Instigator / Pro
15
1499
rating
52
debates
35.58%
won
Topic
#3918
We should not say truthful nonsense statements
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
After 5 votes and with 20 points ahead, the winner is...
RationalMadman
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- Two weeks
- Max argument characters
- 6,000
- Voting period
- One month
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
Contender / Con
35
1702
rating
574
debates
67.86%
won
Description
Burden of proof is shared.
Truthful nonsense: statements that are obviously true and do not seem to be necessary, such as “please remember to tie your shoe”, “the weather is nice today huh”, or even “one plus one equals two”.
Round 1
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” — These are the opening words to the Declaration of Independence, powerful and perhaps the most famous “truthful nonsense”. If something is self evident, why repeat it at all? Thomas Jefferson might have argued that the Britains were being cruel and unreasonable, ignoring even obvious truths known to everyone else, yet was this really the case? I will argue here that the truthful nonsense presented in the American revolution create such a detriment as to outweigh any other possible benefits from normal people using truthful nonsense.
Let’s make it clear here that white men owned slaves, contrary to the unalienable rights of life and Liberty, not to mention pursuit of happiness. Among the 13 colonies’ arrogance and self entitlement, they believed that the people they enslaved were naturally property and did not deserve to be part of the people within the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps Vox makes it clearest how the truthful nonsense stated here made the Colonies stuck in their mindset. The declaration complained also of taxes, and sprayed many accusations that everyone knew. It was obvious. The only thing the Nonsense did was make the colonies a hive mind, a sheep that would only listen to themselves and not care about anyone else. Why else would abolition take decades longer — Britain did not declare any such truthful nonsense and had the slavery abolishment in 1834, decades earlier than America.
Vox points out Jefferson wastes so much time declaring obvious statements in the independence, yet he missed all the important facts.
Anger at Dunmore's emancipation ran so deep that Thomas Jefferson included it as a grievance in a draft of the Declaration of Independence. That's right: the declaration could've included "they're conscripting our slaves" as a reason for independence.
The arrogance of the colonists goes further. Allying themselves with simple and obvious truths makes the colonists alien to other mindsets, forever unable to improve, impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands of slaves, forcing them into manual labor, death, and general suffering. This is more than any benefit that con can possibly present. Not only so, Vox notes, American colonists … refused to see Indians as fellow subjects. Instead, they viewed them as obstacles in the way of their dreams of land ownership and trading wealth." This view is reflected in the Declaration of Independence, which attacks King George III for backing "merciless Indian Savages."
Indeed, what Truthful Rubbish, king George did back the Indians, and the Indians were savages for the colonists standards. Case closed right? It was obvious to everyone who lived in the colonies. Yet they never stopped for a second to self reflect on what they said. If they had stayed silent and prudent, thinking truly and deeply to see if they truly believed all men are created equal. If it is self evident, then they should first enforce it through the colonies first!
While the million lives of slaves over the decades is the biggest impact, I understand still billions more use truthful nonsense in real life. Con might talk about the freedom of speech or the hidden message of love behind a parents simple “tie your shoe”. Can silence really be better? In a scenario like this, the people rallied together upon simple truths, not even thinking to dive into the full reality of the situation. They thought they were the only ones who were real people deserving the freedom. But if I really think deep, maybe, just maybe, the slaves would have been freed sooner. If you spend less time on wasteful statements, you would be able to think more from the other persons perspective. Don’t waste their time. Don’t be blinded by your thoughts and be bound together by a truth you can’t even enforce. I would stop saying these truths are self evident, and actually show my actions to show you there are no more slaves, just as Britain did decades earlier than the Americans.
Britain with its silence and actions to free the slaves, speak a thousand times louder than the Declaration of Independence. These unalienable rights are deserved by all human beings: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Kritik 1: Truthful nonsense either doesn't exist or is only nonsense due to lack of understanding.
1. a: words or language having no meaning or conveying no intelligible ideasb(1): language, conduct, or an idea that is absurd or contrary to good sense(2): an instance of absurd action
If a person or their comments are truthful, they are honest and do not tell any lies.
