Instigator / Pro
12
1417
rating
158
debates
32.59%
won
Topic
#2310

If All human brains can share knowledge in one second, then they should do it

Status
Finished

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

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
9
Better sources
6
6
Better legibility
3
3
Better conduct
3
3

After 3 votes and with 9 points ahead, the winner is...

MisterChris
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
21
1762
rating
45
debates
88.89%
won
Description

let there be some magic that allows all humans to share knowledge in a telepathic manner, occurring within one second. The other person can memorize this instantly and understand the concept as well as the sharer. Knowledge: facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. I support this magic.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

In R1 once the "all humans knowledge" point was raised, my mind went to the overload problem. I do not consider this twisting anything, due to pro bringing up the all secrets instantly revealed bit.

CAPACITY
The Scientific America source had a huge impact. Limited storage space, and too many people in the world. Pro defends that not all memory is import to us to be worth storing, and the storage usage is variable, so declares the limited storage is not a problem... Suffice to say, I don't buy that; even more since we don't know the consequences of overload, but when applied to the whole human race, I don't need to wait for anyone to tell me that's scary. Let's see, con defends, calls pro's arguments that the magic would make it all fine special pleading...

HARMFUL EXCEPTIONS
Very good point, highlighted with the nuke codes (some secrets are best kept secret... as much as I don't for even a moment believe there would be success at using nuclear weapons, it still raises a point of the types of dangers). Pro has a good defense here that access to all human knowledge would change people, but my mind jumps to the problem of loss of autonomy. Pro then undermines his own point by declaring we would not get the feelings, which if true would mean terrorists would have the knowledge without changed feelings to tamper them (note, I fail to see how you would get the skills without the related feelings, PTSD is a learned skill more than anything, an awful one, but still a skill; anyway no feelings are only hoped for, not assured). Pro does get to a really good point that more educated people commit less crime, to which con basically insults the point, then goes back to his cybercriminals point since not all crime would end.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

PRO's thesis is gigantic, untestable, unknowable. He assumes universal knowledge sharing would beget wisdom and solve problems without really explaining why.

CON does a nice job of demonstrating the impracticality of the proposal- capacity, exploitation of secrets, the dissemination of trauma, the incitement of conflicts. This voter is less persuaded by the arrogance and dullness of perfect knowledge arguments (after all there is plenty more of the universe to discover and be humbled by) but PRO never challenges these so let's push these two.

PRO counters capacity arguments with undefined magic, which CON correctly trashes as special pleading.

PRO counters exploitation and conflict with an interesting argument linking education to less crime. Unfortunately, CON has already discussed nuclear launch codes which takes us right to CON's test- if there's even one person who (even on some mentally ill impulse) could use that knowledge to end the world then the universality of PRO's program fails.

For this voter, trauma is the most persuasive argument although neither side gets down to whether two year olds are ready to experience the memories of holocaust survivors or relive the memories of the actresses in two girls, one cup. PRO argues that EXPERIENCE is somehow separate from INFORMATION but that is both absurd and moving the goalposts substantially.
Whether or not experience is emotional it is nevertheless information. PRO now wants to separate experience to segregate out trauma but his terms clearly stated experience as included in the share and in truth, I don't think separating learning from associated emotion is possible.

PRO never really why universal sharing automatically solves problems like world hunger. 1 in 8 Americans went hungry this past summer but that wasn't due to any lack of food or information. The principles deciding to escalate WW1 or Viet-Nam generally understood that they were making a terrible mistake but made that mistake anyway. Oppenheimer believed that the end of the world was one small probability outcome of the first nuclear test but he took that chance anyway. Trump understood that COVID was the worst epidemic in American's memory but deliberately exacerbated the spread in the hopes of improving his election chances. Information is not wisdom or good judgement, those characteristics require deep empathy, a quality that PRO wishes to exclude from his hypothetical.

Args to CON.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

It is made clear who won.
R1-P1:
PRO lists possible benefits to sharing knowledge: catching crime, and solving big problems.
R1-C1:
CON brings up how the human mind does not have memory to store that much information, thus somehow overloading the brain, which is obviously detrimental. CON also brings up how it is detrimental to world security, a very valid point. Then CON brings up traumatic experiences also a valid point. I don't believe that any of the other points were going to benefit CON as much as these, it is lucky that CON spread his attention to these contentions in the later rounds.
R2-P2:
All of PRO's rebuttals to CON's memory argument are based off the special pleading fallacy, thus making it invalid. PRO attempts to refute the traumatic experiences point, and mainly ignores the world security. His refute towards traumatic experiences is that feelings aren't knowledge, which is false. His other refute against world security is that just because people know something doesn't mean that there are going to do it. That may be true in some cases, but because there is still murder, genocide, and robbery in this world, we know for a fact that there are exceptions.

At this point, all of PRO's refutes that he tries to make are invalid. It is a lost cause for PRO as his rebuttal is not solid enough, leading to an argument by CON