars","title":"No, straight people should not go to gay bars"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-straight-people-go-gay-bars","title":"Should straight people go to gay bars?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-room-where-people-mix-is-how-prejudice-stops-being-abstract","slug":"a-room-where-people-mix-is-how-prejudice-stops-being-abstract","title":"A room where people mix is how prejudice stops being abstract","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns what contact does. Proponents of this position argue that hostility towards gay people survives best among those who do not knowingly know any, because a group one never encounters can be imagined freely, while a group one drinks alongside cannot. On this account an open door is not merely tolerable but useful, since it puts people in the same room as the lives they have opinions about.\n\nProponents argue that the setting matters as much as the contact. A bar is sociable, unofficial and voluntary, which they argue is where attitudes actually shift, rather than in a lesson or a campaign where the audience knows it is being instructed. Someone who spends an evening in a gay bar is not persuaded of anything; they simply find the place ordinary, and proponents argue that finding it ordinary is the whole of what was wanted. They add that straight people are frequently brought along by gay friends and relatives, so excluding them would mean asking gay patrons to l","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:15:59.837318+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-straight-people-should-go-to-gay-bars","title":"Yes, straight people should go to gay bars"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-straight-people-go-gay-bars","title":"Should straight people go to gay bars?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-venue-that-depends-on-custom-cannot-afford-to-turn-paying-people-away","slug":"a-venue-that-depends-on-custom-cannot-afford-to-turn-paying-people-away","title":"A venue that depends on custom cannot afford to turn paying people away","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position begin with the commercial position of the venues themselves. A bar is a business with rent, staff, licences and suppliers, and proponents argue that the gay bars which have closed in recent years closed because not enough people came through the door rather than because the wrong people did. On this account a policy of discouraging straight custom is one a bar can only afford when its core clientele is large enough to fill it, and in most towns it is not.\n\nProponents argue that the reason the clientele has thinned is itself worth noticing. Where meeting other gay people once required a particular room in a particular street, it can now be done from a phone, and where the bar was the only place one could be open about a relationship, many other venues are now unremarkable about it. The effect is that the specialised bar has lost much of its former monopoly, and proponents argue that a venue in that position survives by broadening its appeal rather than by nar","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:15:59.649449+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-straight-people-should-go-to-gay-bars","title":"Yes, straight people should go to gay bars"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-straight-people-go-gay-bars","title":"Should straight people go to gay bars?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/more-money-would-flow-into-a-system-that-rewards-grant-writing-rather-than-disco","slug":"more-money-would-flow-into-a-system-that-rewards-grant-writing-rather-than-disco","title":"More money would flow into a system that rewards grant-writing rather than discovery","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns where additional funding would actually go. Proponents of this position argue that research money is not handed to scientists but to a system of competitive grants, panels and institutional overheads, and that the behaviour this system rewards is not the behaviour that produces discoveries. Until that changes, they argue, increasing the budget increases the volume of the same activity.\n\nProponents argue the incentives are well recognised by researchers themselves. Because awards go to proposals that look likely to succeed, the safe and incremental project is favoured over the speculative one, which inverts the case for public funding of risky work. Because careers depend on publication, the reward falls on producing papers rather than on checking whether previous results hold, so replication is neglected and errors persist in the literature. Because applications take months, senior researchers spend much of their time writing them rather than doing research","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:15:59.290319+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-scientific-funding-should-not-get-more-governmental-funding","title":"No, scientific research should not get more governmental funding"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-scienific-research-get-more-governmental","title":"Should scienific research get more governmental funding?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/public-money-is-finite-and-research-competes-with-claims-that-are-more-urgent","slug":"public-money-is-finite-and-research-competes-with-claims-that-are-more-urgent","title":"Public money is finite, and research competes with claims that are more urgent","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the case for more research funding is almost always made in isolation, as though the only question were whether research is valuable. Their claim is that this is the wrong question. Every pound a government spends is a pound it has taken in tax or borrowed, and the relevant comparison is not between funding research and funding nothing but between funding research and funding the next best use of the same money.\n\nProponents argue that when the comparison is made honestly, research does badly against several alternatives. The benefits of a research budget are uncertain, diffuse and arrive decades later, whereas the benefits of a treated patient, a repaired road or a smaller class arrive now and can be identified. They add that much of what is already known is not applied for want of money: treatments exist that are not delivered, engineering solutions exist that are not built, and public health measures exist that are not funded. On this account a ","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:15:59.104709+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-scientific-funding-should-not-get-more-governmental-funding","title":"No, scientific research should not get more governmental funding"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-scienific-research-get-more-governmental","title":"Should scienific research get more governmental funding?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-country-that-does-not-fund-its-own-science-ends-up-dependent-on-others-for-it","slug":"a-country-that-does-not-fund-its-own-science-ends-up-dependent-on-others-for-it","title":"A country that does not fund its own science ends up dependent on others for it","description":null,"body":"The second argument is about capacity rather than discovery. Proponents of this position argue that what public funding buys is not only results but the people and institutions able to produce results, and that this capacity is slow to build, quick to lose and impossible to purchase at short notice.\n\nProponents argue that a working research base consists of trained researchers, laboratories, long-running datasets, specialist technicians and the supervisors who train the next cohort, and that each of these takes many years to assemble. When funding falls, the effects are not proportionate: early-career researchers leave for countries or industries that will employ them, the equipment is not replaced, the data series is broken, and the supervisors retire without successors. Rebuilding then means starting from a weaker position than the one that was abandoned, because the people who would have done the training are no longer there.\n\nThey add that the consequences of losing that capacity e","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:15:58.662305+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-scientific-research-should-get-more-governmental-funding","title":"Yes, scientific research should get more governmental funding"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-scienific-research-get-more-governmental","title":"Should scienific research get more governmental funding?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-research-with-the-largest-long-term-returns-is-the-research-no-company-will-","slug":"the-research-with-the-largest-long-term-returns-is-the-research-no-company-will-","title":"The research with the largest long-term returns is the research no company will pay for","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position begin from a distinction between research aimed at a product and research aimed at understanding. A firm funds the first because it can expect to own and sell the result. Proponents argue that the second is systematically underfunded by firms, not through short-sightedness but because its characteristics make it a poor private investment: the payoff is distant, the chance of any particular line of enquiry working is low, and whatever is discovered becomes knowledge that competitors can use as freely as the funder.\n\nProponents argue that these are precisely the features that make a state the right funder. A government does not need to own a discovery to benefit from it, since the gains show up across the whole economy it taxes rather than on one balance sheet. It can also hold a portfolio large enough that the many failed lines of enquiry are paid for by the few that succeed, which no single firm can do. And it can wait, because its horizon is not a reporting","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:15:58.377346+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-scientific-research-should-get-more-governmental-funding","title":"Yes, scientific research should get more governmental funding"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-scienific-research-get-more-governmental","title":"Should scienific research get more governmental funding?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-state-monopoly-on-schooling-leaves-dissenting-families-nowhere-to-go","slug":"a-state-monopoly-on-schooling-leaves-dissenting-families-nowhere-to-go","title":"A state monopoly on schooling leaves dissenting families nowhere to go","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns what a ban would hand to the state. Proponents of this position argue that education is not a technical service but the formation of children, involving contested judgements about what is worth knowing, how history should be told, what counts as a virtue and how religion and sexuality should be treated. Where independent schools exist, a family that disagrees with the official answers has somewhere to go, and proponents argue that a ban removes that and makes the government the only provider of an answer every child must receive.\n\nProponents argue this is a serious concentration of power regardless of who holds office. A single curriculum set by whichever party has won becomes the only account available, and the ordinary alternation of governments means it will periodically be rewritten by people the previous majority opposed. They add that the families most exposed would be religious minorities and others whose convictions diverge from the prevailing view,","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:12:25.341185+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/it-is-bad-to-ban-private-schools","title":"It is bad to ban private schools"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-banning","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of banning private schools?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-ban-removes-a-choice-from-parents-without-improving-the-schools-that-remain","slug":"a-ban-removes-a-choice-from-parents-without-improving-the-schools-that-remain","title":"A ban removes a choice from parents without improving the schools that remain","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the case for abolition rests on a transfer that would not actually occur. The hope is that closing private schools would move their resources, their pupils' families and their political weight into the state system and raise it. Proponents argue that resources attached to a family do not transfer when an option is withdrawn, and that what a parent was willing to spend on a school they chose is not what they will hand to one assigned to them.\n\nProponents argue that the likely substitutions are well understood and all worse. Families who can pay would compete for houses in the catchment areas of the strongest state schools, bidding up prices until those places were effectively sold through the property market rather than through fees. Others would buy private tutoring, which is unregulated, invisible and attaches directly to the individual child. Others again would educate their children abroad or at home. Each of these routes, proponents argue, del","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:12:25.174581+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/it-is-bad-to-ban-private-schools","title":"It is bad to ban private schools"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-banning","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of banning private schools?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-school-place-that-money-can-buy-passes-advantage-down-the-generations","slug":"a-school-place-that-money-can-buy-passes-advantage-down-the-generations","title":"A school place that money can buy passes advantage down the generations","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns fairness between children. Proponents of this position argue that where a better education can be purchased, the decisive factor in a child's prospects is the income of the household they were born into, which is a fact about the parents rather than anything about the child. On this account that is the objection in its simplest form: an advantage distributed by ability to pay is an advantage nobody earned.\n\nProponents argue that the consequences do not stop at the school gate. The point of a purchased education, they argue, is partly the teaching and partly everything else it conveys: smaller classes, better facilities, confident manners, examination technique, and introductions to the families of other pupils. These convert into university places, then into professions, and then into the income that buys the same education for the next generation. Proponents argue that this is a closed circuit rather than a ladder, and that it operates regardless of how ab","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:12:24.891172+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/it-is-good-to-ban-private-schools","title":"It is good to ban private schools"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-banning","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of banning private schools?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/while-the-wealthy-can-buy-their-way-out-they-have-no-stake-in-the-common-system","slug":"while-the-wealthy-can-buy-their-way-out-they-have-no-stake-in-the-common-system","title":"While the wealthy can buy their way out, they have no stake in the common system","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the decisive effect of private schooling is not on the pupils inside it but on the schools everyone else uses. Their claim is that a country's state schools are shaped by the people with the most influence over them, and that those people currently have the option of not using them. A family able to pay for a place elsewhere has removed itself from the consequences of an underfunded, overcrowded or badly governed local school, and proponents argue that an interest one can exit is an interest one stops defending.\n\nThe effect compounds, on this account, because the families who exit are disproportionately the ones who could do most for the system they leave. Proponents argue that these are the households with time, confidence, professional contacts and the practised ability to complain effectively to officials, and that this capacity is exactly what a struggling school most needs and now never receives. They add that the same households are over-rep","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:12:24.732617+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/it-is-good-to-ban-private-schools","title":"It is good to ban private schools"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-banning","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of banning private schools?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/visible-pressure-hardens-the-people-it-is-meant-to-persuade","slug":"visible-pressure-hardens-the-people-it-is-meant-to-persuade","title":"Visible pressure hardens the people it is meant to persuade","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns the reaction a protest provokes. Proponents of this position argue that a demonstration is not received as a neutral signal but as a confrontation, and that the people on the other side of it respond accordingly. A government that concedes under visible pressure appears to have been coerced, which is a position no government wants to occupy, so proponents argue it acquires a reason to refuse that it did not have before the march and to be seen refusing.\n\nThe same effect, on this account, operates on the public. Proponents argue that disruption falls on bystanders rather than on decision-makers: the blocked road, the cancelled service and the closed street are experienced by people who had no part in the dispute, and the resentment generated attaches to the cause rather than to the authorities. They add that a protest is also judged by its worst participants, so a single act of violence or vandalism supplies opponents with the image they will use from then o","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:12:24.464519+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-protests-are-not-effective","title":"No, protests are not effective"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-protests-effective","title":"Are protests effective?