For a statement to be deemed truthful, it needs to be coherent such that we can determine there are no lies in it.
If the statement is nonsense, one would presume it to contain lies or be at the very least neither truthful nor have lies as it's a Schrodinger's cat scenario:
In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment that illustrates a paradox of quantum superposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.
This thought experiment was devised by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935,[1] in a discussion with Albert Einstein,[2] to illustrate what Schrödinger saw as the problems of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The scenario is often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics, particularly in situations involving the measurement problem.
The parallel to nonsense statements is that the only time we can deem them truthful or full of lies is once we have made sense of them and thus they are no longer nonsense statements. This entire resolution is based on a paradox and this will be my first Kritik.
We can only make truthful nonsense statements if the recipient of the statements is lacking in capacity to make sense of what is otherwise sensible and truthful.
Perhaps you will take this as a concession but it is not, I will explain more in my second Kritik.
==
Kritik 2: Freedom above all else in language.
I believe that short of making direct threats and bullying remarks, we ought to be permitted and encouraged to say whatever we like.
Since what is nonsense to one person may be sensible to another, there is never a time where we can knowingly be harmful with 'truthful nonsense' since we can always say 'this may not be nonsense to the recipient even though it is to me.' We have the capacity to create entire fictional worlds with our words on a book's pages, it is a beautiful part of being human. Why would Pro have us oppress this?
Pro actually would have us annihilate the entirety of fiction in any instance where what is fictional could relate to the real world (making it de facto truthful nonsense of sorts).
Round 2
Forfeited
Forfeited
Round 3
Forfeited
Alright, extend and end
This is a debate topic and we debate all and only those all that can be interpreted to be on the topic. Such restrictions are futile and limit those who believe in it, rather than the other party.
Multiple ways to interpret something is of course true but after you apply common sense, you can tell which interpretation is most likely correct. It was further made obvious after the post in round one.
FF by Pro
Such topics can be interpreted in more than one ways. Just because Pro has not tooted all their guns does not mean you have the right to tell debaters in the debate what it means.
Kritik 1: Truthful nonsense either doesn't exist or is only nonsense due to lack of understanding.
Just debate what op wants. Don't be a dick. You know he means obvious statements of fact. I would take con here also but argue the way it was intended
What do you think of my argument? Given the Declaration of Independence, is this “Fei hua” or something else entirely? 🤔
The correct answer is yes. "Fei hua" appears to imply an affirmative position. That is all. Nothing you mentioned is actually nonsense.
Well I think the guy was exaggerating to make a point, he’s like “of course that is a question”. An article talking about Fei Hua also said the useless questions could also be Fei hua …“ On several occasions I have been in a restaurant in China, eating with a pair of chopsticks, when a Chinese person has approached me and asked “can you use chopsticks?” The correct response here would be “fèi hùa!””
Ah yes, contemplating about life is meaningless, you say, sire?
The Chinese custom and slang has extended the wasteful/rubbish/nonsense to include obvious statements with flattery or just flowery “yes. Yes it is. Sun is bright today.” And the parents worries lead to command you to get a good grade is a meaningless statement, of course you already know to work hard and get a good life. It’s this kind of obvious statement that you already know is true, hence nonsense or a waste of time
To be fair one of the con for the topic said “to be or not to be that is the question” is also truthful nonsense
Being the foundation of possibly the entire algorithm utilized by computers, calling "1+1=2" nonsense is a disrespect to the entire IT field.
"please remember to tie your shoe" is an imperative, not a declarative, so it doesn't hold a truth value like 'your shoe is untied' does. It can neither be true or false.
'The weather is nice today huh' Although often said in meaningless contexts, this statement holds a truth value and can be used to communicate knowledge/beliefs. If I said this to someone who doesn't know what the weather is like, it is a useful statement, and not obviously true or untrue.
'one plus one equal two' This still has a truth value. At some point in your life you will learn this for the first time. A sponge does not have knowledge of this, but a two-year old human does.
Wanna have another go? I thought of a specific example where truthful nonsense may have resulted in some unclear incoherence that may outweigh the con argument….