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
Tags
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
1702
rating
574
debates
67.86%
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".
Round 1
Pro
#1
Thanks RM for agreeing to this debate.
I am a Bad Person
I work in fastfood so I am in a business that is the cause of many people's issues with obesity, and the many medical issues that come with it. I guess you can say my job is making people fat for a living, destroying their health and causing them to come to an early death.
I once killed a guy in a car accident. I was driving to a pool tournament, and they were driving in a pick-up truck and drove in front of my lane, causing me to T-Bone the truck. 3 people were in the front of the truck, but one guy was in the bed of the truck. Upon impact he went air born, flew over 4 lanes of traffic and hit a gravel area on the side of the road. His body laid in a twisted unnatural position and I watched him writhing in some inhuman way. He died in the helicopter ride to the hospital.
Once the truck stopped spinning like a top, the 3 people in the front of the truck jumped out and started running away from the scene. I would later learn that the people had stolen the truck and was making a getaway from a robbery when I hit them. Some locals in threads discussing the event called me a hero. The guys relatives publicly apologized to me for being forced to deal with such a traumatic event. I didn't feel like a hero.
Sometimes I close my eyes and can still see the impact and him flying through the air. I always suspect that if I were a better driver than he would still be alive. I shouldn't have left my family for a pool tournament. I should have spent the night with them. I'm crying now as I write this, but at that time it was more than tears. I was catatonic for about a week after that. Afraid to leave the house. I still wince and hit the breaks when somebody comes to a stop sign on a cross road, not trusting they will stop. Had I been this cautious before that man would not be dead.
I caused my siblings to be put in abusive foster care situations https://www.reddit.com/r/fosterit/comments/93j2hw/the_journey_home/?fbclid=IwAR33Z54u-kBhwIeZQ8WAPak0EV1mz0WC2TJqMwI2u_zxt17pdJWOvRq3yTw . It's my fault they went to abusive foster homes. Living with my father was horrendous, but I made things worse. Had I taken no action, I feel like their lives would have been less shitty. The foster home situations were so bad in fact that at 16 I was emancipated (considered an adult) by the state, and got custody of my siblings. Working 2 jobs to take care of them. I'm certain I did a terrible job though. My sister is currently in what I would describe as a cult. My brother has a hell trigger temper and allows himself to be treated like a door mat. I'm sure all the drug use and drinking I did in front of them while raising them has done irrepairable harm. I made a shitty brother and an even shittier parent.
I have a son I haven't seen in years. https://www.debate.org/debates/Sex-before-Marriage/8/ I'm clearly a shitty father for not being in his life, though I have hard time wrestling with wondering whether I am too shitty of a person to be in his life, and am doing him a favor, or am I a shitty human being (If I deserve that label), for not being in his life. Either way, I'm a bad person. It doesn't matter.
The Benefits of dying
I think I just make things go to hell, like the above. If I killed myself it would be better for everyone. I couldn't be around to fuck up their lives anymore. If I make it look like I was murdered or it was an accident, I can make sure that my fiance gets a large sum of money to do something positive with. Perhaps this new kid would get a better father than his real father. I'm sure she could find a better man than me to be with. It quite honestly isn't hard to find somebody better than me. I'm almost incapable of showing love anyway. I'm honestly not sure if I can make it through this debate without blowing my head off. If I don't I apologize to RM, for yet another incompleted debate. I hope that judges will still weigh arguments and disregard the forfeited rounds.
Con
#2
This is a 4k-char-cap debate. I can't go into every single detail of what Pro has confessed and vented to us here.
I can waste more character preaching to him about the specifics of his case and lose this debate anyway or risk it or I can be really blunt here and tell him to 'get over it'. This is not to discredit psychiatry, nor to deny the significance of mental health but rather to approach suicide as something even worse than we see it as already and see death as something better.
I don't know if he should die or not and it's easy to come up with weird arguments to support that or deny it but when it comes to if he should kill himself I find far more ways to win and I hope you, the reader, consider that I am not his therapist and that you and I together need to help Wylted in such a way that he genuinely wants to only die by the hands of fate itself or some other way, not by suicide.
I could come here talking of this high philosophy or that but why not match my opponent's style and hell, I may literally save this guy (I genuinely do not have a clue how true or real his whole rant was but I have little doubt that you, the reader, are going to take it very serious and see me as a real jackass if I play the right-wing 'your problem' mentality here). I care for my fellow being, he's hurting even if faking it for attention or a laugh... I want to assume it's not so as to feel good while helping him and to make you, reader, go on a very emotional journey that ends with you and him both never ever wanting to kill yourself because I've actually been there too and there is a way out.
