Instigator / Con
15
1577
rating
20
debates
72.5%
won
Topic
#5638
The ocean is a soup
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
After 3 votes and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...
Best.Korea
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Rated
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 10,000
- Voting period
- Two weeks
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
- Minimal rating
- None
Contender / Pro
18
1271
rating
354
debates
39.83%
won
Description
There have been a lot of serious and meaningful debates in this site, but that’s boring.
I’m doing the stupidest debate I could think of, is the ocean a soup?
This one has actually been pretty long-standing between me and my friends, so hopefully this settles that.
I’m not going to provide definitions, mostly because that’s the whole point of the debate. At its core, It’s really a debate about what definitions are and mean.
Just don’t come it here and start defining a soup as whatever you want. Use common sense.
Round 1
Thank you pro for accepting. I’m just not realizing my that this probably should have been a standard debate, but it’s too late to change that now.
The main argument in favor of the ocean being a soup is that it fits the basic definition of one. It has meat vegetables all in a broth. I have several objections to this though
The broader definition
Even though the ocean does fit the basic definition, there are certain qualities that a soup must have that are so fundamental to a soup, that they are not included in the definition.
If I was to make a basic definition of a soup, I wouldn’t feel the need to say that it is man made, or that it isn’t supposed to kill you, because that much is just assumed. However, the ocean will kill you if you eat all of it, and it is also not man made.
Soups don’t have toxic chemicals in them, and they certainly don’t have an island of garbage right in the middle.
The ocean isn’t made for the express purpose of being eaten, and it isn’t served in a bowl or any other man made container.
Soups also don’t have weird animals like the electric eel or the angler fish. If I made a soup and just threw in a blob fish, you would call me a sociopath.
The colloquial use of words
Many people think that the dictionary is the absolute source for the meaning of words. However, this isn’t quite true. For one, there are many different dictionaries with different definitions, but the all define soup about the same way, so this doesn’t help my argument.
The real way words derive their meaning is from the way we use them every day. Some people use some words in different ways, but one thing is for sure, no one uses the word “soup” to describe the ocean.
If went to a restaurant and ordered soup, I’d be pretty pissed if the waiter came back with the ocean. If I say to a friend to drive me to the ocean, and they drive me to a soup, then I’d also be pretty pissed, because I clearly meant the ocean, not a soup.
Nobody actually uses the word “soup” to describe the ocean, and so the ocean cannot be a soup, because nobody says that it is.
Words are just arbitrary sounds that we give arbitrary meaning to, and the meaning we have given to “soup” is not the same meaning we have given to “ocean”.
Thank you for humoring me with this stupid debate, I yield the floor.
The disagreement rises in the fact that my opponent thinks his definition of soup doesnt fit ocean, but I will prove that his definition of soup doesnt even fit soup.
Topic "Ocean is a soup" means that entire ocean, not some of it but all of it, can be placed in the category of soup.
But my opponent's definition contains many contradictions. For example, he says that eating soup wont kill you, but there were times in history where people were killed by poisoned soup.
Thus, we see that soup can kill you, and since ocean can kill you too, it follows that ocean can be soup.
Further, any soup can contain plastic and many poisonous chemicals.
Further, my opponent claims that if you ate entire ocean, you would die, but same would apply if you ate all the non-ocean soup in the world as well.
Also, no one has ever eaten all the non-ocean soup in the world, since there is still plenty of non-ocean soup.
And it is obvious that any part of ocean can be made into soup.
What is soup made of? Mostly of water.
Oceans, seas and rivers are mostly water. So soup can be made from them.
It is easy to make soup from an ocean. Take some ocean water, some fish from ocean and some greens from ocean, boil it and you have soup.
Compare that to the non-ocean soup. You take greens and meat, place it in water, boil it and you get soup.
As we can see, there is no significant difference in soup made from ocean and soup made from non-ocean.
We could even argue that all soup came from ocean, because greens and meat first appeared in oceans.
Round 2
my opponent claims that if you ate entire ocean, you would die, but same would apply if you ate all the non-ocean soup in the world as well.
Well yes, but the debate is “is the ocean a soup”. The question is if the whole ocean is a soup, not just a select amount of the ocean. When eating a soup, you take at least one spoonful, which we can say is 1% of the soup.
If I ate one percent of the ocean, I would die. Even if I drank a couple bowlfuls of the ocean I would die because of the salt water. If the ocean is a soup, then you would eat the same amount proportionate to what you would have at with a normal soup.
And it is obvious that any part of ocean can be made into soup.What is soup made of? Mostly of water.Oceans, seas and rivers are mostly water. So soup can be made from them.
Yes, soup can be made from the ocean, but the debate is about if the entire ocean is a soup, not just a part.
What is soup made of? Mostly of water.
Not salt water
But my opponent's definition contains many contradictions. For example, he says that eating soup wont kill you, but there were times in history where people were killed by poisoned soup.Thus, we see that soup can kill you, and since ocean can kill you too, it follows that ocean can be soup.
That’s a fair point, I didn’t think that one through. A poisoned soup is still a soup, but the ocean still isn’t a poisoned soup.
A poisoned soup is man made.
A poisoned soup has had poison added for the purpose of killing someone.
A poisoned soup is made to be consumed
A soup in general doesn’t have trash in it.
A soup doesn’t have animal piss in it
A soup doesn’t have salt water as the broth
A soup doesn’t have tides
You don’t do surfing on a soup
You get the point.