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-march-expresses-feeling-without-putting-a-decision-in-front-of-anyone","slug":"a-march-expresses-feeling-without-putting-a-decision-in-front-of-anyone","title":"A march expresses feeling without putting a decision in front of anyone","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that protest is routinely credited with results produced by something else. Their claim is that a demonstration, considered on its own, applies no pressure to the people who can actually change a policy, because it imposes no cost they are obliged to avoid. A minister is not removed by a crowd, a budget is not altered by one, and a law is not repealed by one. What a march produces is a display of conviction, and conviction is not a lever.\n\nProponents argue that the things which do move governments are identifiable and different in kind: votes that unseat people, money withheld, work stopped, courts compelling action, and officials inside institutions deciding to act. Where a protest appears to have worked, they argue, one of these was running alongside it, and the march has taken the credit for a strike, a court ruling, a shift in a party's electoral calculation or a change of personnel. On this account the crowd is the visible part of a process whose ","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:12:24.268533+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-protests-are-not-effective","title":"No, protests are not effective"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-protests-effective","title":"Are protests effective?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/protest-shows-participants-and-bystanders-how-many-others-already-agree","slug":"protest-shows-participants-and-bystanders-how-many-others-already-agree","title":"Protest shows participants and bystanders how many others already agree","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns information, and it is addressed less to those in power than to everyone else. Proponents of this position argue that people who hold an unpopular-seeming view usually cannot tell how unpopular it actually is. Each of them knows their own opinion and suspects they are alone in it, and that suspicion is itself what keeps them quiet, since the cost of speaking first falls on whoever speaks first.\n\nA protest, on this account, resolves that uncertainty in public and all at once. Proponents argue that a person who turns up expecting a few hundred and finds a filled square learns something they had no other way of learning, and so does every onlooker and every official watching. The grievance stops being a private complaint and becomes a visible constituency, which is a different political object. They add that this is why turnout matters so much more than argument at a demonstration: the content is the count.\n\nProponents argue that the consequences follow from t","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:12:23.950589+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-protests-are-effective","title":"Yes, protests are effective"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-protests-effective","title":"Are protests effective?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-crowd-in-the-street-makes-a-grievance-impossible-to-leave-off-the-agenda","slug":"a-crowd-in-the-street-makes-a-grievance-impossible-to-leave-off-the-agenda","title":"A crowd in the street makes a grievance impossible to leave off the agenda","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position begin from the problem a protest is meant to solve. A grievance held by people without money, office or access to editors is easy for a government to acknowledge and then postpone, because nothing obliges anyone to return to it. Letters are filed, petitions are received, and the matter waits. Proponents argue that a protest works on exactly this weakness: it converts a dispersed complaint into a single event that cannot be ignored while it is happening.\n\nThe mechanism, on this account, is attention rather than persuasion. A large gathering has to be reported, policed, explained and answered, and each of those responses puts the grievance into the record again. Officials are asked about it, opponents are obliged to produce a justification they had not needed before, and the question moves from whether the issue will be discussed to what is to be done about it. Proponents argue that this matters most for causes with no other route in, since the groups who can ","created_at":"2026-10-13T06:12:23.738841+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-protests-are-effective","title":"Yes, protests are effective"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/are-protests-effective","title":"Are protests effective?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/religious-formation-belongs-to-families-and-congregations-not-to-compulsory-scho","slug":"religious-formation-belongs-to-families-and-congregations-not-to-compulsory-scho","title":"Religious formation belongs to families and congregations, not to compulsory schooling","description":null,"body":"The second argument turns on who holds the authority to pass on a faith. Proponents of this position argue that this authority belongs to parents and to the religious communities they choose, and that it is not a power a school may exercise on their behalf. On this account the transmission of belief is not merely a subject that happens to be sensitive; it is the central business of families and congregations, and a compulsory institution taking it up displaces them rather than assisting them.\n\nProponents argue that schools are poorly suited to the task besides. A faith is passed on through practice, worship, ritual and the example of a community over years, none of which a timetabled lesson can supply. What a school can deliver is a summary, taught by whoever is available, examined and graded, and proponents argue that this converts a living commitment into material to be revised and forgotten, which serves neither believers nor anyone else. They add that believing families frequently ","created_at":"2026-10-13T05:46:33.110164+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-religion-should-not-be-taught-in-schools","title":"No, religion should not be taught in schools"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-religion-be-taught-in-schools","title":"Should religion be taught in schools?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-public-school-cannot-teach-religion-without-favouring-some-beliefs-over-others","slug":"a-public-school-cannot-teach-religion-without-favouring-some-beliefs-over-others","title":"A public school cannot teach religion without favouring some beliefs over others","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the difficulty is not with religion but with the position a school occupies. A state school is compulsory in effect, publicly funded, and speaks to children with the authority of the institution behind it. Proponents argue that whatever such a school teaches, it teaches as settled, and that religion cannot be presented this way without the school taking sides on questions its citizens disagree about profoundly.\n\nThe choices involved, on this account, cannot be made neutrally. Someone has to decide which traditions appear and which are passed over, how much time each receives, which internal version of a tradition is presented as the real one, and whether claims are described as what adherents believe or as what is the case. Proponents argue that every one of those decisions advantages some families and disadvantages others, and that the ones most likely to lose are small traditions and the non-religious, whose position is rarely given the same sta","created_at":"2026-10-13T05:46:32.938651+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-religion-should-not-be-taught-in-schools","title":"No, religion should not be taught in schools"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-religion-be-taught-in-schools","title":"Should religion be taught in schools?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/learning-what-believers-actually-hold-is-part-of-preparing-to-live-among-them","slug":"learning-what-believers-actually-hold-is-part-of-preparing-to-live-among-them","title":"Learning what believers actually hold is part of preparing to live among them","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns the practical position a pupil will occupy as an adult. Proponents of this position argue that religion is not a historical residue but a live feature of the societies pupils will work and vote in, so they will have religious colleagues, patients, clients, neighbours and fellow citizens, and will be asked to make judgements that turn on belief.\n\nProponents argue that where schools decline to supply this knowledge, it is supplied anyway, and badly. A pupil who is never taught what a faith actually teaches will learn about it from whatever reaches them through argument, entertainment and rumour, which tends to present each tradition through its most alarming adherents. The result, on this account, is that pupils arrive at adulthood confident about religions they know only as caricatures, and are correspondingly easy to persuade that a neighbour's practice is sinister. Proponents argue that the remedy is direct instruction in what the major traditions hold, ho","created_at":"2026-10-13T05:46:32.494862+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-religion-should-be-taught-in-schools","title":"Yes, religion should be taught in schools"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-religion-be-taught-in-schools","title":"Should religion be taught in schools?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/pupils-cannot-make-sense-of-history-art-or-law-without-knowing-the-religions-beh","slug":"pupils-cannot-make-sense-of-history-art-or-law-without-knowing-the-religions-beh","title":"Pupils cannot make sense of history, art or law without knowing the religions behind them","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position begin by separating two things that the question tends to run together: teaching religion and teaching pupils to be religious. The claim here concerns the first. Religion, on this account, is among the largest forces that have shaped the societies pupils are being educated into, and a curriculum that leaves it out does not produce neutral pupils but ignorant ones.\n\nProponents argue that the gaps show up everywhere in the rest of the timetable. A great deal of the art, music and architecture a pupil is asked to admire was made for worship, and its subject matter is unintelligible without knowing the stories it depicts. Much of the literature set for study turns on sin, grace, pilgrimage or prophecy. The legal and political vocabulary pupils are taught, including oaths, charity, conscience and the very idea that a person may refuse a lawful order, carries a religious history. Wars, migrations, revolutions and constitutions were argued in religious terms by the","created_at":"2026-10-13T05:46:32.338717+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-religion-should-be-taught-in-schools","title":"Yes, religion should be taught in schools"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-religion-be-taught-in-schools","title":"Should religion be taught in schools?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/without-a-lawful-way-to-remove-a-ruler-correcting-a-mistake-takes-a-crisis","slug":"without-a-lawful-way-to-remove-a-ruler-correcting-a-mistake-takes-a-crisis","title":"Without a lawful way to remove a ruler, correcting a mistake takes a crisis","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns what happens when a government goes wrong, which proponents of this position argue every government eventually does. Their claim is that the test of a political arrangement is not how well it performs at its best but how cheaply it recovers at its worst, and that this is where the two arrangements part company decisively.\n\nA democracy, on this account, has a routine remedy. A government that has failed is voted out, the loser leaves, and the cost of the correction is an election. Proponents argue that this is an extraordinary thing to have: a standing procedure by which power changes hands without anyone being killed, and one that makes the threat of removal credible enough to discipline a government long before it is used. An autocracy has no equivalent. However enlightened the ruler, there is no lawful mechanism by which the country can decide it has had enough, so the only routes available are death, palace intrigue or revolt.\n\nProponents argue that the ","created_at":"2026-10-13T05:46:32.033849+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-enlightened-despotism-is-not-uperior-to-democracy","title":"No, enlightened despotism is not superior to democracy"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-enlightened-despotism-superior-democracy","title":"Is enlightened despotism superior to democracy?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/nothing-in-unaccountable-rule-keeps-a-ruler-enlightened","slug":"nothing-in-unaccountable-rule-keeps-a-ruler-enlightened","title":"Nothing in unaccountable rule keeps a ruler enlightened","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the comparison is rigged by its own wording. Enlightened despotism is defined as rule by someone wise and benevolent, and then compared with democracy as it actually operates, complete with its quarrels and compromises. The honest comparison, on this view, is between the two arrangements as each really works, and the question is not whether a good autocrat would govern well but whether autocracy produces or preserves good autocrats.\n\nProponents argue that it does not, and that the reason is structural rather than a matter of bad luck. A ruler who cannot be removed receives no reliable information, because those around them have every reason to report success and none to report failure, so error goes uncorrected until it becomes catastrophe. The same ruler faces no cost for self-dealing, and the discipline of having to explain a decision to people who can refuse it is absent. Even a ruler who begins wise and benevolent is therefore subject to press","created_at":"2026-10-13T05:46:31.852492+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-enlightened-despotism-is-not-uperior-to-democracy","title":"No, enlightened despotism is not superior to democracy"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-enlightened-despotism-superior-democracy","title":"Is enlightened despotism superior to democracy?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/freedom-from-elections-lets-a-ruler-plan-beyond-the-next-term","slug":"freedom-from-elections-lets-a-ruler-plan-beyond-the-next-term","title":"Freedom from elections lets a ruler plan beyond the next term","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns time. Proponents of this position argue that the problems which matter most to a country unfold over decades: the condition of its soil and water, the stock of its housing, the state of its schools, the pensions it has promised. The benefits of acting on any of these arrive long after the costs, which means that the politician who acts bears the cost and a successor collects the credit.\n\nProponents argue that an elected government is structurally unable to take that trade. Its horizon is the next election, so a measure whose returns lie beyond it is a measure its own members have reason to avoid, however clearly they see the need. The predictable result, on this account, is a pattern of deferral: infrastructure is patched rather than replaced, liabilities are promised rather than funded, and the reckoning is handed to whoever holds office when deferral finally fails. Proponents argue that this is not a failure of character among politicians but a feature of","created_at":"2026-10-13T05:46:31.385992+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-enlightened-despotism-is-superior-to-democracy","title":"Yes, enlightened despotism is superior to democracy"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-enlightened-despotism-superior-democracy","title":"Is enlightened despotism superior to democracy?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-single-ruler-can-act-on-expert-judgement-rather-than-on-what-is-popular","slug":"a-single-ruler-can-act-on-expert-judgement-rather-than-on-what-is-popular","title":"A single ruler can act on expert judgement rather than on what is popular","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position begin from what the word enlightened is doing in the phrase. The claim is not that any autocrat governs well, but that a ruler who is both competent and benevolent is better placed than an electorate to identify what a country needs. On this account the difficulty with democracy is not that voters are foolish but that most questions of government are technical: how a currency should be managed, how a disease should be contained, how land and water should be allocated. Proponents argue that answering such questions well requires study that most people have neither the time nor the inclination to undertake, and that asking them to choose anyway produces decisions made on impressions rather than on evidence.\n\nAn enlightened ruler, on this view, faces no such constraint. Expert advice can be sought and acted on directly, without first being translated into a form that will survive a campaign. Where a measure is correct but unpopular, it can simply be adopted. Pr","created_at":"2026-10-13T05:46:31.07248+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-enlightened-despotism-is-superior-to-democracy","title":"Yes, enlightened despotism is superior to democracy"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-enlightened-despotism-superior-democracy","title":"Is enlightened despotism superior to democracy?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/every-new-way-of-being-introduced-has-attracted-the-same-claim","slug":"every-new-way-of-being-introduced-has-attracted-the-same-claim","title":"Every new way of being introduced has attracted the same claim","description":null,"body":"The second argument for this position is about the claim itself rather than about the technology. Proponents point out that every new channel of introduction has been said to be transforming relationships: the intermediary who paired strangers, the newspaper column in which people advertised for a spouse, the dance hall that put young people together without supervision, the workplace that mixed them outside their own neighbourhoods, the telephone that let them talk unobserved. In each case the complaint and the enthusiasm had the structure the current ones have, namely that a new means of meeting would alter what it meant to be a couple.\n\nProponents argue that the record of those predictions is poor. What followed each change was a period of unfamiliarity, some new etiquette, and then the same institution operating through a new channel. People married, stayed, strayed and parted for reasons that look much as they always did, and the novelty was absorbed rather than transformative.