Instigator / Pro
2
1543
rating
8
debates
75.0%
won
Topic
#1429

TH, as the UN, would not pursue an investigation to find and prosecute Kira, and would allow the rise of a new world.

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Winner
2
0

After 2 votes and with 2 points ahead, the winner is...

Exile
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Winner selection
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
0
1294
rating
75
debates
18.0%
won
Description

INFO SLIDE: In the crime ridden world of 2020, someone of high intellect finds a mysterious notebook that falls from the sky one day. The notebook is said to contain the power to kill anyone by writing someone's full name while visualizing their face, and after 60 seconds that person dies of a heart attack or another cause of death that is otherwise noted at the time of writing. Eventually, this person takes upon the vigilante role as Kira, and sets out to kill numerous high-profile domestic criminals, before eventually targeting international criminals and felons, in the hopes to create a better, new world for all.

RULES:
- Rounds will go as follows:
R1: Opening statements
R2: First rebuttals
R3: Second rebuttals
R4: Closing statements (no new information or rebuttals allowed)
- Terms/sources will be used with respect of the anime and NOT the manga.
- Knowledge of the anime is not required but is recommended. Expect spoilers and difficulty arguing against this motion.
- This debate is supposed to be fun, so be sure to have fun!

By agreeing to contend this debate, you agree to the rules and will have read the info slide. Not adhering to the rules will cost you a conduct point.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:

This voter is not familiar with the anime "Death Note."

PRO describes a totalitarian fantasy of epic proportions- a single anonymous individual's judgement is substituted for all the legal systems and scholarship and courts and police in the world. Crime and criminality is not defined but this all powerful super-assassin best guess seems to be the only definition of crime that matters and the judgement of criminal applies to most of the world, apparently. PRO offers a world where one anonymous individual has the power and self-justification to kill without discretion or oversight or checks and balances and actually defends this world as preferable to the (presumably) democratic and processes of the United Nations.

PRO seems to presume that Kira would necessarily be successful in suppressing crime, ignoring the scale of the problem. Even if Kira takes no time for criminal investigation, forensics, witness interviews, mitigating circumstances and just devotes all 243,000 minutes of the average person's waking life to killing people he is pretty sure are bad guys, that's only a few hundred thousand criminals dead in a world that's chock full of criminals. PRO compares the crime plague to the Black Plague so let's say 50%- 3,750,000,000 individual criminals. Best case, PRO's ubermurderer can take out 6 one-thousanths of 1% of the criminal problem. What's PRO's plan for the rest of the criminals? Who vets Kira's definition of crime. What if Kira thinks not wearing a hat is a crime or not shaving a beard? Who would tell Kira he's wrong?

Obviously, the world's response to an anonymous sniper who kill by face and name would be to stop naming people, changing and covering faces. The human response to an anonymous tyrant is counter-anonymity.

This voter hates the world PRO describes and his hideously anti-democratic superhero. I suppose all superheroes are anti-democratic to a profound degree, Nietzsche's superman=ubermensch=" Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" (Kill Bill's contemptuous superman speech) but PRO's notion of justice is deeply depressing

NEVERTHELESS,

This is PRO's game. PRO made the rules. This VOTER agrees with just about every argument CON makes but CON's argument fail to engage PRO's set up. R1, CON argues that PRO's fiction does not reflect the real world which is true but breaks the dynamic of a hypothetical discussion. R2 argues that superheros are unnecessary antidotes to crime. Again true but not engaged. R3 and R4 correctly call the whole dynamic dangerous but never bothers to get into why.

PRO set up a fairly arguable hypothetical situation that CON fails to discuss. So argument to PRO as well as conduct- CON did not follow PRO's reasonable debate format

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:

Interpreting the resolution:
The generic world government would be better served by not seeking to prosecute the wielder of the Death Note

Gist:
Con dropped pro’s argument to run a K, but the K missed the target leaving pro’s six major points wholly uncontested.

Suspension of disbelief
The first sentence in the description informs us what basis things are assumed to happen in. Arguing that the world should not have acted against Kira in 2019, doesn’t touch on the crime ridden world of 2020 in which this debate is focused.

Arguments:
Some credit to con for engaging in the debate without just copy/pasting lines from sources. However, the crime data he cited from 2018 and 2017 is grossly outdated, we could not have predicted the crime wave that was to start in October 2019! That those changes worked for awhile, did not stop the criminals; it’s like con is struck in the past...

I do generally agree with con that we should deal with poverty (and ideally not by means of the Death Note), and train better police. Pro even built into his case that Kira might just stop one day, and implied we should press our advantage.

A good counter case could have focused on Kira needlessly targeting police officers, and possibly the corruption of power clearly manifested in the uncontrolled criminal activity around the world... Heck even a ‘we should take it for ourselves, and use it to end poverty’ would have been at least potentially valid (if still unlikely to win).

Conduct:
“the hypothetical world you created in your brain is silly so is a book you can right names in” unwilling to engage in the debate as agreed, and insulting the very foundation of it, merits the penalty.