Wylted is alive. He was born and wanted to live at least at the start of his life. If he truly had no self-preservation instinct and solely is alive due to avoidance of the pain of hunger, thirst and social shunning or worry or others in being suicidal and openly depressed, then I doubt he'd be here pouring his heart out. He clearly has a side to him that wants to live, desperately so. This is why he's reaching out, there's also the alternative that this is a hoax or a semi-exaggerated 'everyone sucks I'm just one of them' rants that he did in R1 but let's assume (as I'm sure we all do) he truly is in a place of agony emotionally and intellectually with regards to his satisfaction in life and his philosophical purpose in sustaining this existence.
Every single problem he brings up, whether it's his job, the fact he was an accidental hero to someone who had their truck robbed... All of it, has either shaped him to be a better person who didn't choose to demand me to show my IQ is above 120 and troll me into a very awkward situation where even if I used my ingenuity to win anyway would have been excruciatingly unpleasant for me and be him sadistically laughing at me as well as every single point he makes about his life reflecting on his conscience disallowing him to be the high-functioning psychopath who doesn't just server fast-food but owns the farms and all of it playing markets, banks and insurance companies with people like toys. He isn't top of the food chain economically and is ashamed of the tiniest bit of guilt of the food he serves, fuck man people in your income-bracket go deal drugs, fuck people's lives up actively and passionately. You're doing your best at a legal job (or maybe it was a metaphor for this exact thing, who knows) but really, you don't get it:
THE FACT YOU ARE SO HARD ON YOURSELF IS YOUR EXCELLENCE. You can only use today, you can only change your reputation by tomorrow. Killing yourself won't let you be the brother-dad to your siblings you could be had you lived. Fuck off with your excuses and hate yourself the right way. Change and be the best Wylted you can.
If life was supposed to be easy, it would. If you were meant to have killed yourself, you would have done so already. Your'e alive, fate is guiding you to this site, you're begging for help and it's here.
Round 2
Pro
#3
THE FACT YOU ARE SO HARD ON YOURSELF IS YOUR EXCELLENCE. You can only use today, you can only change your reputation by tomorrow. Killing yourself won't let you be the brother-dad to your siblings you could be had you lived. Fuck off with your excuses and hate yourself the right way. Change and be the best Wylted you can.
It seems like Con is trying to talk me out of suicide or something. I don't think I'll ever commit suicide. I'm too afraid of dying. I just think I should kill myself. I am jealous of those who do have the courage to face the unknown, but I'm not a person who does well with the unknown. I need absolute certainty. The abuse earlier in life by my family, by strangers in "the system", and by the government who put me in "The System", the amount of chaos I faced then has made me never want chaos again. I fear uncertainty enough to have a diagnosable condition known as OCD.
Rational madman has dropped my arguments that my family would be better off without me. I don't think he has given me a single reason to stay alive. He has stated I could turn things around, but even if improve my presence still might not have benefits as much as somebody who is already better than me. My existence probably denies my fiance and son the opportunity to have me replaced by somebody better.
I'm not some loser who just is whining about never doing anything with my life. I have considered whether I should committ suicide. It is not an emotional decision. RM wants the judges to vote against me, because "It may save my life". He says he wants to take you on an emotional ride. So do I, because I consider debate an art. The kind that takes place here anyway, but after the emotional journey is taken. I want you to judge the arguments that took place. I want you to set aside any argument not pertaining to whether "I should kill myself". If RM wins, it should not be because he tried to talk me out of suicide, or because he gave me a pep talk. It should be because he gave better reasons for why I should live, than I gave for why I should die.
I don't know if he should die or not and it's easy to come up with weird arguments to support that or deny it but when it comes to if he should kill himself I find far more ways to win and I hope you, the reader, consider that I am not his therapist and that you and I together need to help Wylted in such a way that he genuinely wants to only die by the hands of fate itself or some other way, not by suicide.
I ask the voters for something different and for something that better honors debating. I don't want to die ever. I'm a transhumanist who hopes the singularity will save us like some kind of messiah. You don't need to convince me of anything, you need to vote in an honorable way that weighs the arguments for and against the resolution given by both side.
RM, I suspect one day I may fake my death to give my family a big insurance payout and to make their lives better by exiting it, but even then I should kill myself, if for no other reason than the world is better off without me.
It's not just my family who would be better off without me. I've seen commercials that say I can save starving children for just pennies a day. How many lives would I save by living in squalor and sending almost every dime to save starving children? By not doing that I have practically starved thousands of children every year. https://www.fmsc.org/
Just by existing I leave a carbon footprint that slowly is killing the world. If I killed myself, I could put a dent in stopping global warming. If my death could be done in a way that inspires the suicide of others, than I may make a huge dent in global warming. Suicides inspiring others to kill themselves have been known to happen. https://www.thedailybeast.com/teen-copycat-suicides-are-a-real-phenomenon
RM is right that I should change, but it is hard and our habits are wired into us. I doubt I'll stop leaving any carbon footprint, and start sending 100% of my pay to hungry kids.
