Instigator / Pro
2
1417
rating
158
debates
32.59%
won
Topic
#2330

If you could easily modify your life to become perfect, you should not do it

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...

seldiora
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
5,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Winner selection
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
0
1480
rating
1
debates
0.0%
won
Description

Assume you are granted limitless power with regards to your own life, and can make your life perfect, without errors, as good as can possibly be, while using very little effort ("with a single click", as I can I BB would say)

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

First I should state that I wouldn't hesitate to press the button.

Pro does a very good job pointing out the damage to other people's freedoms, which the very risk of ethically means someone ought to not press the button. Con does ok defending this, but he just misses the mark a little by insisting on the errors as part of perfection (they certainly help build toward improvement, but are not perfection in themselves). At the same time, I like what con says would be perfection to him; it is however not the perfection I would assume the average person would seek.

I can't get the impacts to other people out of my head... Even as someone who sides with pro, I realize that my perfect life would include a certain perfect someone; and the perfection would not allow them to ever voice if they would rather be somewhere else with someone else. So I would do it, but I should not.

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

Both PRO and CON seem to agree on the framing that "life is about the journey, not the destination." PRO argues that this means having a "perfect life" is like being at the destination with nowhere to go, and CON says there is plenty to go for from there. My question as a voter is: what? What is there to go for? If we are defining "perfect" as "having everything you want in life fulfilled," I really don't understand how CON can argue there is any more to gain from it in terms of taking a "journey."

What CON really needed to do was reframe the entire discussion and argue that "having nowhere to go is not a bad thing. In fact, it's exactly where we should aspire to be."

As for the arguments regarding other people, as a voter I buy that a creating a "perfect life" could entail changing other people who are actively involved in that life. What I don't buy is the idea that creating a perfect life for yourself means that you are able to affect the world outside of your social circle. As for this argument, I am also giving this to PRO, because while I do like the argument CON presents (that people can use their ability to help those in their immediate circle) I find that using it to alter the life of someone else in a distasteful way to be all too likely of a scenario.