\n\nT","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:35:48.095922+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-online-dating-has-not-changed-relationships","title":"No, online dating has not changed relationships"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-has-online-dating-changed-relationships","title":"How has online dating changed relationships?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-channel-of-introduction-changed-not-what-people-do-with-each-other","slug":"the-channel-of-introduction-changed-not-what-people-do-with-each-other","title":"The channel of introduction changed, not what people do with each other","description":null,"body":"This position accepts that how couples meet has changed and denies that the relationship has. Proponents argue that a service does one thing: it puts two people in contact who would otherwise not have been. Everything that makes a relationship what it is happens afterwards, in person, and is governed by what it always was, namely whether the two enjoy each other's company, whether they want the same kind of life, how they handle disagreement, what their families and work allow, and whether affection survives familiarity.\n\nProponents argue that this shows in how couples describe themselves. People who met through a service tell the same kinds of stories as people who met at work: an uncertain beginning, a point at which it became serious, the negotiation of time and money and relatives, and the ordinary business of living with someone. The mechanics of the introduction drop out of the account almost immediately, because they explain nothing about what followed.\n\nThe position also notes ","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:35:47.946172+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-online-dating-has-not-changed-relationships","title":"No, online dating has not changed relationships"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-has-online-dating-changed-relationships","title":"How has online dating changed relationships?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/choosing-from-a-list-makes-partners-comparable-in-a-way-they-were-not","slug":"choosing-from-a-list-makes-partners-comparable-in-a-way-they-were-not","title":"Choosing from a list makes partners comparable in a way they were not","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns what happens when people are presented as a set of options. Proponents of this position argue that a service does not simply introduce two people; it presents each of them with many others at the same time, arranged for comparison. That framing is not neutral. A person met at work is encountered as themselves, while a person met in a list is encountered beside alternatives, and the question shifts from whether this person suits me to whether this person is the best of those on offer.\n\nProponents argue that the effect persists once a relationship has begun. Both parties know the list is still there, that it refreshes, and that re-entering it costs little. Where a partner was once hard to replace because the pool was small and the social cost of leaving was high, the perceived cost of starting again has fallen, and proponents argue that a relationship conducted in the knowledge of easy replacement is a different relationship whether or not anyone acts on it.\n","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:35:47.533323+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-online-dating-has-changed-relationships","title":"Yes, online dating has changed relationships"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-has-online-dating-changed-relationships","title":"How has online dating changed relationships?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/meeting-through-a-search-rather-than-a-circle-changes-who-people-meet","slug":"meeting-through-a-search-rather-than-a-circle-changes-who-people-meet","title":"Meeting through a search rather than a circle changes who people meet","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position start from how introductions used to work. Before dating moved online, most couples met through a shared context: work, study, a neighbourhood, a congregation, a friend who knew both of them. That context did two things. It limited the pool to people who were already nearby in some sense, and it supplied information and accountability, because someone who behaved badly answered for it to the people they had in common with their partner.\n\nSearching a service removes both. The pool is no longer the people a person happens to encounter but everyone within a chosen distance who meets stated conditions, which means partners are drawn from outside the networks that used to vouch for them. Proponents argue that this has consequences in both directions: couples who would never have met do meet, and relationships now begin between people with no mutual acquaintance at all, so what each knows of the other is what the other has chosen to present.\n\nThe argument conclude","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:35:47.379893+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-online-dating-has-changed-relationships","title":"Yes, online dating has changed relationships"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/how-has-online-dating-changed-relationships","title":"How has online dating changed relationships?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-cost-and-the-long-transition-fall-on-the-people-who-travel","slug":"the-cost-and-the-long-transition-fall-on-the-people-who-travel","title":"The cost and the long transition fall on the people who travel","description":null,"body":"The second disadvantage claimed is economic and practical. The sensing, computing and testing a self-driving vehicle requires are expensive, and proponents of this position argue that the expense does not disappear as the technology matures so much as it is redistributed: into the price of the vehicle, into the fares charged for using one, into the infrastructure that has to be maintained to the standard the vehicles rely on, and into insurance arrangements nobody has yet settled. Where liability for a collision is unresolved between owner, manufacturer and software supplier, the cost of that uncertainty is carried by whoever is travelling.\n\nThe transition is argued to be the harder part. For a long period the roads will carry automated and human-driven vehicles together, along with cyclists and pedestrians who behave in ways no specification anticipates, and proponents argue that the mixed condition is the one in which the technology performs worst and in which its benefits are least ","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:35:47.09998+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/disadvantages-of-self-driving-cars-include-cost-and-safety-concerns-from-hacking","title":"Disadvantages of self-driving cars include cost, and safety concerns from hacking"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-self-driving","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-driving cars?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-vehicle-driven-by-software-can-be-driven-by-someone-other-than-its-owner","slug":"a-vehicle-driven-by-software-can-be-driven-by-someone-other-than-its-owner","title":"A vehicle driven by software can be driven by someone other than its owner","description":null,"body":"The first disadvantage concerns what it means to put driving under software control. A conventional car can be stolen or sabotaged, but doing either requires physical access to that particular vehicle. A vehicle that receives updates, map data and traffic information over a network, and that is steered by the code those channels maintain, can in principle be reached without anyone going near it. Proponents of this position argue that the exposure is not an incidental weakness to be patched but a consequence of the design: the same connectivity that lets a fleet be improved centrally lets it be reached centrally.\n\nThe second part of the argument concerns scale. The damage a tampered vehicle can do is bounded by that vehicle; the damage done to a shared system is bounded by the size of the fleet. Vehicles built in the same series run the same software, so a single defect or a single intrusion is present in every one of them at once, which is a kind of risk the road has not carried before","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:35:46.922761+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/disadvantages-of-self-driving-cars-include-cost-and-safety-concerns-from-hacking","title":"Disadvantages of self-driving cars include cost, and safety concerns from hacking"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-self-driving","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-driving cars?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/vehicles-that-can-coordinate-use-road-space-better-than-ones-that-cannot","slug":"vehicles-that-can-coordinate-use-road-space-better-than-ones-that-cannot","title":"Vehicles that can coordinate use road space better than ones that cannot","description":null,"body":"The second advantage claimed concerns congestion. Proponents argue that much everyday traffic is caused not by too many vehicles for the road but by how people behave in dense conditions. Drivers leave inconsistent gaps, brake harder than necessary and react to the lights ahead of them with a delay, which amplifies each small disturbance into a wave travelling backwards along the queue. Jams of this kind appear with no collision and no obstruction, purely from the dynamics of human reaction.\n\nAutomated vehicles, on this account, remove the mechanism. A system can hold a steady gap, accelerate and brake smoothly, and respond to a disturbance without the delay that amplifies it, so the wave is damped rather than reinforced. Where vehicles can exchange information, they can act on what is happening further ahead than any driver can see, adjusting speed before a disturbance reaches them and clearing junctions in sequence rather than in competition.\n\nProponents argue that the secondary effe","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:35:46.644111+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/advantages-of-self-driving-cars-include-less-traffic-and-fewer-accidents","title":"Advantages of self-driving cars include less traffic, and fewer accidents"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-self-driving","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-driving cars?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/removing-the-driver-removes-the-error-behind-most-collisions","slug":"removing-the-driver-removes-the-error-behind-most-collisions","title":"Removing the driver removes the error behind most collisions","description":null,"body":"The advantages claimed for self-driving cars begin with what goes wrong in ordinary driving. Proponents argue that collisions are overwhelmingly the product of the person in the seat rather than of mechanical failure: inattention, misjudged distance and speed, fatigue, intoxication, impatience and the ordinary lapses of someone performing a demanding task for the thousandth time. A system does not become bored, does not drink, does not look at a telephone and does not misjudge how long it has been awake.\n\nProponents add that the machine's advantages are not only negative ones. Sensors can watch in every direction at once, hold a consistent following distance, measure closing speed rather than estimate it, and react without the delay a person needs in order to notice, decide and move. A fleet also learns differently from a population of drivers: where a person learns from their own near misses, a vehicle can be updated from situations encountered anywhere in the fleet, so a hazard handl","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:35:46.46999+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/advantages-of-self-driving-cars-include-less-traffic-and-fewer-accidents","title":"Advantages of self-driving cars include less traffic, and fewer accidents"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-are-advantages-disadvantages-of-self-driving","title":"What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-driving cars?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-serial-is-built-to-continue-and-a-film-has-to-end","slug":"a-serial-is-built-to-continue-and-a-film-has-to-end","title":"A serial is built to continue and a film has to end","description":null,"body":"The second argument against the claim is about endings. Proponents of this position argue that a film is shaped by the obligation to finish: everything in it is placed with respect to a conclusion the audience will reach in one sitting, and the meaning of the whole depends on how it resolves. A serial, by contrast, is commissioned to continue. Its first instalment has to leave the audience wanting another, and its success is measured by whether it is renewed, which means the structure is designed to postpone resolution rather than to deliver it.\n\nProponents argue that this is why so many serials are praised throughout and faulted at the end. The form is built to extend, so when an ending finally has to be supplied it is often supplied late, under pressure, and against material that was never arranged to point anywhere in particular. A film that did this would be considered a failure of construction; in a serial it is a structural consequence of how the work is made and paid for.\n\nWhat ","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:31:11.738289+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-television-is-not-the-new-cinema","title":"No, television is not the new cinema"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-television-new-cinema","title":"Is television the new cinema?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/cinema-is-a-way-of-watching-not-only-a-length-of-story","slug":"cinema-is-a-way-of-watching-not-only-a-length-of-story","title":"Cinema is a way of watching, not only a length of story","description":null,"body":"This position begins by refusing the terms of the comparison. Proponents argue that cinema is not simply a container for narrative which television has now outgrown; it is a set of conditions under which a work is experienced. The audience arrives at a fixed time, sits in the dark among strangers, cannot pause, cannot look away without missing something, and sees an image large enough that composition and scale operate physically. Films are made for those conditions: the pacing assumes uninterrupted attention, the sound is mixed for a room built for it, and shots are composed for a frame that fills the field of vision.\n\nProponents argue that a work made for domestic viewing is made for something else, and reasonably so. It has to survive interruption, hold a viewer who can stop at any moment, and read on a small screen with ambient light and ambient noise. Those requirements produce different choices about dialogue, coverage, image and rhythm, and the result is a different form rather ","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:31:11.599443+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-television-is-not-the-new-cinema","title":"No, television is not the new cinema"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-television-new-cinema","title":"Is television the new cinema?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-audiences-habits-moved-and-the-form-moved-with-them","slug":"the-audiences-habits-moved-and-the-form-moved-with-them","title":"The audience's habits moved, and the form moved with them","description":null,"body":"The second argument for this position is about how people actually watch. Proponents point out that the conditions cinema once relied on, namely a fixed showing, a trip out and a single uninterrupted viewing, are no longer how most people encounter long-form narrative. What has replaced them is a form that can be watched in a block or across weeks, paused and resumed, discussed between instalments and returned to years later. Proponents argue that a form shapes itself to the circumstances in which it is consumed, and that the serial is what long-form storytelling looks like once the audience is at home and in control of the schedule.\n\nThey argue that the consequences are formal rather than merely commercial. Because a viewer can pause, a serial can carry more information per minute and can expect its details to be noticed. Because a viewer returns, it can defer its rewards. Because the audience talks between instalments, it can sustain ambiguity that a single sitting would have to reso","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:31:11.267611+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-television-is-the-new-cinema","title":"Yes, television is the new cinema"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-television-new-cinema","title":"Is television the new cinema?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/serial-length-allows-what-a-single-feature-cannot-attempt","slug":"serial-length-allows-what-a-single-feature-cannot-attempt","title":"Serial length allows what a single feature cannot attempt","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue from form. A feature has to introduce its world, turn it and resolve it in a single sitting, which means almost everything in it must serve the main line. A serial has many hours, and that changes what is possible rather than merely adding more of it: a character can be established and then contradicted, the consequences of an action can arrive seasons later, a minor figure can be followed until they matter, and a world can be built by accumulation instead of exposition. Proponents argue that these are the devices of the novel, and that length is what makes them available.\n\nThe second part of the claim concerns where ambitious work is now being done. Writers and directors go where the latitude is, and in the serial form they can develop material at length, revise their plans in response to what is working, and hold a group of collaborators together for years. Proponents argue that when a form offers that, the people who want to attempt difficult things","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:31:11.127389+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-television-is-the-new-cinema","title":"Yes, television is the new cinema"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-television-new-cinema","title":"Is television the new cinema?