Con
#4
As I explicitly stated in R1, I am not his therapist and my role here ultimately is to win a debate as opposed to save his life. It's become apparent that when faced with a problem, be it his neglectful raising of his siblings or his general failure to help people in his life thus far, Wylted concludes that the best outcome is to fake himself dying by accident and/or murder so as to enable life insurance to be paid to his relatives. It's more peculiar as given his age and time he's likely insured his life, by now the scenario of suicide would be covered by his insurance, albeit less so:
Generally a life insurance policy will not pay out if the policyholder commits suicide in the first 12 months of the policy but it will pay out after that. This is so insurers can guard against clients insuring themselves to the hilt, then taking their lives to get their family out of financial difficulties.However, in some cases suicide claims are turned down because there has been non-disclosure about the mental health of the insured and whether they have been receiving medical or psychiatric treatment.
At all points (every single point) in his line of thinking, whenever the ending is 'I should kill myself' he is picking the worse option in terms of what he could do to take steps to improve others in a way they'd not only know was him but which he could truly build himself up doing at the same time.
I ask Wylted this:
What will your family think about you if they think you were murdered? What will they think about you if they assume you had a fatal accident? What good will your money do them compared to what you could do them if you could not only share with them but be physically there for them, giving them advice, actively helping them through equal or worse shit than what you're going through right now?
I, as someone who loves poker and who was intrigued by a recent post Wylted made, would like to bring up a scenario to him:
Outside of poker, GTO is usually introduced with the “prisoner’s dilemma.” In this hypothetical situation, the two of us are arrested for jointly committing a crime. If neither of us talks, we both get off with light sentences. However, if one of us snitches on the other, the snitch will get off with no punishment at all, while the person who doesn’t talk gets a harsh sentence. If we both snitch, we both get a harsh sentence, since each person’s testimony can be used against the other.Even though we would be best off with the first scenario (nobody talks), each individual is better off from collaborating with the authorities, regardless of what the other does (if I don’t snitch, you should snitch to get off free, and if I do snitch, you should definitely snitch as well). In an environment where players are rewarded for taking advantage of each other, it may not be worth acting cooperatively, even if all sides would be better off by doing so.
- https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/game-theory-optimal-solutions-and-poker-a-few-thoughts-22654.htm
So, while he can argue that completely decimating his well-being to the point where he's as impoverished as those he argues deserve help (so he's being hypocritical by neglecting and abusing himself to the level of making him that which deserves help) as well as arguing he eventually should fake his own death being a non-suicide to get his family money via life insurance, Wylted is at a loss when it comes to explaining how and why his I-lose-they-win scenarios are better than the he-wins-they-win-even-more scenarios with him fighting with every shred of emotional and physical means to be the best sibling-father, human being and version of Wylted IRL that he possibly can, starting today. He is playing suboptimally because he's terrified of making things worse while ignoring the potential to make things better for everyone involved.
Round 3
Pro
#5
I love Hopsin. One of the few performance artists who actually sings from his heart. I'll make this quick, because I have to go to work. Yet again many of my points have been dropped, such as the environmental impacts of remaining alive and the fact that I have caused thousands of kids to starve to death.
What will your family think about you if they think you were murdered? What will they think about you if they assume you had a fatal accident? What good will your money do them compared to what you could do them if you could not only share with them but be physically there for them, giving them advice, actively helping them through equal or worse shit than what you're going through right now?
Dude, who am I to give advice? I'm a failure. I don't have fame or fortune. I haven't changed the world, if anything I have made it worse. I have no ideal how to achieve fame and fortune. I certainly am incapable of giving them advice on how to be succesfull. I don't know that I'm useful at helping them through horrible things that happen either. I've had horrible things happen to me. I've been abused by my father, and then in foster care. I've grown up neglected, surviving on very little food. My father bragged that he never failed to put food on our plate, but we would often go months consuming a diet that consisted only of Ramen noodles.
I haven't recovered from these things. I adapted by having a lot of anxiety that borderlines on paranoid personality disorder. I have OCD as a result of the past. I constantly live with regret and inappropriately high levels of guilt. I feel guilty anything bad ever happens to anybody. I feel like I should have somehow devoted myself to something that should have ended all human suffering by now.
You see, my advice has gotten me shitty results and it would be irresponsible to share any with that track record. My actions have gotten me bad results, so helping them would likely accomplish the same thing. When I try to help things usually go to shit. I helped my siblings escape from an abusive home, only to get us sent to seperate abusive foster homes. Though my sister atleast managed to end up in a good one, while me and my brother remained in an abusive one for our stay in the system. I remember injecting myself into a situation where some girl was in an abusive relationship with a gang member. I put myself in danger to save her, and she ended up going back to the guy. I assume things were probably worse after I inserted myself into that situation. I had a friend I took into my house (before I had my child) who was addicted to drugs. I tried to help him. I even went as far as punching him in the face everytime I caught him doing drugs, so he would start to associate doing drugs with getting punched in the face, and quit. I failed him also. He is still a drug addict. I can't offer good advice, and I always fuck up when trying to help people.
