Massive nuclear retaliation
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 2 votes and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- One week
- Max argument characters
- 7,500
- Voting period
- One month
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
Death23 is PRO - Death23 is arguing in favor of massive nuclear retaliation.
Hypothetical: The United States has just been nuked to ashes by the Chinese. 300+ million are dead. To retaliate, or not to retaliate.
Massive retaliation would result in the deaths of over a billion Chinese civilians who, arguably, didn't have anything to do with the decision to launch a first strike. Further, it may very well lead to the extinction of the human race through nuclear winter and the spread of fallout. On the other hand, we must have our revenge.
Credit to both debaters for a fun read.
To me this dilemma can be summarized down to one phrase from con: "Survivors have a better chance of surviving Chinese occupation than of surviving another Chinese nuclear retaliation."
If retaliation risks extinction of the human race, just to spite the Chinese, our few remaining people and significant others would be harmed worse by it than by a potential invasion. With pro's claims of how many Chinese would die anyway, it really sounds like they would be ill-suited to continue. Even if they were out of nukes, that sounds like a double edged sword from us nuking them making the planet harder for our few survivors to survive on. As for there being uncertainty if quite every human would die from us retaliating: It's intuitively not an all or nothing thing, any statistically significant advance toward that tipping point is to be avoided (particularly if some of them are ours).
I agree with pro about the resolution, as much as I don't care that much about resolution and definition nitpicking. I was further impressed by his use of evidence of the trolly problem, and calling the people liars for saying they would aim for killing less people (weird to counter your own evidence, but fun to see).
Pro also did well in questioning if China could launch more nukes. Still, the damage to the whole planet of our nukes hitting them, seems really bad for us.
Con of course could have easily won by pointing to how many US Citizens live abroad. An angle I was surprised pro did not push was finishing off our own population with making things worse, to be an act of mercy; as opposed to them slowly suffering under barely more than lethal radiation levels. Which wouldn't make it ethical, but pro was quite clear that his case was an appeal against conventional ethics.
On a smaller scale, pro's embrace revenge argument would have been harder to resist.
ARGUMENT:
As the resolution "proper" isn't much of a resolution - I will be using Con's. Yes, Pro does argue against the resolution, but he fails to actually provide a compeating one. He doesn't dispute that the provided resolution is bad, just that he doesn't except Con's; however, Con's resolution actually fits closest to Pro's purposed scenario, as Pro says that the chinese attack is "genocidal" and this point is argued by Pro. This is the resolution:
RESOLVED: In response to the Chinese nuking of over 300 million American civilians, the United States should nuke over a billion Chinese civilians.
Unjustified Atrocity - so.. this essentially goes:
Pro - arguements regarding to the immoral nature of an act has nothing to do with the debate
Con - Killing a billion innocent people is unjustified and evil, so we should not do it
Pro - Any argument about morality doesn't matter
So, this point easily goes to Con - Pro does not do the legwork to convince me that we should disregard morality, he literally claims that his position is, "let's do it anyway", and that we wouldn't be reasonable in such an exchange. As was previously stated, this goes to Con.
Guarented Death:
Con argues that the bombing would result in global anhilation of the human species, Pro responds that China... would run out of bombs, and Pro points out that it if we were to fire back it there would be more destroyed humanity, which fits given the facts. Pro drops the points in the final rebuttal, which is... unfortunate, because I'm judging this as one of if not the biggest impact in the debate. There is no satisfaction to be had if everyone is dead, Con wins this one.
A lot of the other arguments are... well, essentially pro decides to contradict a number of positions that he held previously in the round - he initially argues that the chinese would launch an invasion after the strike, but then argues that the chinese would all die after the strike; that a strike back at China would protect further American harm, after Pro argues that most China would mostly be dead.. This, and the huge impacts that Con won (and one that Pro just dropped), wins Con the argument section
I'd argue yes on the grounds of rational irrationality.