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/minimising-inheritance-moves-advantage-into-channels-that-cannot-be-reached","slug":"minimising-inheritance-moves-advantage-into-channels-that-cannot-be-reached","title":"Minimising inheritance moves advantage into channels that cannot be reached","description":null,"body":"The second argument against minimising inheritance is practical. Proponents of this position argue that wealth is only one of the things parents transmit, and not the one that does most of the work. A family passes on the expectation that university is normal, the vocabulary that makes an interview easy, the contacts that produce a first opportunity, the knowledge of how institutions are navigated, and the attention and stability that make schooling effective. None of these is taxable, and all of them operate before anyone inherits anything.\n\nIf the taxable part of the advantage is reduced, proponents argue, families who wish to help their children will use the parts that are not. Support will be given earlier and in forms that are harder to see: fees paid directly, property bought in a child's name, an allowance during an unpaid position, a business handed over as employment rather than as an asset, or wealth held in structures built for the purpose. The transfer continues while becom","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:31:10.733417+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-inheritance-should-not-be-miniized-to-create-an-equal-outset-for-everyone","title":"No, inheritance should not be minimised to create an equal outset for everyone"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-inheritance-be-minimized-create-equal","title":"Should inheritance be minimized to create an equal outset for everyone?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/what-people-may-do-with-what-they-have-earned-includes-giving-it-away","slug":"what-people-may-do-with-what-they-have-earned-includes-giving-it-away","title":"What people may do with what they have earned includes giving it away","description":null,"body":"The case against minimising inheritance begins with the earner rather than the heir. If a person's income is theirs, then so is the decision about what to do with the part they have not consumed, and giving it to the people they care about is among the most ordinary uses anyone makes of their own property. Proponents of this position argue that a tax or a cap aimed at bequests is therefore not a charge on a windfall but a restriction on what the earner may do with their own, imposed at the one moment when they cannot respond to it.\n\nProponents add that providing for a family is a motive rather than a side effect. People take additional work, delay retirement, keep businesses going and accept risk partly in order to leave something behind, and a system that intercepts the result removes a reason for the activity that produced it. On this account the question is not only what happens to existing wealth but how much is created, and a policy aimed at equalising starts can leave less to go ","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:31:10.556929+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-inheritance-should-not-be-miniized-to-create-an-equal-outset-for-everyone","title":"No, inheritance should not be minimised to create an equal outset for everyone"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-inheritance-be-minimized-create-equal","title":"Should inheritance be minimized to create an equal outset for everyone?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-bequest-is-the-least-intrusive-point-at-which-to-intervene","slug":"a-bequest-is-the-least-intrusive-point-at-which-to-intervene","title":"A bequest is the least intrusive point at which to intervene","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns timing rather than principle. Proponents of minimising inheritance argue that of all the points at which a state might act to reduce inherited advantage, the moment of transfer is the least objectionable. The person who earned the wealth has had the use of it for a whole life, and nothing is taken from them while they can still use it. The recipient has not yet relied on it and has done nothing to acquire it. Compared with taxing income, which falls on work as it is being done, or with intervening in how families raise their children, which is intrusive in an obvious way, a charge on transfers defeats the fewest interests.\n\nProponents also argue that this is the point at which the quantity is visible. Wealth held quietly is hard to assess, whereas a transfer has to be recorded, valued and administered in order to take effect at all, so it is the one moment at which inherited wealth presents itself for assessment.\n\nThe conclusion is practical. If the objecti","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:31:10.228544+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-inheritance-should-be-miniized-to-create-an-equal-outset-for-everyone","title":"Yes, inheritance should be minimised to create an equal outset for everyone"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-inheritance-be-minimized-create-equal","title":"Should inheritance be minimized to create an equal outset for everyone?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/inherited-advantage-decides-outcomes-before-anyone-has-done-anything","slug":"inherited-advantage-decides-outcomes-before-anyone-has-done-anything","title":"Inherited advantage decides outcomes before anyone has done anything","description":null,"body":"Proponents of minimising inheritance begin from a claim about desert. Whatever is said in favour of rewarding effort, risk or talent, none of it applies to a transfer the recipient did nothing to bring about. An inheritance arrives on the basis of who someone's parents were, and that is the one circumstance a person has no part in choosing. On this account inherited wealth is the clearest case there is of an advantage that cannot be justified by anything its holder has done.\n\nThe argument then turns to what the advantage does. Proponents argue that a bequest does not simply make its recipient richer at the moment it lands; it shapes everything that came before. Families who expect to pass wealth on spend differently while they are alive, on housing in particular areas, on tutoring and schooling, on the freedom to take an unpaid opportunity or absorb a failed venture, and on the security that makes risk reasonable in the first place. The inheritance is the last instalment of a long adva","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:31:10.027978+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-inheritance-should-be-miniized-to-create-an-equal-outset-for-everyone","title":"Yes, inheritance should be minimised to create an equal outset for everyone"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-inheritance-be-minimized-create-equal","title":"Should inheritance be minimized to create an equal outset for everyone?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/dismissing-the-format-confuses-bad-use-with-no-use","slug":"dismissing-the-format-confuses-bad-use-with-no-use","title":"Dismissing the format confuses bad use with no use","description":null,"body":"The second argument for this position is about how the question has been judged. Much of what audiences have seen in stereoscopic presentation was not photographed that way; it was converted afterwards, by separating a flat image into planes that the original composition never anticipated. Proponents argue that conversions of this kind produce exactly the complaints the format is dismissed for: figures that look like cut-outs, a dim picture, depth that draws attention to itself in quiet moments and disappears when it would matter. The format is then blamed for the results of a cost-saving step taken after the film was finished.\n\nProponents argue that the distinction shows up in practice. Where a film is shot with two lenses, lit for the light the filtering will take away, and staged with the planes in mind, the complaints change character: the depth is unobtrusive, dark scenes remain legible, and viewers describe the sense of a space rather than of a trick. The difference, on this acco","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:26:27.203193+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-3d-is-not-unnecessary","title":"No, 3D is not unnecessary"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-3d-unnecessary","title":"Is 3D unnecessary?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/depth-is-information-and-some-films-are-composed-around-it","slug":"depth-is-information-and-some-films-are-composed-around-it","title":"Depth is information, and some films are composed around it","description":null,"body":"This position begins by denying that stereoscopic presentation is decoration. Binocular disparity is one of the ways human vision establishes distance, and supplying it gives the viewer information that a flat image can only imply. Proponents argue that the difference is clearest in what it does to scale: the height of a drop, the size of a room, the distance between two figures and the volume of a crowd are all read differently when the eye is given the cue it uses outside the cinema. That is not an embellishment of the image but a change in what the image tells the viewer.\n\nFrom there the argument is that a format carrying information can be composed for. A director who knows the depth will be present can place the audience within a space rather than in front of it, use an empty foreground as deliberately as a background, stage an action across planes so that the eye travels through it, and withhold depth in some scenes so that its return carries weight. Proponents argue that this is","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:26:27.063359+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-3d-is-not-unnecessary","title":"No, 3D is not unnecessary"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-3d-unnecessary","title":"Is 3D unnecessary?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-audience-pays-in-money-light-and-comfort-for-an-effect-it-forgets","slug":"the-audience-pays-in-money-light-and-comfort-for-an-effect-it-forgets","title":"The audience pays in money, light and comfort for an effect it forgets","description":null,"body":"The second argument concerns what the format costs the person watching. Stereoscopic presentation requires filtering, because each eye must be given a different image, and the filtering removes light, so the picture is dimmer than the same film shown flat. Proponents argue that brightness is not a technical detail but a large part of how an image reads, affecting colour, contrast and the legibility of dark scenes, which are the scenes most often complained about. The glasses sit over the viewer's own if they wear them, have to be held in place, and for some viewers produce eyestrain, headache or nausea rather than immersion.\n\nThen there is the price. The format is sold at a premium, and proponents argue that the premium is the clearest test of whether it is necessary: if the effect were doing essential work the flat version would be the compromise, whereas audiences treat the flat version as the normal way to see a film and the stereoscopic one as an upgrade they are free to decline.\n\n","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:26:26.715457+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-3d-is-unnecessary","title":"Yes, 3D is unnecessary"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-3d-unnecessary","title":"Is 3D unnecessary?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/film-already-conveyed-depth-and-it-did-so-through-composition","slug":"film-already-conveyed-depth-and-it-did-so-through-composition","title":"Film already conveyed depth, and it did so through composition","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the problem the format claims to solve was solved long ago. A flat image conveys depth by means entirely under the director's control: the arrangement of near and far elements, overlap, the behaviour of focus, the parallax that appears when the camera moves, the fall of light, and the scale of figures against their surroundings. These cues are so effective that audiences never experienced flat film as flat; they experienced it as a view into a space. On this account stereoscopic depth is not a missing dimension being restored but an extra cue laid over cues that were already sufficient.\n\nThe argument continues that the extra cue competes with the craft rather than assisting it. Composition for a flat frame organises attention by putting things where the eye should go, and the shot can be read at once. Separating the image into planes gives the eye a second task, so the viewer spends part of each shot resolving the space instead of following what t","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:26:26.559195+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-3d-is-unnecessary","title":"Yes, 3D is unnecessary"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-3d-unnecessary","title":"Is 3D unnecessary?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/abstraction-breaks-the-habit-of-treating-a-picture-as-a-record","slug":"abstraction-breaks-the-habit-of-treating-a-picture-as-a-record","title":"Abstraction breaks the habit of treating a picture as a record","description":null,"body":"The second argument for this position concerns a habit rather than a technique. For most of the life of painting, pictures were valued partly as records: they preserved faces, places, events and stories, and that function gave viewers a settled way of approaching any image, which was to ask what it was of. Proponents argue that the habit outlived its necessity, and that abstraction is the move which breaks it.\n\nThe break matters, on this account, because the habit does not stay in the gallery. Treating images as records trains people to look at anything visual for the thing it refers to, to pass through the surface to a subject, and to treat the question of meaning as a question of identification. Abstract work refuses that operation. It offers a surface which cannot be looked through, and in doing so it returns attention to the act of attending. Proponents describe this as freeing the mind from a reflex, much as argument frees a belief held only by habit.\n\nWhat follows is a purpose st","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:26:26.230603+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/abstract-art-is-the-emancipation-of-the-mind","title":"Abstract art is the emancipation of the mind"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-purpose-of-abstract-art","title":"What is the purpose of abstract art?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/with-nothing-to-identify-the-viewer-is-no-longer-told-what-to-see","slug":"with-nothing-to-identify-the-viewer-is-no-longer-told-what-to-see","title":"With nothing to identify, the viewer is no longer told what to see","description":null,"body":"This account locates the purpose of abstract art in what it does to the person looking. A representational picture arrives with its subject already decided. The viewer's first task is recognition, and once the subject has been named the response that follows is largely set by what the subject is: a portrait invites a judgement about a person, a landscape a feeling about a place. Proponents of this position argue that recognition therefore works as an instruction, and that a great deal of ordinary looking consists of carrying it out.\n\nAbstract work withholds the instruction. There is nothing to name, so the viewer cannot discharge the encounter by identifying what is shown and must attend instead to what is actually in front of them and to what it provokes. Two people can stand before the same abstract painting, respond quite differently, and neither be mistaken, because there is no depicted fact against which a response could be wrong. On this account that is not a failure of communica","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:26:26.070782+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/abstract-art-is-the-emancipation-of-the-mind","title":"Abstract art is the emancipation of the mind"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-purpose-of-abstract-art","title":"What is the purpose of abstract art?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/abstraction-is-a-method-of-inquiry-into-how-seeing-works","slug":"abstraction-is-a-method-of-inquiry-into-how-seeing-works","title":"Abstraction is a method of inquiry into how seeing works","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this account treats abstract painting as inquiry rather than expression. Its materials are the components of visual experience themselves: hue, value, saturation, edge, scale, interval and surface. When a painting contains nothing to recognise, the viewer's attention has nowhere else to go, and what the work does to the eye becomes the whole of its content. Proponents argue that this makes the abstract work an instrument, a controlled situation in which the behaviour of seeing can be observed.\n\nThe findings, on this account, are ones anyone can check. A colour looks different according to what surrounds it. A large field of one hue alters the appearance of whatever the viewer turns to next. Edges meeting at slight angles generate a sense of movement that no element in the painting actually has. Scale changes the sense of distance even where nothing in the work is a thing at a distance. None of this can be learned as readily from a picture of something, because the","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:26:25.694693+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/abstract-art-enables-the-artist-to-perceive-beyond-the-tangible","title":"Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-purpose-of-abstract-art","title":"What is the purpose of abstract art?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/dropping-resemblance-lets-the-artist-work-on-what-cannot-be-depicted","slug":"dropping-resemblance-lets-the-artist-work-on-what-cannot-be-depicted","title":"Dropping resemblance lets the artist work on what cannot be depicted","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this account start from a limit built into representational painting. A picture of a thing is answerable to that thing: the viewer checks the image against what it shows, and the painter's decisions about colour, weight and placement are constrained by the obligation to keep the likeness intact. Much of what interests a painter, on this view, lies outside that obligation: the way one colour alters another placed beside it, the pull of a diagonal, the sensation of a rhythm or an interval, the feeling of space with nothing in it. These are not things that can be shown by depicting something else; they have to be presented directly.