So, while he can argue that completely decimating his well-being to the point where he's as impoverished as those he argues deserve help (so he's being hypocritical by neglecting and abusing himself to the level of making him that which deserves help)
The difference is that they deserve help. They had no control over the fact they were born into societies where opportunities are limited. I've had opportunities but have fucked them up. They haven't harmed the people around the, I have. They've probably done their best to help their families, but have had a lack of access to the proper tools to do so. IThe tools to help my family surround me. The people I want to help are actual victims, and I am an actual monster. Other than the inappropriate amount of empathy, I feel nothing. No joy, no love, no happiness, anger, or sadness. For the most part I am an unfeeling monster. I'd gladly change spots with an actual human who deserves the things I have. I'm not worthy of the good things in my life. Not worthy of my beautiful fiance, and son. Not worthy of the money I have.
Con
#6
There is a fundamental issue with the way that Pro/Wylted approaches downfall, bad news and disappointment. When faced with the realisation of something disappointing, no matter how many such realisations of no matter how high intensity, the solution cannot... Well, blatantly is not, to kill yourself. The reason is that no matter how disappointing your cause for despair is, you will only ever win, only ever make use of said disappointment (the feeling) by struggling micrometre by micrometre, millimetre by millimetre until you are making progress to do better. Similarly, no matter how bad the news, and how low the downfall, there's only two options after ignorance is out the window since you've realised/accepted it:
- Let it get worse and worse until you snap and kill yourself (or get yourself killed by negligence).
- Do anything and everything (including the thinking itself to work out what the anything and everything is) to better the circumstances and after doing it enough to enough circumstances, finally solving the dilemma with the situation.
Wylted keeps reiterating how bad he is for having money and then contradicts this shame by being so ashamed for the pathetic line of work he's in or whatever else. In fact, I am curious how Wylted even justifies morality to begin with but that's not necessary for me to win the debate. Wylted is obsessed with the fundamental conflicting ideas that:
- He's truly evil/corrupt and yet knows it, comes here preaches it and begs for someone to talk him out of his agonising guilt-ridden state of mind that's lost all hope of a happy ending.
- He's absolutely going to make his family better off and do all the 'wrong' he did raising them as a drug-addicted sloth or whatever he was to his siblings that he adopted/fostered, by killing himself and faking it sufficiently to look like an accident and/or murder so that the life insurance pays out and his family (who are going to not know what the hell he did for them) are going to then go through grief, have just as shit memories of him as before and not remotely help any starving kids out there with the money unless they do that and then the entire point of him killing himself in that way or for that reason is negated.
- He should make himself become as poor and suffering as possible and drain himself of every cent because people who are in that exact state of living and being are the ones he absolutely deserves to commit suicide for not having helped.
Not only are all these ideas self-contradictory but all 3 contradict one another at a core basis in their own way. 2 and 3 blatantly contradict one another if you read the ending to what I say in idea 2 but furthermore idea 1 and BOTH 2 and 3 are in direct conflict because a psychopath or whatever else he thinks he is, would not show this level of agony. The way he is talking about himself is indicative of someone who strongly, extremely so, regrets and cares about what they have done wrong but simply wants to stop 'rolling on' or 'jumping hte next hurdle' (this is only true if his content in this debate is not all/mostly lies, in which case his entire debate ends up all being lies and I win this by him not meeting BoP).
Wylted should not kill himself because, as I explain at the end of the previous Round, the scenarios where he commits suicide are all suboptimal. He loses, the others lose and the gain even if it is there is nowhere near to how much his siblings, friends, poor people he may meet and assist in life could benefit from his presence, effort and capacity to do things (even just physically do things, help a woman with severe arthritis cook dinner so she doesn't eat shitty food or have to cook on her knees that have eroded the cartilage and constantly have friction burns the more she moves). There's so fucking much to be doing with his life to do good and work his way up form the karmic debt he owes and whatever else he is saying he hates having the burden of but instead he argues he should be just as pathetic and evil as ever and say adios, helping no one on the long term or at least 'barely anyone'.
Round 4
Pro
#7
Because of that outage yesterday of the site, I have very little time to argue. I feel like I won already anyway and completing this is a formality. I'll comment on a few things though.