That is, a country makes up its mind ahead of time, as in "I have no choice or further control over my own actions. Under condition X, I must respond with action Y." This country becomes a slave to its earlier vow or policy even if, when the moment finally comes, it's irrational.
This appears to makes no sense at first glance. After all, when the moment comes it should be a decision based on current realities alone, right? But my answer is that a country which does not put itself in bondage to its past vow or policy has no credible deterrent at any point before X happens.
Thus, rational irrationality. It works effectively for every moment up until X, but if it could be simply reversed upon X then it paradoxically cannot have existed beforehand, meaning that it never had value.
Thanks for the vote
I don't think America should nuke the Chinese in this instance, but how else will America get our revenge? We can't just let China get away with killing most Americans.
vote bump
vote bump
vote bump.
Thanks for the vote
Vote bump.
Eh, usually you wanna do things when you feel like doing them but who knows if that's gonna happen. Sometimes it does, sometimes it don't.
Looks like I'll be doing this pretty last minute too.
Oh well
Apologies, but I mixed up my PRO's and my CON's a few times in R2. Here is the corrected statements:
1. "CON concedes that China would repeatedly bomb the US in response until they ran out of nuclear weapons, of which they would have about 150 left (200 of which would be used up) undoubtedly resulting in the absolute destruction of the United States as a nation."
This should be:
"PRO concedes that China would repeatedly bomb the US in response until they ran out of nuclear weapons, of which they would have about 150 left (200 of which would be used up) undoubtedly resulting in the absolute destruction of the United States as a nation."
2. "PRO agrees with CON that the world would be thrust into a Dark Age regardless of a response from the US. PRO never claimed otherwise."
This should be:
"CON agrees with PRO that the world would be thrust into a Dark Age regardless of a response from the US. CON never claimed otherwise."
3. "CON’s response is largely a non-response. RECALL & EXTEND that the extinction of humanity is a bad way to preserve it. CON himself describes this as likely in his description: “Further, it may very well lead to the extinction of the human race through nuclear winter and the spread of fallout.”
This should be:
"PRO's response is largely a non-response. RECALL & EXTEND that the extinction of humanity is a bad way to preserve it. PRO himself describes this as likely in his description: “Further, it may very well lead to the extinction of the human race through nuclear winter and the spread of fallout.”
Retaliate by brutally overthrowing the government via worldwide allied invasion. Not one single nation will forgive China for what it did and PLENTY of its neighbours are only allied to it via coercion.
The EU and Middle East would join 100%, Africa and South America would stay out of it with perhaps North Africa helping via arms. Australasia and India would absolutely assist.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhsss!!!!
Don's say this on the internet - China is watching us.
They can send the nukes before the nukes are even close to the US.
Yeah I cut it pretty close due to schoolwork, hopefully it didn't hurt the quality of my arguments too bad.
Thanks for getting around to it. I was worried about you.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio-class_submarine
If the US is nuked to ashes, then I doubt that the US can even retaliate.
I'll most likely get my R1 finished before the time elapses. If not I'll simply waive and post it later
I had to cut this out due to character limits, but it doesn't have any impact so I'll put it here.
I came across an opinion on Reddit where someone had said something like killing millions of civilians could never be justified and wasn't even a valid opinion. I viewed it as somewhat of a challenge. So, this debate represents an attempt to justify the killing of not just millions of civilians, but over a billion. If there's any wondering, I would do it if I were the king, and all of the arguments I put forth here are ones that I believe in.
I also chose to debate this subject to touch on a lot of issues that are interesting to me, and that I find myself in disagreement with many people about. Issues like nationhood, humanism versus patriotism, sacrifice versus selfishness, collective punishment or responsibility in wartime, the value of justice versus the value of human life, honesty about oneself, and the value of morality. In everyday life, much of that stuff really has no practical impact on any decision. But when we're faced with extreme situations, fundamental philosophical or political disagreements like these are brought to the fore. This hypothetical is one of the most extreme situations imaginable. I'm hoping to bring many of those issues to the table for discussion and debate.
Looking forward to it.
you're on.