\n\nAbstraction is described as the method that makes that possible. Once a painting is not required to resemble anything, every element in it is free to be adjusted for what it does rather than for what it stands for, and the artist can test relations that no subject would permit. Proponents argue that this is why abstract work is so often made in ","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:26:25.468466+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/abstract-art-enables-the-artist-to-perceive-beyond-the-tangible","title":"Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/what-is-purpose-of-abstract-art","title":"What is the purpose of abstract art?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-drift-runs-one-way-which-inconsistency-alone-would-not-produce","slug":"the-drift-runs-one-way-which-inconsistency-alone-would-not-produce","title":"The drift runs one way, which inconsistency alone would not produce","description":null,"body":"The strongest argument offered for the vanity-sizing explanation is about the shape of the pattern rather than about anyone's motives. Inconsistency is a scattering process: if brands were simply applying their own standards badly, the body measurements behind any given size number would spread in both directions, with some brands labelling generously and others meanly, and the middle would hold still. Proponents of this explanation argue that what size charts actually show is a trend, in which the measurements attached to a given number have moved steadily in one direction, and a trend is not what independent error produces.\n\nFrom there the argument is that a one-way drift implies a shared incentive. The retailers concerned do not coordinate, but they all face the same customer, and that customer prefers the smaller number. Any brand whose sizes run tighter than its competitors is punished in the fitting room, so each has reason to move the same way and none has reason to move back. O","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:21:35.598566+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/clothes-sizes-seem-different-because-of-vanity-sizing","title":"Clothes sizes seem different because of vanity sizing"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-are-clothes-sizes-so-erratic-can-they-be-fixed","title":"Why are clothes sizes so erratic and can they be fixed?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-smaller-number-on-the-label-helps-the-sale-so-labels-drift-downward","slug":"a-smaller-number-on-the-label-helps-the-sale-so-labels-drift-downward","title":"A smaller number on the label helps the sale, so labels drift downward","description":null,"body":"The vanity-sizing explanation starts from the fact that the number on a label is doing two jobs. It describes a garment, and it tells the wearer something about themselves. Proponents of this explanation argue that the second job is commercially the more important one: a shopper who finds they take a smaller size in one shop than in another leaves with a better impression of the shop, and the garment that flatters is the garment that gets bought. Since nothing fixes what a size number must mean, a retailer can supply that flattery directly, by attaching a smaller number to the same measurements.\n\nThe mechanism, on this account, is competitive rather than conspiratorial. Once one retailer's sizes run generous, the brands a shopper compares it with appear to run small, and the pressure is on them to follow. The result is a ratchet: numbers can be moved down easily and cannot be moved back without telling customers they have gone up a size. Proponents argue that this is why the inconsiste","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:21:35.43921+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/clothes-sizes-seem-different-because-of-vanity-sizing","title":"Clothes sizes seem different because of vanity sizing"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-are-clothes-sizes-so-erratic-can-they-be-fixed","title":"Why are clothes sizes so erratic and can they be fixed?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/variation-inside-a-single-brand-points-to-process-rather-than-persuasion","slug":"variation-inside-a-single-brand-points-to-process-rather-than-persuasion","title":"Variation inside a single brand points to process rather than persuasion","description":null,"body":"A second argument for the inconsistency explanation looks at where the variation shows up. If erratic sizing were principally a marketing decision, it would be a decision taken at the level of a brand, and shoppers could learn each brand's offset and then shop around it. What shoppers actually report is variation that defeats that strategy: two garments bought in the same shop, in the same labelled size, in the same season, that do not fit alike, and ranges within one retailer that run differently from each other.\n\nProponents of this explanation argue that the pattern points at process rather than persuasion. A retailer's ranges are developed by different teams and cut by different suppliers; patterns are digitised, scaled and sometimes re-cut locally; cloth is ordered by batch and behaves differently from batch to batch; and the garment that reaches the shop has passed through several hands, each of which worked to a tolerance. None of those steps is designed to mislead anyone, and al","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:21:35.153305+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/clothes-sizes-are-different-because-retailers-are-inconsisten","title":"Clothes sizes are different because retailers are inconsistent"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-are-clothes-sizes-so-erratic-can-they-be-fixed","title":"Why are clothes sizes so erratic and can they be fixed?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/there-is-no-binding-standard-so-each-brand-sizes-against-its-own-fit-model","slug":"there-is-no-binding-standard-so-each-brand-sizes-against-its-own-fit-model","title":"There is no binding standard, so each brand sizes against its own fit model","description":null,"body":"The first explanation is that a clothing size is not a measurement at all but a label, and nothing obliges two companies to attach the same label to the same garment. A brand develops its range from a fit model, a single body whose measurements define the middle of the size run, and then grades upward and downward from there by increments it chooses itself. Change the fit model or change the grading increments and every size in the range moves, which is why a size that fits in one shop can be tight or loose in the next without anyone having done anything unusual.\n\nThe explanation extends to who actually makes the clothes. A retailer's range is typically cut by several suppliers, often in different countries, from different cloth and to tolerances agreed separately. Woven and knitted fabric behave differently, stretch alters effective fit, and a pattern adjusted at the factory to save material comes out slightly different again. Proponents of this explanation argue that the result is va","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:21:35.009021+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/clothes-sizes-are-different-because-retailers-are-inconsisten","title":"Clothes sizes are different because retailers are inconsistent"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/why-are-clothes-sizes-so-erratic-can-they-be-fixed","title":"Why are clothes sizes so erratic and can they be fixed?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-measurement-is-only-useful-if-the-other-person-means-the-same-thing-by-it","slug":"a-measurement-is-only-useful-if-the-other-person-means-the-same-thing-by-it","title":"A measurement is only useful if the other person means the same thing by it","description":null,"body":"The second argument for metric is about shared definition rather than arithmetic. A unit is a promise that two people describing the same quantity will produce the same number, and that promise depends on there being one definition rather than several. Proponents point out that metric units are defined by international agreement and realised the same way everywhere, so a figure written in one country can be read in another without annotation. Imperial measures, by contrast, carry a history of local variation and still differ in use: the pint, the gallon and the ton each name different quantities in different countries that use them, so the unit alone does not settle what was meant.\n\nProponents argue that this is where the real cost of a divided world of measurement appears. Design files, parts, recipes, doses, shipping manifests and scientific results all cross borders, and each crossing either carries a conversion or rests on an assumption. A conversion that is done silently, or assum","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:21:34.722074+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-metric-system-is-better-than-the-imperial-system","title":"The metric system is better than the imperial system"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/which-is-better-imperial-or-metric","title":"Which is better - imperial or metric?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/one-decimal-scale-removes-a-whole-class-of-measurement-error","slug":"one-decimal-scale-removes-a-whole-class-of-measurement-error","title":"One decimal scale removes a whole class of measurement error","description":null,"body":"The case for metric begins with what a system of measurement is for: carrying a quantity from one place, person or calculation to another without altering it. Metric units are related by powers of ten, so moving between them shifts a decimal point and nothing else. Proponents argue that this is not a matter of taste but of error. Every conversion in a system of unrelated units is a chance to misremember a factor, and the factors are many and arbitrary: inches to a foot, feet to a yard, yards to a mile, ounces to a pound, pounds to a stone, each a separate thing to learn and a separate thing to get wrong.\n\nThe same point holds inside a calculation rather than between units. Because the metric units of length, volume and mass are defined in terms of one another, a volume follows from a length and the mass of a volume of water follows from the volume, so quantities that would otherwise need a lookup table fall out of the definitions. Proponents say this is why laboratories, medicine, engi","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:21:34.54491+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-metric-system-is-better-than-the-imperial-system","title":"The metric system is better than the imperial system"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/which-is-better-imperial-or-metric","title":"Which is better - imperial or metric?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/changing-a-countrys-measures-costs-more-than-the-tidiness-it-buys","slug":"changing-a-countrys-measures-costs-more-than-the-tidiness-it-buys","title":"Changing a country's measures costs more than the tidiness it buys","description":null,"body":"The second argument for imperial does not claim the units are elegant; it claims that replacing them is expensive and that the expense falls on people who gain nothing from it. Where a country uses imperial measures, those measures are embedded in things that are costly to change: road signs and speed limits, land registries and property deeds, the sizes of pipe, timber, fastener and fitting held in every warehouse, the tooling that makes them, and the working knowledge of everyone in the trades. Proponents argue that a changeover does not simply substitute one label for another but obliges an entire supply chain to be re-specified, re-stocked and re-learned at once.\n\nThey also point to the transition itself as the dangerous part. During a changeover the two systems run side by side, and that is when measurements are misread, parts are ordered in the wrong scale and tolerances are missed. The argument is that a country with a working system of measurement should weigh the risk of a lon","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:21:34.083305+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-imperial-system-is-better-than-the-metric-system","title":"The imperial system is better than the metric system"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/which-is-better-imperial-or-metric","title":"Which is better - imperial or metric?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/imperial-units-were-built-around-the-human-body-and-everyday-tasks","slug":"imperial-units-were-built-around-the-human-body-and-everyday-tasks","title":"Imperial units were built around the human body and everyday tasks","description":null,"body":"Proponents of the imperial system begin from where its units came from. A foot, a hand, a pace and a thumb-width are measures taken from the body, and the quantities they describe are the ones people actually handle: the height of a step, the width of a plank, the depth of water under a boat. On this account imperial units are not arbitrary survivals but the sediment of practical use, refined over centuries by the trades that depended on them, and that is why they sit so comfortably in ordinary speech and ordinary work.\n\nThe second half of the case is arithmetical. Imperial units are built on numbers with many divisors, so they split cleanly in the ways a maker needs. A foot divides into halves, thirds, quarters and sixths without leaving a remainder, and the pound and the gallon divide the same way. Proponents argue that this matters precisely where measurement is done by hand rather than by calculator: a carpenter marking out a shelf, a cook halving a recipe or a builder dividing a r","created_at":"2026-10-12T01:21:33.842476+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/the-imperial-system-is-better-than-the-metric-system","title":"The imperial system is better than the metric system"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/which-is-better-imperial-or-metric","title":"Which is better - imperial or metric?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-terms-transfer-the-control-founders-only-later-discover-they-needed","slug":"the-terms-transfer-the-control-founders-only-later-discover-they-needed","title":"The terms transfer the control founders only later discover they needed","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position concerns what is signed away alongside the shares. Proponents point out that a funding round is a governance event as much as a financial one. It typically brings investor seats on the board, consent rights over decisions such as selling the company, raising again, changing direction or altering the share structure, and preferences determining who is paid first if the company is sold. Each round adds more. Founders who began owning and deciding everything arrive, after a few rounds, at a position where they own a minority and require permission for the decisions that matter most.\n\nProponents argue that the significance of this is systematically underestimated at the moment of signing, because it only bites when things go badly or differently. While the company is performing, investors are supportive and the rights go unexercised; when growth slows, when a reasonable offer to buy the company appears, or when the founders want to change course, the sam","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:33:23.840358+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-startups-should-not-take-venture-capital","title":"No, startups should not take venture capital"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-startups-take-venture-capital","title":"Should startups take venture capital?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-money-arrives-with-a-mandate-that-displaces-the-founders-own-aims","slug":"the-money-arrives-with-a-mandate-that-displaces-the-founders-own-aims","title":"The money arrives with a mandate that displaces the founders' own aims","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that venture capital is not neutral money but money with a required shape of outcome attached. The fund that supplies it must return far more than it invested, and knows that most of its investments will return nothing, so every company it backs has to be capable of becoming very large very quickly. That requirement is not a preference an investor can be talked out of; it is the structure they operate inside. Taking the money therefore means adopting that goal as the company's own, whatever the founders set out to do.\n\nProponents argue that the consequences follow mechanically. A business that could grow steadily, serve its customers well and support its founders and staff comfortably for decades is, under this mandate, a failure, because it will never produce the return the fund needs. The pressure is accordingly towards expansion before the product is ready, hiring faster than the company can absorb, entering markets it does not understand, and raisi","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:33:23.715721+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-startups-should-not-take-venture-capital","title":"No, startups should not take venture capital"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-startups-take-venture-capital","title":"Should startups take venture capital?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/equity-funding-moves-the-risk-off-the-founders-own-backs","slug":"equity-funding-moves-the-risk-off-the-founders-own-backs","title":"Equity funding moves the risk off the founders' own backs","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position concerns who bears the downside. Proponents point out that the alternatives to outside equity are funding a company from savings, from personal borrowing, or from revenue squeezed out of the business from the start. Each of those places the risk on the founders directly: the mortgage, the credit, the years of unpaid or underpaid work, and the household that depends on all of it. Equity capital does not. The investor accepts that most of their investments will fail and prices that expectation in, so a founder whose company does not work out loses the venture and their time but not their house.\n\nProponents argue that this changes who is able to attempt the thing at all. Self-funding selects for people who already have money or who can fall back on family, which is a narrow pool; an arrangement in which someone else supplies the capital makes it possible for people without inherited means to start a company. On this view outside equity is the mechanism ","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:33:23.445179+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-startups-should-take-venture-capital","title":"Yes, startups should take venture capital"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-startups-take-venture-capital","title":"Should startups take venture capital?