I have never been a drug addicted sloth. I smoked a little weed here and there and had a few drinks occasionally at the time. I was also working 2 jobs and getting overtime at both. I needed to make a lot of money so my siblings could focus on academics. I was a 16 year old emancipated kid raising siblings a few years younger than myself. If I was depressed merely because I was a shitty person, that would be one thing, but I gave my best shot at saving them and giving them a great life, but I don't think they have lived up to their potential. Which is my fault. I tried a lot but failed. I saved them from an abusive father, but then we went into abusive foster homes. I saved them from an abusive foster care system by getting emancipated and going up against the state to get custody of them, but I failed them by not raising then to meet their full potential. My father was abusive. When they did something that would spark his rage, I'd normally take the abuse and the blame to insulate them. It wasn't enough to take the abuse and get them away from that home. They couldn't be protected in foster care. All I had to do was keep taking the abuse of my father on their behalf, but I was selfish and tried to escape from it, which put them in harms way. My regrets aren't about not doing anything. My regrets are about not doing enough. Occasionally I wasn't there to take the blame and the abuse for them. I should have been.
My statements about the job may have seemed controversial. I make decent money as a general mangers in training at a fast food place. Soon I will get another raise when they give me my own store. I still poison people, but am compensate well for it.
My regrets aren't from being a bad person. My regrets are for not being more of a martyr. I still try to save people to this day, and I still fail to do it. I'm like Schindler at the end of Schindler list. He was regretting not saving enough people, about being able to do more and failing. I'm no Schindler but I really emphatize with that scene, because my efforts have also fallen short of perfect.
Don't insinuate I am a drug addicted sloth, or that I'm lying about anything. 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.
It doesn't matter what answer I come up with, because ultimately I am a coward anyway. I'm jealous of people who commit suicide, because I don't have the courage that they do. I can't face the ultimate unknown.
I wish I could kill myself. I wish I was both honorable enough and brave enough to as another user told me to do "jump off a cliff".
RM, even if I am a neutral presence in people's lives, I''d still want to die. I have lost the ability to feel joy, it is hard for me to feel love, I can no longer feel the emotion "anger", I don't laugh. The only emotions I feel are sadness and regret, if I lose those feelings than I'll feel nothing. When I don't feel them I feel as if I am just watching the world and myself from a cloud.
I'm hyper vigilant. Always scanning for threats. I'm always thinking every person I walk across is going to randomly attack me, so I have to position myself and make a plan for dealing with them if they do.
It's not much fun to live with these feelings. Sometimes I regret having kids. I suspect everyone secretly hates life as much as I do, and by bringing them into this work I have condemned them to a life of misery. I'm also poorly equipped at saving them from a life without any pain or suffering .
Con
#8
We are reaching the ending where no new points are allowed to be brought and yet Wylted has raised so many new ones... So be it.
Pro has a concept that the BoP here is for me to convince Wylted himself that he shouldn't commit suicide or to make him 'unwant' to do it. You can want to do what you shouldn't and fail to want to do what you should do. Thus, the BoP on me is not at all less met by every single thing stated in Pro's R4.
Pro has rebuked 0% of what I said in previous Rounds. The strategy Pro uses is the following:
- Anything I say that is purely rational, he ignores as not mattering to his urge to commit suicide.
- Anything that isn't purely rational, he says is irrational and therefore ignores the emotional and subjective aspects of suicide and the meaning(s)/purpose(s) of life.
- Every time I turn his own logic against itself to rebuke his points, whether it's living to give to the poor in and of itself until he's so poor he can't even afford food anymore or killing himself to help his family, I can keep again and again disproving what is raised and yet he will say 'but here's new reasons to kill myself and I want to do it anyway no matter what you say.'
This strategy is not just tiresome (I am sure even to himself IRL if he's being genuine in this debate about why he's actually suicidal and isn't putting on an act) but it is also fallacious in every sense of the word. It is both fallacious in terms of logic and in the honor/morality a debater has as a healthy rival or worthy opponent of the other.
If I say 'so what if you're a drug addicted sloth you can work your way up from here' he just replies 'I have never been a drug addicted sloth' completely ignoring the entire point I was making with relation to living to improve no matter how low your 'present self' is. If I say no matter how evil he makes himself out to be the fact he hates himself for it and is so harsh is itself proof he has potential in him and an urge that itself will help him grow better as a person and happier as an experiencer of life he replies "It seems like Con is trying to talk me out of suicide or something. I don't think I'll ever commit suicide. I'm too afraid of dying. I just think I should kill myself." and ignores the entire context or content of what I said altogether in one great swoop.
The BoP on me that I have consistently met is to prove that Wylted's reasons for committing suicide, are all reasons to keep living instead of killing himself if we observe the optimal way to play out his life from this day forth and improve all the wrongs.
Wylted is entitled to want to kill himself, in fact he is entitled to actually do it. That is not what this debate is about and I am not his therapist as I have said countless times.
Time to quote myself.
You can only use today, you can only change your reputation by tomorrow. Killing yourself won't let you be the brother-dad to your siblings you could be had you lived. Fuck off with your excuses and hate yourself the right way. Change and be the best Wylted you can.
