Instigator / Pro
7
1387
rating
34
debates
22.06%
won
Topic
#244

The user known as Wylted should commit suicide.

Status
Finished

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

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
6
Better sources
4
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
1
2

After 2 votes and with 7 points ahead, the winner is...

RationalMadman
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
5
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
4,001
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
14
1697
rating
556
debates
68.17%
won
Description

This debate is about whether I should kill myself. I am pro, that I should kill myself, my opponent is against me doing so. I ask that voting is fair and based on who argued better. There is a temptation that because I am arguing in favor of killing myself, that voting against me will encourage me not to. I assure you, that you have no influence on my decision. Just vote fair. I'm also requesting that my opponent has an IQ of 120 or above (as officially tested) not by online tests pandering to you in an attempt to get you to buy your "full results".

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:

Round 1:

Pros argument in the first round is that he is a terrible person, and it would be better for everyone else if he goes.

Cons response, is pretty clear: and is effectively that this may have been true up to now, but is not necessarily true: pro could be better and do better.

I felt this fully decided pros initial point.

1:0 con

The next round, pro focuses on his specific effects: his carbon footprint being a net negative, his fiancé not being able to replace him while he is alive, and that he isn’t helping starving children in Africa.

Con points out that pro is ignoring the positive impact of his life, and not providing an argument as to why one outweighs the other. While that is a good argument, as pro offered additional specific examples, I felt that con needed to give answers in return. But as he attacks the form of pros premise: that he is unfairly weighting life and not life - I can’t give pro the win on this round, and must score it a draw.

Con 2: 1

Round 3. Pro doesn’t seem to offer any additional argument or justification for the contention. He focuses on talking about himself, and poor decisions, and impact: but fails to explain why these events and actions necessitate or warrant him killing himself.

Con, having spent time being Pros counseller, despite saying not he wasn’t continues in this vein: despite pro making clear he is arguing whether he should, rather than whether he wanted to. However, after 90% of the round, he drops the killer argument again: this time phrasing it much better. The scenarios where suicide occurs are suboptimal as pro is measuring value based on past actions, not potential. That is a killer argument and wins this round.

Con 3:1

Round 4.

Pro again continues to throw the same argument out - that he’s done bad things without justifying the debate contention. Indeed it’s not clear how most of this fourth round is relevant to the debate topic at hand, and is more self-flaggelation for no debate purpose.

Con reiterates his position of suboptimality.

From this point on pro offers no new arguments and so con wins on arguments.

Conduct to con: this is a shitty troll topic, and the very debate contention denigrates this whole website, and is a childish attempt at attention. It shouldn’t even be up here - the very nature of this debate existing and the topic is so troll like that it warrants conduct loss to pro for posting it in the first place.

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 his opening arguments, Pro takes a two pronged approach to building his argument. On the one hand, he argues that he is a bad person, citing his job in fast food as making people fat, a vehicular accident in which a thief was killed, the poor upbringing of himself and his siblings, and his estranged son. The second prong of his opening argument is the hypothetical benefits of dying, on which he mainly focuses on him being unable to cause anymore harm and the possibility that his fiance may receive an insurance pay-out as a result of his death if he is able to fake a murder or accident.

Con made a rebuttal of several of these points. In a generic response to all points, Con insists that the negative events experienced by Pro have made him a better person. In specific response to the fast food point, Con asserts that Pro's job is still better than an illegal job such as drug dealing, and provides a positive economic benefit to society. Most prominently however, Con emphasizes that Pro being hard on himself is a way in which he can excel and be a better person in the future.

Pro's round 2 rebuttal starts by asserting that Pro didn't give him any reason to stay alive and "dropped" the point about the wellness of his family. Pro infers that his family would be better if he were "replaced" by someone better, and again suggests killing himself for the insurance money. He cites a website about saving starving children and claims to be responsible for their death by not sending all his money to them. Then he cites an article about copycat suicides and suggests that he could fight global warming by convincing other people to kill themselves too. Pro seems not to notice the obvious contradiction here that you can't both fake an accidental death for insurance money and inspire copycat suicides at the same time.

Con's next rebuttal directly targets the insurance issue, citing an article which highlights the safeguards used by insurance companies to prevent exactly the type of scheme Pro has suggested. Con also cites one of Pro's own comments from outside the debate, paired with an article on poker strategy, to build an argument that killing oneself is a poorer strategy than attempting to live as a better person.

Next round, Pro again claims some of his points were dropped, although this seems to be mainly due to the very small character limit which strictly limits how much can actually be said each round. Pro's main argument during this round is to argue that he is such a failure in life that he can't help anyone else, because his own advice has gotten him nothing but bad results, so it would get other people bad results as well.

Con's next rebuttal focuses on the contradictory nature of some of Pro's arguments, pointing out that he can't both be angry at himself over not being successful enough, supposedly doing too much harm to the world through his gainful employment and want to give away all his money (of which, he supposedly has little) to save starving children all at the same time, then somehow conclude that being dead and solving none of these problems would be any better than the current scenario. Con again asserts that Can cannot solve the stated problems by killing himself and would be more effective by staying alive and actually addressing the problems.

Round 4 opens with Pro insisting that he won the debate already. Huh? Pro then proceeds to tell the story of how he worked two jobs when he was 16 to provide for his siblings, which appears to contradict the earlier version of events he gave in the first round where he claimed to have ruined their lives with his bad example. Many of Pro's other statements during this round also seem contradictory of points raised elsewhere. Pro also describes his state of hyper-awareness and the manner in which he always has a plan to kill people around him. In a military context, this would actually be a positive benefit, not a particularly good reason to kill yourself, again contradicting much of his own argument.

Pro says one very important thing in this round;
"I don't care about winning this debate. I care about working through a math problem. The problem of whether society is better off with me dead or alive."
This statement really clenched the outcome of the debate for me.

If this really is a "math problem" for Pro, then the burden of proof shifts to him to prove that he could actually make the world a better place by dying, and he failed to do that. You can't make the world better by killing the general manager of a fast food restaurant, because that job will just be filled by someone else. You can't feed starving children by dying. You can't erase past events with a corpse. Although Pro gives a lot of reasons why his life is bad, none of them can be fixed by dying. His insurance scheme was rebutted effectively by Con, while his "global warming" take was never hashed out enough to be taken seriously.