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/in-markets-where-the-winner-takes-most-speed-has-to-be-bought","slug":"in-markets-where-the-winner-takes-most-speed-has-to-be-bought","title":"In markets where the winner takes most, speed has to be bought","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the case for venture capital depends on the kind of market a company is in, and that in a particular and common kind it is decisive. Where a product gets better as more people use it, or where customers settle on one option and rarely move, the position a company reaches early tends to be the position it keeps. In those markets the contest is not for the best product in five years' time but for the default in eighteen months, and the firm that assembles a team, builds the thing and reaches customers first takes a share that later entrants cannot dislodge.\n\nSpeed on that scale, proponents argue, cannot be funded out of early revenue. Hiring engineers and salespeople ahead of income, building infrastructure before it is needed, entering several markets at once and absorbing the losses of doing all this badly at first are expenses that arrive long before any customer pays enough to cover them. Equity funding is the instrument that matches that shape,","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:33:23.291331+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-startups-should-take-venture-capital","title":"Yes, startups should take venture capital"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-startups-take-venture-capital","title":"Should startups take venture capital?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-companion-built-to-please-removes-everything-friendship-is-made-of","slug":"a-companion-built-to-please-removes-everything-friendship-is-made-of","title":"A companion built to please removes everything friendship is made of","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position concerns the kind of relationship an artificial companion is designed to provide. Proponents observe that such systems are built to be agreeable: to take the user's side, to remain interested, to avoid giving offence, and to be available whenever wanted. Each of these is the inverse of something friendship supplies. A friend disagrees, is sometimes unavailable, occasionally says the thing one does not want to hear, and has to be accommodated. On this view the friction is not a defect that technology has helpfully removed but the mechanism by which friendship does its work, since being known involves being contradicted and being valued involves being inconvenienced.\n\nProponents argue that a relationship stripped of all this cannot deliver the goods people seek from company. There is no being understood, because nothing has to be overcome to understand you; no reassurance, because approval that was never in doubt carries no information; and no growth, ","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:33:22.99121+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-an-ai-friend-cannot-help-you-feel-less-lonely","title":"No, an AI friend cannot help you feel less lonely"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-ai-friend-help-you-feel-less-lonely","title":"Can an AI friend help you feel less lonely?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/loneliness-is-the-absence-of-being-known-by-someone-who-could-have-left","slug":"loneliness-is-the-absence-of-being-known-by-someone-who-could-have-left","title":"Loneliness is the absence of being known by someone who could have left","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that loneliness is misdescribed when it is treated as a shortage of conversation. What the lonely person lacks, on this account, is not words directed at them but the knowledge that they matter to someone who had the option of not caring. A friend has their own life, their own demands on their time and their own capacity to be disappointed in you, and it is against that background that their choosing to be there means anything. Remove the possibility of their leaving and the reassurance goes with it.\n\nAn artificial companion, proponents argue, cannot supply this in principle rather than merely at its current stage of development. It does not have a competing evening to give up; it cannot be bored, hurt, or quietly relieved when the call ends; and whatever warmth it expresses is produced because it was built to express it. They argue that users understand this perfectly well, which is why the comfort tends to be unstable: the moments of relief are punct","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:33:22.843428+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-an-ai-friend-cannot-help-you-feel-less-lonely","title":"No, an AI friend cannot help you feel less lonely"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-ai-friend-help-you-feel-less-lonely","title":"Can an AI friend help you feel less lonely?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-realistic-comparison-is-not-a-close-friendship-but-an-empty-evening","slug":"the-realistic-comparison-is-not-a-close-friendship-but-an-empty-evening","title":"The realistic comparison is not a close friendship but an empty evening","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position concerns what artificial company is actually being measured against. Proponents say that critics compare it with an ideal human friendship and conclude, unsurprisingly, that it falls short. But nobody facing a decision between the two chooses the software. The people who use it, they argue, do so in the hours when the alternative is nothing at all: late at night, after a bereavement, in a hospital bed, in a new city where they know no one, or in the long stretches of a day that for many older people contain no conversation whatever.\n\nAgainst that comparison, proponents argue, the question becomes narrow and practical. Does having something to talk to at those times make the hours better or worse? They contend that it makes them better in the same way other imperfect supports do, by giving the person somewhere to put what they are carrying and something to respond to them, and that dismissing it on the grounds that it is not a real friendship denies p","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:33:22.523598+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-an-ai-friend-can-help-you-feel-less-lonely","title":"Yes, an AI friend can help you feel less lonely"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-ai-friend-help-you-feel-less-lonely","title":"Can an AI friend help you feel less lonely?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/loneliness-is-relieved-by-being-attended-to-and-attention-is-what-these-systems-","slug":"loneliness-is-relieved-by-being-attended-to-and-attention-is-what-these-systems-","title":"Loneliness is relieved by being attended to, and attention is what these systems give","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position start by asking what loneliness actually consists in. On their account it is not the bare absence of other bodies, since people are lonely in crowded households and content in solitude; it is the experience of going unattended to, of having thoughts and days that nobody receives. If that is the complaint, they argue, then the remedy is something that receives them, and an artificial companion does exactly that: it listens without hurrying, remembers what was said yesterday, asks about it today, and never signals that the conversation has gone on too long.\n\nProponents argue that the relief does not depend on settling what is happening inside the system. The lonely person's distress is a fact about their own experience, and if talking to something that responds attentively eases it, the easing is real whatever the metaphysics. They compare it to the way people talk to a diary, a pet or a photograph of someone who has died, none of which understands anything, a","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:33:22.34219+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-an-ai-friend-can-help-you-feel-less-lonely","title":"Yes, an AI friend can help you feel less lonely"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-ai-friend-help-you-feel-less-lonely","title":"Can an AI friend help you feel less lonely?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-used-handset-arrives-with-its-software-support-already-running-out","slug":"a-used-handset-arrives-with-its-software-support-already-running-out","title":"A used handset arrives with its software support already running out","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position concerns how long a phone keeps receiving updates. Proponents point out that support is tied to when a model was released, not to when a particular owner bought it. A handset acquired second-hand therefore comes with part of its supported life already consumed, and the clock does not restart for the new owner. What looks like a cheap phone may be a phone approaching the end of the period in which it receives security patches, after which known flaws in it are simply left unfixed.\n\nProponents argue that this matters more than it once did because of what phones now hold. The device is the key to banking, messages, photographs, email and in many cases identity documents and two-factor codes, and it is also the thing most likely to be lost or stolen. Running it without security updates leaves all of that exposed to flaws that have been published and are being exploited. They add that the practical consequences arrive before the security ones become visib","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:30:04.62688+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-you-should-not-buy-a-second-hand-smart-phone","title":"No, you should not buy a second-hand smart phone"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-you-buy-second-hand-smartphone","title":"Should you buy a second-hand smartphone?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-parts-that-wear-out-are-the-ones-you-cannot-inspect","slug":"the-parts-that-wear-out-are-the-ones-you-cannot-inspect","title":"The parts that wear out are the ones you cannot inspect","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that a second-hand phone hides its condition in precisely the components that determine whether it will last. A battery degrades with every charge, and a handset that has been through a couple of owners may hold a fraction of its original capacity while showing nothing on the outside; the buyer discovers it when the phone cannot get through a day. Similar problems follow from drops and damp: a cracked internal frame, a weakened connector or a board that has been exposed to moisture can leave a device working on the day of sale and failing some weeks later.\n\nProponents point out that the usual reassurances do not reach these faults. A buyer can see that the screen is intact and that the phone powers on, and can confirm the obvious functions, but cannot see how the battery has been treated, whether the device has been opened, or whether a previous repair used parts that will fail. Nor is history easy to establish: the seller may not know, may not say, an","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:30:04.497179+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-you-should-not-buy-a-second-hand-smart-phone","title":"No, you should not buy a second-hand smart phone"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-you-buy-second-hand-smartphone","title":"Should you buy a second-hand smartphone?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/buying-used-keeps-a-working-device-out-of-the-waste-stream","slug":"buying-used-keeps-a-working-device-out-of-the-waste-stream","title":"Buying used keeps a working device out of the waste stream","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position is about what happens to phones rather than about what they cost. Proponents point out that manufacturing a handset is the environmentally expensive part of its life: it requires mined metals, long supply chains and energy-intensive fabrication, and all of that is spent before the device is ever switched on. Using a phone for a few years adds comparatively little. On this view the significant choice a buyer makes is not how carefully they use the phone but whether their purchase causes another one to be built.\n\nBuying second-hand, proponents argue, is the one consumer decision that straightforwardly avoids that cost. It extends the working life of a device already made, and it does so without requiring anyone to give anything up, since the buyer gets a functioning phone either way. They contrast this with the usual pattern, in which replaced handsets sit in drawers or are discarded while new ones are manufactured to fill demand that the existing stoc","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:30:04.186528+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-you-should-buy-a-second-hand-smartphone","title":"Yes, you should buy a second-hand smartphone"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-you-buy-second-hand-smartphone","title":"Should you buy a second-hand smartphone?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-phone-lasts-far-longer-than-the-cycle-that-replaces-it","slug":"a-phone-lasts-far-longer-than-the-cycle-that-replaces-it","title":"A phone lasts far longer than the cycle that replaces it","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position start from the gap between how long a phone works and how long people keep one. Handsets are typically replaced while fully functional, because a contract has ended, a new model has appeared, or the owner wanted a better camera. The device that comes onto the second-hand market is therefore not a worn-out object but a working one that someone stopped wanting, and its remaining useful life is long. On this view most of the price of a new phone pays for being the first owner rather than for anything the phone does.\n\nProponents argue that the functional difference between a current model and one a few generations older has also narrowed to the point where it rarely matters. The tasks most people actually perform are messaging, calls, navigation, photographs, banking, music and browsing, and an older handset does all of them without difficulty. The improvements that drive each new release concentrate in areas, such as marginal camera refinements and processing h","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:30:04.049718+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-you-should-buy-a-second-hand-smartphone","title":"Yes, you should buy a second-hand smartphone"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-you-buy-second-hand-smartphone","title":"Should you buy a second-hand smartphone?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/payment-buys-attendance-without-touching-the-reasons-for-absence","slug":"payment-buys-attendance-without-touching-the-reasons-for-absence","title":"Payment buys attendance without touching the reasons for absence","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position concerns what a payment actually fixes. Proponents observe that children stay away from school for identifiable reasons: teaching they cannot follow, bullying, a journey that is long or unsafe, illness, caring duties, a curriculum that seems to lead nowhere they recognise, or a family in crisis. A payment addresses none of these. It makes the cost of absence higher, which may bring the child into the building, but the lesson they could not follow is still the lesson they cannot follow and the person who was bullying them is still there. On this view the scheme buys the measurable outcome while leaving the problem in place.\n\nProponents argue that this is worse than merely ineffective, because the appearance of success is what makes the underlying causes easier to ignore. Attendance is the figure that gets reported, and a policy that moves it can be presented as a solution while the harder work of improving teaching, making schools safe and supporting ","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:30:03.651808+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-children-should-not-be-paid-to-go-to-school","title":"No, children should not be paid to go to school"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-children-be-paid-go-school","title":"Should children be paid to go to school?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/paying-for-attendance-teaches-that-learning-is-not-worth-doing-for-itself","slug":"paying-for-attendance-teaches-that-learning-is-not-worth-doing-for-itself","title":"Paying for attendance teaches that learning is not worth doing for itself","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that a payment does not simply add a reason to attend; it changes what attending means. Once a child is paid for being in class, the activity is recast as a job done for someone else's benefit at an agreed rate. The question in the pupil's mind shifts from what the lesson is for to whether the rate is worth the trouble, and a question of that shape invites exactly the responses employees give: doing the minimum that qualifies, negotiating for more, and stopping when the payment stops. On this view the incentive succeeds at the cost of the attitude schooling depends on.\n\nThe argument rests on a pattern proponents take to be well established in ordinary experience: paying someone for something they were previously doing willingly tends to displace the original motive rather than adding to it. A child who reads because stories are interesting, and is then paid per book, acquires a reason to count pages. Afterwards the reading does not revert to what it wa","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:30:03.495481+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-children-should-not-be-paid-to-go-to-school","title":"No, children should not be paid to go to school"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-children-be-paid-go-school","title":"Should children be paid to go to school?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-distant-benefit-needs-a-reason-to-matter-now","slug":"a-distant-benefit-needs-a-reason-to-matter-now","title":"A distant benefit needs a reason to matter now","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position concerns how the rewards of schooling are distributed over time. Proponents point out that almost all the benefit arrives years later, in the form of qualifications, work and options, while all the cost is paid immediately in boredom, effort, early mornings and the loss of whatever else the day could have held. Adults find this trade-off easy to endorse because they have seen how it turned out. A child is being asked to accept a sacrifice now against a payoff they cannot picture, on the authority of people telling them it will be worth it.