Wylted should not kill himself because, as I explain at the end of the previous Round, the scenarios where he commits suicide are all suboptimal. He loses, the others lose and the gain even if it is there is nowhere near to how much his siblings, friends, poor people he may meet and assist in life could benefit from his presence, effort and capacity to do things (even just physically do things, help a woman with severe arthritis cook dinner so she doesn't eat shitty food or have to cook on her knees that have eroded the cartilage and constantly have friction burns the more she moves). There's so fucking much to be doing with his life to do good and work his way up form the karmic debt he owes and whatever else he is saying he hates having the burden of but instead he argues he should be just as pathetic and evil as ever and say adios, helping no one on the long term or at least 'barely anyone'.
Round 5
Pro
#9
This debate has went off topic a few times by myself due to the relaxed nature of it, but it has remained almost entirely off topic on con’s side, because he either misunderstands the resolution or thinks he can win by making it seem like he is talking me down from the edge of a building.
Resolution- “The User Known as Wylted Should Commit Suicide”
You do this by weighing the impact of each argument, on it’s own merit and seeing which arguments would have a bigger and better impact on the world. Before we go into my impacts, I want you to notice a poor rhetorical strategy my opponent has used, that you should not fall for. Con says.
“ Wylted should not kill himself because, as I explain at the end of the previous Round, the scenarios where he commits suicide are all suboptimal”
The truth is he hasn’t shown that. He has merely insinuated that it is suboptimal because of a hidden premise that human life is special in some way, but since he has not shown the premise or argued for it, his presuppositions should be dismissed.
Con’s whole argument boils down to. “If pro doesn’t kill himself, he can be a better person and improve his life, he can be a better father or sibling”. All of which misses the point that the world would be better off without me in it. It also fails to address whether I should kill myself or not, it only says life gets better. Maybe I can start to live a healthy life and become a better person, it doesn’t mean the world wouldn’t benefit more from my death.
This is beside the point, and irrelevent to the impact analysis that should be done on the debate, but I would like my opponent to answer the following question. What happens if I improve in the areas you think I can improve in? I’ve succeeded in lots of areas, it doesn’t mean I’m happy with those areas. I play pool, I can beat my opponent pretty badly and I will still beat myself up about the result because I played imperfectly. I have came to this recent store to improve it, and in a few weaks, I have helped them reduce food waist, lower labor costs and dropped their average drive-through time in half. I still beat myself up because the numbers could be better. It actually seems like con is advocating for me to be more of a perfectionist. He advocates for me doing more. I’m not sure he realizes the danger of advocating for somebody who is prone to putting in 100 hour work weeks and, going days without sleeping... to do more. The black and white all or nothing thinking and perfectionism I clearly displayed here should have been red flags to not advocate for “doing more”.
Impacts- Round 2 I tell you this: “Rational madman has dropped my arguments that my family would be better off without me. ... He has stated I could turn things around, but even if improve my presence still might not have benefits as much as somebody who is already better than me. My existence probably denies my fiance and son the opportunity to have me replaced by somebody better. “
He hasn’t offered a rebuttal for this point. I mention how I could literally save the world from global warming in the following statement “just by existing I leave a carbon footprint that slowly is killing the world. If I killed myself, I could put a dent in stopping global warming. If my death could be done in a way that inspires the suicide of others, than I may make a huge dent in global warming. Suicides inspiring others to kill themselves have been known to happen”
Con drops this argument. The only argument I made that con has addressed is the one where I say I am a monster, and really his advice to stop being one is just a mitigating argument.
Conclusion: It is unusual for RM to argue quite this poorly, but he has. Maybe from focusing more on rhetoric and appeals to emotion than the substance of a debate. That’s not the judges problem, nor should you be taken in by his strategy. You should list the reasons why I should and shouldn’t kill myself and then vote on which reasons have a better impact on the world.
Con
#10
Deciding the winner of a debater isn't as simple as making a list of arguments and whoever has more is the winner. Sometimes one can be worthy four in importance and relevance to the resolution. Additionally, it wasn't me who had to prove that human life has any innate value, the burden of proof was on the one seeking to disturb status quo and that is Pro. Pro is not just disturbing the present state of him being alive but further asserting that it should be disturbed in a very specific self-administered manner. This debate is significantly less burdensome on me to prove wrong than if I were Con to 'Wylted should not be alive.' as this is specific about him killing himself.
In the process of trying to justify why he should die, I turned all reasons that he brings up as either reasons he should keep living to undo wrong and make up for bad acts in the past or reasons that prove he is a good person who is worthy of living. I even went into the specifics of suicide and life insurance and explored the optimisation of how to repay his family and I took on board his notion of not having repaid the world and poor in it enough and how his approach to giving ends up (with him as the one who should be given to meaning in the first place he has to love himself to pursue that path or is hypocritically loathing himself while loving all the poor and suffering other than himself).