If I added any of these things to a soup, it wouldn’t be a soup anymore. It would be a soup with little kid pee, or a garbage island in it. The thing that makes the ocean different is that you have to take it all as one.
You can’t say, the ocean is a soup except for all the stuff that isn’t a soup, it has to be taken as one, and because it has many elements that are not in soups, then it is not a soup.
Well yes, but the debate is “is the ocean a soup”. The question is if the whole ocean is a soup, not just a select amount of the ocean. When eating a soup, you take at least one spoonful, which we can say is 1% of the soup.If I ate one percent of the ocean, I would die. Even if I drank a couple bowlfuls of the ocean I would die because of the salt water. If the ocean is a soup, then you would eat the same amount proportionate to what you would have at with a normal soup.
This again faces same problem, because my opponent is claiming that if "soup" reaches a certain size, it stops being "soup".
So if you made 20 liters of soup and you ate it all, you would still die due to too much water intake.
My opponent wants to argue some ratio here, but by mere logic, most soups are of different sizes.
My opponent made a definition "if you ate it all, it would kill you", but same applies to poison mushroom soup.
So even if I were to concede the definition which limits the size of soup, it wouldnt change anything.
But notice how in round 1, my opponent didnt define any specific size.
So if someone was to make 20 liters of soup, all here can agree that 20 liters of soup can exist.
If you ate 20 liters of soup in a short time, you would die.
My opponent tried to point out "a soup", but "a" isnt a definition of any size either.
When people cook 20 liters of soup in a large pot, they dont say "I am making soups", but they say "I am making soup".
Its kinda like water. If you drink 6 liters of water in an hour, you will die.
Yet water doesnt stop being water just because it killed you.
Otherwise, if we applied this logic everywhere, we would need a new name for each thing that ends up killing someone, which is absurd.
"Tree that falls on a person and kills a person is not a tree anymore, because trees dont normally kill people..." is how my opponent's logic of definitions works here.
That’s a fair point, I didn’t think that one through. A poisoned soup is still a soup, but the ocean still isn’t a poisoned soup.A poisoned soup is man made.A poisoned soup has had poison added for the purpose of killing someone.A poisoned soup is made to be consumedA soup in general doesn’t have trash in it.A soup doesn’t have animal piss in itA soup doesn’t have salt water as the brothA soup doesn’t have tidesYou don’t do surfing on a soupYou get the point.If I added any of these things to a soup, it wouldn’t be a soup anymore. It would be a soup with little kid pee, or a garbage island in it. The thing that makes the ocean different is that you have to take it all as one.You can’t say, the ocean is a soup except for all the stuff that isn’t a soup, it has to be taken as one, and because it has many elements that are not in soups, then it is not a soup.
My opponent concedes that people throw trash into ocean, which means that "ocean" as it exists now is man made, so even if my opponent moves the goalpost to "man made", current ocean is still man made.
My opponent makes a list of points about differences, but all those points could apply to soup.
Besides, different soups exist. If you throw a tiny piece of trash in the soup, its still a soup. If you put a drop of pee in a soup, its still a soup.
If you spill soup in the ocean, does ocean become a soup then?
Round 3
This again faces same problem, because my opponent is claiming that if "soup" reaches a certain size, it stops being "soup".So if you made 20 liters of soup and you ate it all, you would still die due to too much water intake.My opponent wants to argue some ratio here, but by mere logic, most soups are of different sizes.My opponent made a definition "if you ate it all, it would kill you", but same applies to poison mushroom soup.
Yeah, I conceded that point last round. A soup can kill you can still be a soup.
So even if I were to concede the definition which limits the size of soup, it wouldnt change anything.But notice how in round 1, my opponent didnt define any specific size.So if someone was to make 20 liters of soup, all here can agree that 20 liters of soup can exist.If you ate 20 liters of soup in a short time, you would die.My opponent tried to point out "a soup", but "a" isnt a definition of any size either.
I’ll concede that one too. I didn’t really consider that the worlds largest soup is still a soup. However, keep in mind I’m not confessing the debate. This is going somewhere.
My opponent concedes that people throw trash into ocean, which means that "ocean" as it exists now is man made, so even if my opponent moves the goalpost to "man made", current ocean is still man made.
The different here is that the ocean is not entirely man made.
If I hired some guys to build me a house, and then I hammered in the last nail, you wouldn’t say that I built the house, they built it.
Part of it is man made, but overwhelmingly most of it is not, and so it does not fit the definition of soup.
Besides, different soups exist. If you throw a tiny piece of trash in the soup, it’s still a soup. If you put a drop of pee in a soup, it’s still a soup.
Now this is where it gets interesting. I think that the soup part is still a soup. It’s just soup with trash in it.
Well by that logic, the parts of the ocean that are a soup are a soup with trash and pee and pollutants in it, right?
Wrong, because it’s the ocean, not some of the ocean. You have to take it as one.
If you spill soup in the ocean, does ocean become a soup then?
The ocean is still the ocean and it has some soup in it, just like before, but it is still not a soup.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to point out to anyone voting on this debate that my opponent has not responded to the entire second half of my first argument about the colloquial use of words. There have also been other points that I made that have been dropped.
I conceded some of the points that they brought up, but many other points have gone unresponded too.
For that reason, and for the merit of my arguments that you find, vote Pro!
Anyways, thanks for humoring me with this stupid debate Con.
Pleasure.
Damn
We need more votes. I cant afford to win this debate. I am very sure that I logically lost it anyway.
Votes
Thank you.
I'll read it over and vote.
This needs more than 1 vote
votes
Fabulous.