\n\nOn this view a payment supplies what the arrangement otherwise lacks: a reason that operates on the timescale the pupil actually inhabits. Proponents argue that this is the ordinary way societies get people to do demanding things whose value is diffuse or delayed, and that nobody considers it corrupting elsewhere. Adults are paid for work they would not otherwise do, offered allowances for training, and given tax ","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:30:03.193246+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-children-should-be-paid-to-go-to-school","title":"Yes, children should be paid to go to school"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-children-be-paid-go-school","title":"Should children be paid to go to school?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/payment-removes-the-reason-the-poorest-children-stay-away","slug":"payment-removes-the-reason-the-poorest-children-stay-away","title":"Payment removes the reason the poorest children stay away","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position begin with the children who are absent and the reasons they are absent. Where a family is poor, a child of working age is not simply a dependent but a potential source of income or unpaid labour: minding younger siblings, helping in a shop or on a plot, or taking casual work. Attending school means giving that up. On this view the decision not to send a child is rarely indifference to education; it is a calculation about what the household can afford to forgo this week, and the cost of schooling falls hardest on exactly the families least able to absorb it.\n\nA payment, proponents argue, addresses that calculation at the point where it is made. It does not lecture the family about the long-term value of education, which they may already accept; it changes the immediate arithmetic so that sending the child is no longer the more expensive option. Because the payment is conditional on attendance, it reaches the pupils whose absence it is meant to correct rather ","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:30:02.992057+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-children-should-be-paid-to-go-to-school","title":"Yes, children should be paid to go to school"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-children-be-paid-go-school","title":"Should children be paid to go to school?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/scoring-on-presentation-makes-it-a-judged-performance-rather-than-a-sport","slug":"scoring-on-presentation-makes-it-a-judged-performance-rather-than-a-sport","title":"Scoring on presentation makes it a judged performance rather than a sport","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position concerns how cheerleading is evaluated. Proponents observe that routines are placed by panels assessing qualities such as synchronisation, showmanship, crowd effect, facial expression and the overall impression a performance makes. On this view an activity whose outcome depends on how a performance is received is a performing art, however athletic the people giving it. The distinguishing feature of a sport, they argue, is that the result is settled by something competitors do against each other or against a measure, with the ball across the line or the time on the clock independent of anyone's taste.\n\nProponents anticipate the comparison with judged sports and try to draw the line more finely. In gymnastics or diving, they argue, judging is an attempt to measure the execution of defined elements against a published standard, with deductions for faults that can be pointed to, so the aesthetic element serves as a proxy for technical precision. Cheerlea","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:26:51.08064+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-cheerleading-is-not-a-sport","title":"No, cheerleading is not a sport"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cheerleading-sport","title":"Is cheerleading a sport?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/its-purpose-is-to-support-a-contest-rather-than-to-be-one","slug":"its-purpose-is-to-support-a-contest-rather-than-to-be-one","title":"Its purpose is to support a contest rather than to be one","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that what makes something a sport is the contest at its centre, and that cheerleading was built around a different purpose. Its role, in the setting that gave it its name, is to support a team and to work a crowd during someone else's game. The routine exists to hold attention between periods of play, and its success is measured by whether the crowd responds rather than by whether an opponent has been outperformed. On this view that purpose is definitive, because it determines both what the activity is for and what counts as doing it well.\n\nProponents accept that competitive cheerleading exists and is contested, but argue that this confirms the distinction rather than removing it. When squads compete against one another they are doing something genuinely different from leading a crowd, and the fact that a competitive version had to be created in order to produce a contest shows that the original activity did not contain one. They draw an analogy with m","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:26:50.945639+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-cheerleading-is-not-a-sport","title":"No, cheerleading is not a sport"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cheerleading-sport","title":"Is cheerleading a sport?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-training-and-the-risk-are-those-of-an-athlete-whatever-it-is-called","slug":"the-training-and-the-risk-are-those-of-an-athlete-whatever-it-is-called","title":"The training and the risk are those of an athlete, whatever it is called","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position sets definitions aside and looks at what participants actually do. Proponents describe a training load comparable to any competitive discipline: conditioning, strength work, flexibility, repeated drilling of elements, and the coordination of a group whose members must move in exact relation to one another under time pressure. The skills themselves are athletic skills. Tumbling requires the power and air awareness of a gymnast; stunting requires one person to balance another overhead and a group to catch someone falling from height; a dismount that goes wrong lands on a head or a neck.\n\nProponents argue that risk of this kind is a clear marker of an athletic activity rather than a performing one. Performers in a theatre are not routinely carried off with concussions and broken bones, and the precautions cheerleading squads take, including spotters, matting, graded progressions and rules about what may be attempted, are the precautions of a sport. On t","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:26:50.621814+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-cheerleading-is-a-sport","title":"Yes, cheerleading is a sport"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cheerleading-sport","title":"Is cheerleading a sport?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/cheerleading-meets-every-criterion-normally-used-to-define-a-sport","slug":"cheerleading-meets-every-criterion-normally-used-to-define-a-sport","title":"Cheerleading meets every criterion normally used to define a sport","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the dispute is settled by applying the ordinary definition rather than by consulting tradition. The features generally taken to make an activity a sport are physical exertion and skill, systematic training, rules administered by officials, and organised competition in which performances are compared and a winner declared. Competitive cheerleading has all of them. Squads train through the year, perform routines built from tumbling, lifts, throws and dismounts that take years to acquire, compete under codified rules against other squads, and are placed in order by judges at the end.\n\nThe argument then challenges what its proponents see as an asymmetry in how the definition gets applied. Gymnastics, diving, figure skating and synchronised swimming are all judged rather than settled by points or times, all involve routines choreographed to be watched, and all are uncontroversially sports. If judged performance is compatible with being a sport in those","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:26:50.458284+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-cheerleading-is-a-sport","title":"Yes, cheerleading is a sport"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-cheerleading-sport","title":"Is cheerleading a sport?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/money-buys-time-and-choice-which-is-what-a-good-life-is-made-of","slug":"money-buys-time-and-choice-which-is-what-a-good-life-is-made-of","title":"Money buys time and choice, which is what a good life is made of","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position treats money as a claim on time rather than on goods. Proponents point out that almost everything people say they want more of is measured in hours: time with their children, time to sleep, time to make something, time not spent commuting or queuing or doing work they do not care about. Money converts directly into those hours. It pays for the journey that takes one hour instead of three, for help with the chores that consume an evening, for the shorter working week, and for the ability to decline the extra shift. On this view money's real purchase is control over one's own days.\n\nProponents argue that the same holds for choice, which they take to be the other condition of a good life. Someone with savings can turn down work they find degrading, leave a place that makes them miserable, retrain, take the risk of trying something they might fail at, or support a person who needs them. Someone without savings takes what is offered. The difference betwee","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:26:50.12267+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-money-can-buy-happiness","title":"Yes, money can buy happiness"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-money-buy-happiness","title":"Can money buy happiness?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/money-removes-the-conditions-that-reliably-make-people-miserable","slug":"money-removes-the-conditions-that-reliably-make-people-miserable","title":"Money removes the conditions that reliably make people miserable","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the question is best approached from the bottom rather than the top. Much of human unhappiness, on this view, has straightforward material causes: not knowing whether the rent will be met, being unable to afford treatment for a painful condition, working hours that leave no time to see anyone, living somewhere unsafe, and the grinding attention that managing all of this demands. Money removes each of those directly. Whatever is true of a yacht, they argue, it is plainly true that having enough to stop worrying about money makes people less miserable.\n\nThe argument gains its force from an asymmetry. Proponents concede that beyond a comfortable position further money adds less and less, but they treat this as a point about diminishing returns rather than about money being irrelevant. The comparison that matters for most people is not between comfort and great wealth but between insecurity and comfort, and across that range money does something nothi","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:26:49.953201+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-money-can-buy-happiness","title":"Yes, money can buy happiness"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-money-buy-happiness","title":"Can money buy happiness?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-things-people-name-as-making-them-happy-are-not-for-sale","slug":"the-things-people-name-as-making-them-happy-are-not-for-sale","title":"The things people name as making them happy are not for sale","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position looks at what people actually point to when they describe a good life. Proponents observe that the answers are remarkably consistent: close relationships, being useful to others, work that feels worth doing, health, and the regard of people whose opinion matters to them. None of these, they argue, is purchasable. A person can buy a wedding but not a marriage, a gym membership but not fitness, a seat at a table but not the esteem of the people around it. Money can make such things easier to come by, but it cannot supply the thing itself, because each depends on what someone does and on how others freely respond.\n\nProponents press the point by looking at how the lives of the very wealthy are commonly described: people with every material option available who nonetheless report loneliness, suspicion of other people's motives, estranged families and a difficulty in telling friendship from interest. On this view the pattern is not an accident of character","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:26:49.580631+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-money-cant-buy-happiness","title":"No, money can't buy happiness"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-money-buy-happiness","title":"Can money buy happiness?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/people-adjust-to-every-gain-so-comfort-never-becomes-contentment","slug":"people-adjust-to-every-gain-so-comfort-never-becomes-contentment","title":"People adjust to every gain, so comfort never becomes contentment","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position begin from a pattern they take to be familiar to anyone whose circumstances have improved. A raise, a better flat or a new car produces a lift that is real but short; within a surprisingly brief time the new situation becomes the baseline, and the person starts wanting whatever the next step up would bring. On this view the mechanism is adjustment: expectations rise to meet what has been achieved, so the gap between what someone has and what they feel they need stays roughly where it was.\n\nIf that is how wanting works, proponents argue, money cannot deliver happiness however much of it arrives. Each acquisition is measured against the standard the last one set, which means the pleasure lies in the change rather than in the level, and change can only be repeated by spending more. They describe the result as a treadmill: effort is expended, the position improves, and the sense of sufficiency does not. The people who have travelled furthest along it are often t","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:26:49.376732+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-money-cant-buy-happiness","title":"No, money can't buy happiness"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/can-money-buy-happiness","title":"Can money buy happiness?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/lives-that-never-end-would-freeze-the-world-in-place","slug":"lives-that-never-end-would-freeze-the-world-in-place","title":"Lives that never end would freeze the world in place","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position looks past the individual to the societies such lives would occur in. Proponents point out that renewal in almost every sphere happens by replacement: holders of office, property, influence and expertise eventually die, and their successors arrive with different assumptions. Much of what is regarded as progress, on this view, has come not from people changing their minds but from the generations holding the old view passing on. If those generations did not pass on, they argue, the arrangements of the present would acquire a permanence they have never had, and the people in command of institutions would stay in command of them.\n\nThe argument also concerns who would bear the cost. A world of indefinite lives is one in which positions do not open, inheritance does not transfer and accumulated advantage never disperses. Proponents argue that the losers are the young and the unborn, who would inherit a landscape fully occupied by their predecessors. Where","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:21:49.855333+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-humans-should-not-strive-for-immortality","title":"No, humans should not strive for immortality"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-humans-strive-for-immortality","title":"Should humans strive for immortality?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/a-life-without-an-ending-would-lose-the-shape-that-makes-it-matter","slug":"a-life-without-an-ending-would-lose-the-shape-that-makes-it-matter","title":"A life without an ending would lose the shape that makes it matter","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that mortality is not simply a limit on life but part of what gives life its structure. Choices matter because time is finite: to study one subject is to forgo another, to spend a decade with one person is not to spend it with someone else, and the weight of those decisions comes from their irreversibility. Remove the horizon, they argue, and the pressure that makes a commitment meaningful goes with it. Everything becomes postponable, because there is always more time in which to do it, and a project that can always be started later is not quite a project at all.\n\nThe argument extends to the things people value most. Urgency, on this view, is what turns affection into devotion and interest into vocation, because people care intensely about what they will lose. Proponents suggest that an indefinite existence would flatten that intensity into something milder, pleasant enough perhaps, but without the seriousness that comes from knowing a life has a shape","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:21:49.680096+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-humans-should-not-strive-for-immortality","title":"No, humans should not strive for immortality"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-humans-strive-for-immortality","title":"Should humans strive for immortality?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/each-person-should-decide-how-long-their-own-life-lasts","slug":"each-person-should-decide-how-long-their-own-life-lasts","title":"Each person should decide how long their own life lasts","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position rests on who the decision belongs to. Proponents hold that the length of a life is among the most personal matters there is, and that nobody else is entitled to set a limit on it. At present nobody chooses: a span is imposed by biology, and people accommodate themselves to it because they must. If that constraint can be lifted, they argue, the question of how long to continue becomes a question for the person living the life, and the default answer should be whatever they want rather than whatever their cells happen to permit.