I have said all that needs to be said and am not really insulted by his jibe at me at the end as he was actually complimenting me saying I rarely debate this bad even though he's incorrect; I played this debate perfectly.
Voters, decide for yourself if Pro has proven Wylted should commit suicide successfully or not. If not, Con wins automatically and if Con has further proved that Wylted should keep living on top of negating the reasons Wylted brings up, you even more so should vote Con. Pro has/had the initial burden of proof in this debate, not 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:
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.
Also, I literally ignored every part of his argument where he was pleading with you and rambling about you not killing yourself - I literally said as much.
From my vote:
“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.”
Or, to clarify:: you raised a good point. Con countered it with a generic argument about how you weighted the value of your past and future lives - and how it is possible to mitigate ongoing negatives, which for me was convincing, but I scored this round as a draw because he didn’t counter your specifics with other specific examples.
I literally dealt explicitly with this part of your argument in my vote: and weight it more I’m your favour than others
Cons argument that you were weighting your future actions based on your past actions was killer - and is why you lost. If con had said something along the lines “you can mitigate your footprint by planting a few trees a year”, it would have been a total one sided victory. That’s what I was explaining in my vote.
Please show me the part of the debate where con said I can completely eliminate my carbon footprint.
he Just rambled on about not killing myself because I could be a better person, and ignored my negative impacts on the world such as environmental and ignored the fact that even if I improve people who are better than me can still fill my spot better than I could.
I did do an “impact” analysis. It’s just in that analysis was that the impact was in itself irrelevant. As I said in my vote:, your first round argument was that you had a specific negative impact on people - which was uncontested - cons whole argument was that you were implicitly conflating past impact with future impact. This was compounded by the fact that you yourself don’t really provide any compelling why the negative impacts necessitate your death as opposed to anything else.
So it seems you’re mostly butthurt because I didn’t view the implicit nature of the argument and the approach you presented the way you wanted me to in the context of the debate - mainly because con did much better at framing the difference between your claims and his in respect to context.
I took the debate off topic on purpose so he would continue to say the same shit and ignore my impact statements. No impact analysis was done by the boters so far though.
Almost everything you did was a mistake. There is no impact analysis here just awarding each side a mystery point for each argument. The conduct point was absurd, you literally should almost never award a point for anything but arguments. But there are some isolated examples of shitty logic such as : "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."
You never did the math did you, killing myself would cause me to have no negative impact on the environment. If I lived I would definitely continue to harm the environment. I also said it could start off a chain of suicides that would also help the environment and my opponent never refuted the point so it should beaccepted. I also argued that I am not capable of eliminating my actions from causing any pain or suffering to anybody. He merely states I can reduce the pain I cause, he never argues that I can eliminate all negative conssequences of my actions occurring. He never even states it is okay to have some negative results if the good outwieghs it, no rebuttal. Please challenge me to a debate on whether that vote was shitty.
Also - it is incredibly hard for you to be honest as to why my vote sucked, when you have yet to provide any actual explanation as to what part of my vote you feel was incorrect, invalid, or otherwise “sucky”.
The Drafterman vote was saying exactly the same thing as my vote - literally the same thing - except I went into more detail to break down the individual arguments.
I literally mentioned a good vote against me. So it is more likely I am just being honest about why yours sucks.
Gotta love mature, reasonable adults who are capable of emotionally dealing with people voting against them.
No, I thought drafter's vote was decent. You're just biased and too low IQ to know how to adjust for that
I think your phone autocorrected “a vote that happened to go against my position”, to “shitty vote”.
Damned iPhones.
I deny that their votes here are bad at all. I also deny that, overall, either is a net-bad voter relative to the norm.
The earlier voting was shitty, I'm not sure it was biased but that was before my time
Anyway don't deny ralter and sham are shitty voters
Go back to the beginning of their won debates (not all debates, let's only look at won) and observe the RFD quality even after vote-modding was introduced.
Mikal and bluesteel were such close friends that bluesteel as vote mod led to Mikal being able to easily slip past the radar so he lasted far longer with the BS votes in his favour whereas the others had to earn earlier on (3 years ago or so) but there's a reason why the top are form 'way back' it's because they are from the gang-voting era.
Mikal is a piece of shit and literally begged people for votes, but others in the top ten deserved it such as thett, danielle bsh1 roy latham, whiteflame etc.
He's talking about where the core community of this site came from. He is missing out (intentionally) how it used to be gang-voting mentality and shit. Mikal climbed by literally having a voting ring that to this day people half admit was really arranged.
https://www.debate.org/people/leaders/
I don't know what that answer means... so I think that means you win.