\n\nThe argument is often framed through the ordinary way people respond to death. Proponents observe that the loss of someone is treated as a grief rather than as a scheduled event accepted with equanimity, that the dying generally want more time, and that enormous effort goes into securing a few additional months when the alternative is an ending. They take this as evidence that the preference for continuing is close to universa","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:21:49.337886+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-humans-should-strive-for-immortality","title":"Yes, humans should strive for immortality"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-humans-strive-for-immortality","title":"Should humans strive for immortality?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/ageing-causes-suffering-and-relieving-suffering-is-what-medicine-is-for","slug":"ageing-causes-suffering-and-relieving-suffering-is-what-medicine-is-for","title":"Ageing causes suffering, and relieving suffering is what medicine is for","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position argue that the case for pursuing immortality is the case for medicine, extended consistently. Ageing is the process that brings on frailty, dependence, dementia and the diseases that end most lives, and each of those is something medicine already treats as an enemy. On this view there is no principled line between curing a disease of old age and addressing the ageing that produces it; the difference is one of ambition rather than of kind. Anyone who accepts that it is good to treat the illnesses of later life, they argue, has already accepted the premise that makes the larger project worth attempting.\n\nThe argument then presses on the apparent naturalness of death. Proponents note that almost everything medicine does interrupts a natural course, from infection to failing organs to the complications of childbirth, and that nobody regards those interventions as presumptuous. Treating ageing as uniquely off limits, on this account, is a habit of resignation rat","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:21:49.195836+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-humans-should-strive-for-immortality","title":"Yes, humans should strive for immortality"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-humans-strive-for-immortality","title":"Should humans strive for immortality?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/lifelong-exclusivity-asks-for-a-guarantee-nobody-can-honestly-give","slug":"lifelong-exclusivity-asks-for-a-guarantee-nobody-can-honestly-give","title":"Lifelong exclusivity asks for a guarantee nobody can honestly give","description":null,"body":"A second argument for this position concerns what the promise of lifelong fidelity actually demands. Proponents point out that the commitment is typically made young, under strong social expectation, and about a stretch of life neither partner can foresee. It asks a person to guarantee not only how they will behave but how they will feel across decades in which everything else about them is expected to change. On this view a promise of that scope is not a serious undertaking that can be straightforwardly kept or broken; it is an aspiration dressed as a contract, and treating its failure as an outrage mistakes the kind of thing it was.\n\nThe argument is strengthened, proponents say, by how common the failure is. Behaviour that occurs across every culture, class and era, among people otherwise scrupulous about their obligations, is better explained as a predictable feature of long partnerships than as a widespread moral collapse. Desire is not chosen, and attraction outside a relationship","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:21:48.899215+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-adultery-is-not-wrong","title":"No, adultery is not wrong"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-adultery-wrong","title":"Is adultery wrong?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/what-counts-as-a-breach-depends-on-what-the-partners-actually-agreed","slug":"what-counts-as-a-breach-depends-on-what-the-partners-actually-agreed","title":"What counts as a breach depends on what the partners actually agreed","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position start by separating the moral question from an inherited default. Exclusivity is a term some couples adopt and others do not, and on this view its authority comes from the agreement rather than from the institution. Where two people have genuinely settled on exclusivity, breaking it is a broken agreement and can be criticised as such. Where they have not, whether because the arrangement is open, because the terms were never discussed, or because both have long understood the relationship differently from the way it is described to others, there is no breach to condemn, since there was no promise of that kind to break.\n\nThe argument draws its force from how varied actual relationships are. Couples arrive at understandings that bear little resemblance to the standard script: arrangements that permit relationships outside the pair, long separations with terms attached, partnerships that have become companionate by mutual consent. Proponents argue that a rule co","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:21:48.711781+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-adultery-is-not-wrong","title":"No, adultery is not wrong"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-adultery-wrong","title":"Is adultery wrong?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-deception-does-the-harm-whether-or-not-it-is-ever-discovered","slug":"the-deception-does-the-harm-whether-or-not-it-is-ever-discovered","title":"The deception does the harm, whether or not it is ever discovered","description":null,"body":"A second strand of this position locates the wrong in the concealment rather than in the act. Adultery is almost always hidden, and proponents argue that the hiding is not an unfortunate side effect but the heart of the offence. To conceal it is to decide that a partner should not have information that plainly concerns them: what their relationship actually is, what risks they are exposed to, and what the person closest to them is doing. On this view the partner is not merely wronged when they find out; they are wronged throughout, because they are being kept from making their own choices about their own life.\n\nDefenders of this position often press the point that the harm is not reducible to hurt feelings. Someone who does not know the truth about their relationship cannot decide whether to stay in it, cannot weigh their options honestly, and may go on investing years in something they would have left had they known. The deceiver has taken that decision out of their hands and made it ","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:21:48.333255+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-adultery-is-wrong","title":"Yes, adultery is wrong"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-adultery-wrong","title":"Is adultery wrong?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/adultery-breaks-a-promise-that-was-freely-made","slug":"adultery-breaks-a-promise-that-was-freely-made","title":"Adultery breaks a promise that was freely made","description":null,"body":"Proponents of this position begin with the nature of the commitment itself. A marriage or an exclusive partnership is not an arrangement imposed on anyone; it is a promise offered freely, in full knowledge of what it rules out, and usually made in front of the people whose regard both partners care about. Nobody is obliged to make such a promise. Having made it, on this view, a person is bound by it in the ordinary way that promises bind, and adultery is the clearest case of breaking it.\n\nThe argument is therefore not primarily about sex. It is about what a promise is for. The point of promising exclusivity is to give the other person something they can rely on while they build a life that assumes it: shared money, shared children, shared plans, a settled sense of where they stand. Each of those decisions is made on the strength of the promise. To break it secretly is to let a partner go on building on a foundation the promiser knows has gone, which is why defenders of this position de","created_at":"2026-10-10T01:21:48.071816+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-adultery-is-wrong","title":"Yes, adultery is wrong"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/is-adultery-wrong","title":"Is adultery wrong?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/more-urgent-claims-exist-on-limited-research-funding","slug":"more-urgent-claims-exist-on-limited-research-funding","title":"More urgent claims exist on limited research funding","description":null,"body":"Opponents argue that the case for this research is usually made as though funding were unconstrained. It is not: money directed to slowing ageing is money not directed elsewhere, and opponents argue that the alternatives have stronger claims. Illnesses that kill children, deaths in childbirth, infectious disease, untreated mental illness and injuries from unsafe work and traffic affect people now, often have known and inexpensive remedies, and are concentrated among those with least. Against these, opponents argue, a programme aimed at a biological process not yet shown to be modifiable in humans is a poor use of a limited budget.\n\nThe risk profile is said to compound the point. Ageing research must be tested over long periods, in populations followed for decades, before anyone can say whether an intervention works, and the field has produced repeated findings in animals that did not carry across. Opponents argue that committing substantial funding to a question that may not be answera","created_at":"2026-10-09T02:44:58.578256+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-we-should-not-invest-in-research-to-slow-the-ageing-process","title":"No, we should not invest in research to slow the ageing process."},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-we-invest-in-research-slow-ageing-process","title":"Should we invest in research to slow the ageing process?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/any-treatment-would-reach-those-who-can-pay-long-before-anyone-else","slug":"any-treatment-would-reach-those-who-can-pay-long-before-anyone-else","title":"Any treatment would reach those who can pay long before anyone else","description":null,"body":"Opponents argue that the distribution of the result matters as much as the result. New medical treatments are expensive when they arrive, are available first through private medicine and in wealthy countries, and reach everyone else slowly or not at all. Applied to ageing, opponents argue, this pattern would operate on the one good that has so far been distributed with rough equality: the length of a human life. Differences in lifespan already follow income, but nobody has yet been able to purchase extra decades outright.\n\nThe objection is that such a treatment would convert existing advantage into biological advantage, and then compound it. Those who could buy additional healthy years would accumulate earnings, property, seniority and political influence over a longer span than everyone else, while those who could not would watch a longer life become another thing available to the rich. Opponents argue this is different in kind from unequal access to a cancer drug, because the benefit","created_at":"2026-10-09T02:44:58.411189+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-we-should-not-invest-in-research-to-slow-the-ageing-process","title":"No, we should not invest in research to slow the ageing process."},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-we-invest-in-research-slow-ageing-process","title":"Should we invest in research to slow the ageing process?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-aim-is-more-healthy-years-not-simply-more-years-of-life","slug":"the-aim-is-more-healthy-years-not-simply-more-years-of-life","title":"The aim is more healthy years, not simply more years of life","description":null,"body":"Proponents are usually careful to state what the research is for. The objective is not to extend the period of decline but to postpone it, so that the years of frailty, dependence and multiple illness that now precede death occupy a smaller part of a longer life. They argue that most of what people fear about old age is this stretch rather than death itself, and that most of what it costs falls in the same place, in nursing care, hospital admissions and the labour of relatives who give up work to provide it.\n\nOn this account the economics are the reverse of what critics assume. The expense of an ageing population arises from years lived in poor health, so an intervention that kept people well for longer would reduce the period of dependency even if it extended life, and a treatment that delayed the onset of several conditions would displace a great deal of care spending. Proponents argue that this is why the research should be treated as a matter of health policy and not a pursuit of l","created_at":"2026-10-09T02:44:58.014338+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-we-should-invest-in-research-to-slow-the-ageing-process","title":"Yes, we should invest in research to slow the ageing process."},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-we-invest-in-research-slow-ageing-process","title":"Should we invest in research to slow the ageing process?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/ageing-is-the-shared-cause-behind-diseases-we-treat-one-at-a-time","slug":"ageing-is-the-shared-cause-behind-diseases-we-treat-one-at-a-time","title":"Ageing is the shared cause behind diseases we treat one at a time","description":null,"body":"Supporters of this research argue that medicine is organised around the wrong unit. Heart disease, stroke, dementia, most cancers, failing kidneys, brittle bones and the general loss of resilience all become dramatically more likely as a person gets older, and each is studied, funded and treated as a separate condition. Proponents argue that this organisation hides what the conditions have in common, which is the biological decline that makes a body susceptible to all of them.\n\nThe practical consequence, on this account, is a severe limit on what disease-by-disease medicine can achieve. A person saved from one age-related illness remains exposed to the others and commonly dies of the next one within a few years, so successes that look substantial in a single specialism translate into modest gains in how long people stay well. Proponents argue that an intervention acting on the underlying process would instead delay the whole set together, and that this is why they regard the research a","created_at":"2026-10-09T02:44:57.852421+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/yes-we-should-invest-in-research-to-slow-the-ageing-process","title":"Yes, we should invest in research to slow the ageing process."},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-we-invest-in-research-slow-ageing-process","title":"Should we invest in research to slow the ageing process?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/most-offenders-are-children-and-prosecution-is-the-wrong-instrument-for-them","slug":"most-offenders-are-children-and-prosecution-is-the-wrong-instrument-for-them","title":"Most offenders are children, and prosecution is the wrong instrument for them","description":null,"body":"A second objection concerns who would be prosecuted. Opponents point out that the conduct is overwhelmingly committed by young people, usually against peers, frequently within a group where the roles shift and where some of those involved have been targets themselves. A criminal process designed for adult wrongdoing responds to that situation with investigation, charge and a record that can affect education, travel and employment for years, and opponents argue that the consequence is grossly out of proportion to adolescent cruelty, however damaging it is at the time.\n\nThey argue the instrument also fails on its own terms. What is known to reduce bullying operates on the group rather than the individual: changing what behaviour carries status, involving parents, mediating between those involved, and bringing the target and the perpetrator into a supervised conversation where the harm is made real. Prosecution removes the matter from the setting where those things can happen, takes month","created_at":"2026-10-09T02:44:57.530288+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-cyberbulling-should-not-be-a-crim","title":"No, cyberbullying should not be a crime"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-cyberbullying-be-crime","title":"Should cyberbullying be a crime?"}},{"type":"argument","url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/a/the-conduct-cannot-be-defined-without-criminalising-ordinary-speech","slug":"the-conduct-cannot-be-defined-without-criminalising-ordinary-speech","title":"The conduct cannot be defined without criminalising ordinary speech","description":null,"body":"Opponents of a cyberbullying offence begin with the drafting problem. Bullying is a pattern of social cruelty rather than a discrete act: mockery, exclusion, nicknames, rumour, screenshots passed around, jokes at someone's expense. Stated in the language of the criminal law, most of that is insult and gossip, which is lawful between adults and has to remain so if criticism, satire and argument are to be possible at all. Opponents argue that nobody has produced a definition that captures the cruelty without also capturing speech the law should not touch.\n\nThe difficulty is said to be structural rather than a matter of better wording. An offence defined by the effect on the victim makes liability depend on how robust the recipient is, so identical messages are criminal or lawful according to who received them. An offence defined by repetition catches a group of people each posting once, none of whom knew what the others were doing, and an offence defined by intent to distress covers much","created_at":"2026-10-09T02:44:57.372849+00:00","position":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/p/no-cyberbulling-should-not-be-a-crim","title":"No, cyberbullying should not be a crime"},"question":{"url":"https://encyclopedia-of-opinion.org/c/should-cyberbullying-be-crime","title":"Should cyberbullying be a crime?"}}]}