At least the debate with bsh1 will get voters who are competent. All the votes on the debates in the voting period I have are stupid, with the exception of the vote drafterman placed
Every remaining top 20 elo member of DDO
There is no funny reply I could give to that, that wouldn't abuse him given the resolution. ;)
Who will you get to judge?
Note: not mentioned in the RFD, there is a lot of content that was not mentioned intentionally. A substantial fraction of this debate had little to do with the debate contention on both sides - these arguments were ignored as irrelevant.
Last time I don't do a judge debate. You are all morons
Oh, good point! I'll have to remember that for next time.
You are always welcome to say RFD in comments and post a comment-split RFD
I wish the character limit on this debate had been higher, because there were a lot of topics in here that could have been hashed out and examined in a lot more depth. The global warming suicide chain idea is something that could have been attacked or promoted a lot of different ways and there just wasn't room in this debate for it.
Either way though, I hope Wylted is still happy with the outcome of the debate, because he likes interesting topics and this one was surely interesting at the least!
Oh, and I did want to try to cram all the points into my RFD, but like I said, character limit bit me there too. Hopefully I didn't glaze over anything critical.
Thanks for the vote though, it was accurate. I didn't even understand his global warming point and you're correct that he can't inspire said chain-suicides with his hiding of the suicide scam.
MY rebuttal to his scheme is that after a long enough time with a life insurance company killing yourself is also insured against, just with a lower payout. The only exception is if you actively hid clinically diagnosed mental illness beforehand from them.
My RFD would have been even longer, but apparently even RFD's have a character limit.
This was a completely fair vote. If the question is legitimately intended to be "would society be better if Wylted was dead" then Pro failed to prove that it would be. Con had effective rebuttals for the insurance money scam idea at the very least, and cast sufficient doubt on everything else to make the overall claim come up short.
Sorry, I just can't bring myself to fairly vote on whether a person should end their life. Regardless of the soundness of the arguments on either side, my vote would remain the same.
You can have fun topics without it being a troll debate. I Don't do troll debates
No it's not.
I can’t figure out whether is considered a troll debate or not.
wrote it in Libre office and the site added quotes, and my time is very limited at the moment so I just had to live with it. I do apologize for it making the debate less readable
Okay. I figured it was probably something like that and wanted to be sure I understood everything correctly.
I think he didn't realise what he was doing. He was pressing enter and it wasn't deleting the quotes.
I'll definitely look everything over one more time and vote when I can. One quick question though; In the last round Pro put his whole argument in a quote? Was all of that quoted from elsewhere or...?
Feel free to vote, ty.
An academic abstraction as in a purely conceptual talking point, like everything else we debate here. This is your life. It's not rhetoric.
When you're depressed you always think the wool's been pulled off from over your eyes and you're finally seeing things as they really are -- the cold, hard, hopeless truth. But I don't really know you. If you think you'll get something out of this debate, it's certainly your right to have it. But I think you've already found the reason why you shouldn't take your life.
What do you mean "Acedemic abstraction"? I wouldn't call myself an academic. My highest level of education is the 9th grade, and by extension I certainly don't engage in anything dealing with acedemia.
I'm more logical when I'm depressed. When I feel good, sometimes I suspect that I'm Jesus or the antichrist. I hear things that aren't there and sometimes see things that don't exist. Even in more sane moments of not being depressed, I'm usually less accurate in my reasoning. Many studies have shown that pessimists make more accurate predictions than optimists.
The fate and value of a human life should not be debated in a win/lose contest like some academic abstraction.
What do you expect this debate to accomplish? By the time you're suicidal, you are beyond the reach of logic. Reasons, arguments -- meaningless. The feeling is all that's truly real; to contemplate anything else is to contemplate the unreal. It has all blurred into a sourceless gray fog without beginning or end, and you are conscious of nothing but the desire to reach a place where you simply cannot think or feel anymore.
You would think that after surviving the traumatic events and having none of that stuff to hold you back, you'd be okay, but it's not true. Some habits I formed then helped me to literally survive, but those same habits don't seem useful now.
I just realized I probably shouldn't have brought up the emotional damage I could do to her, RM may use it against me.
"you said you're not sure if you can make it through this debate without blowing your head off. I'm concerned. Is that true?"
I feel like that some days, or months. Sometimes I can not even get out of bed. I usually need diet pills or some sort of amphetimine during my depressed periods to keep from losing my job and destroying my life by becoming catatonic, but even the stimulants just push back the inevitable and I just end up depressed for long periods. The last 9 months were bad. I almost gave up, but was scared to. I also was afraid of the emotional damage I would do to my fiance. She seems sensitive. Hopefully I can keep my shit together for a while now, and the depressed phases don't come back.
Wyl, you said you're not sure if you can make it through this debate without blowing your head off. I'm concerned. Is that true?
I'm debating over whether I should commit suicide, I'm not threatening to commit suicide. There are a ton of things I should do, that I frequently neglect to.