Resolved- The costs of informing the public of the world ending 3 months prior outweigh the benefits

Resolved- The costs of informing the public of the world ending 3 months prior outweigh the benefits.

I believe that three months is too much time for the public to know such information. Not because they don't deserve to know, but simply because their lives would be much worse if they knew this information. People always want to be able to enjoy the last part of their life, however, the end of their life would only be enjoyed if they did not know when they were going to die. I would suggest that a more appropriate time to inform the public would be maybe 2 weeks, but to inform them 3 months prior would be national suicide. The economy would seize to exist, people would begin invading stores as there would be no one in the store (because people would stop going to work). With no one working, the society would stop running appropriately and it would be 3 months that would simply be more enjoyed if they did not know for another 2 or 2 and a half months.

Costs:

As it is my job to inform the costs within this resolution, I will simply allow my opponent to come up with the benefits.

Cost 1: The economy would crash.
This is obvious. If people knew that they were not going to be alive in 3 months, there would be no reason to try to make money. The economy would crash mostly because of the following costs...

Cost 2: Most people would stop going to work.
With no reason to make money, people wouldn't bother working. Which means that no trucks to ship gasoline or products anywhere. Which means the gasoline supply would run low in individual societies, that alone could mean the economy crashing. 3 months, is simply too long.

Cost 3: People would get their supplies in hurtful ways.
With money nearly coming obsolete, people would still need to get their supplies. This would undoubtedly mean that at least some people would be "forcing" people to give them supplies. Certainly the government would try to help to keep things under control. But with everyone being on their own, they will not be able to control everything. The best way to control the people, would be to inform them around 2 weeks prior to the world ending, NOT three months.

Cost 4: Most children would stop going to school.
I for one would seize going to school. School is meant to prepare you for you life. But there would be no point if you weren't going to have a life. Therefore, children would not bother going to school.

Cost 5: Life as we know it would stop.
The stability of the society would basically be destroyed. I can't say this with certainty. But all running walks of life could collapse. Such as electric companies, farmers, convenient store workers, truckers, etc... The only place that life would probably continue would be religious establishments.

Cost 6: Happiness would lessen.
With all of these instabilities and crashes, the happiness of the people would inevitably be worse. A cost, that can hardly be outweighed by any benefit. In the end, there are simply too many costs.

(I reserve the right to add to the list of costs)

I now stand ready for all benefits and refutation.

Thank You!

I negate, Resolved: The costs of informing the public of the world ending 3 months prior outweight the benefits.

To negate, I simply must win that there is no truth in the above statement. I have no burden to prove that the converse of the statement is true. Nowhere is it stated that the CON debater must prove the converse of the resolution true; rather, the con simply must prove the negative of the resolution true. That is, it is legitimate for me to win if I prove the following to be true: Resolved - The costs of informing the public of the world ending do NOT outweigh the benefits

There are two main points. First, that there are no benefits of informing the public of the world ending three months prior. If this is true, then the resolution can not be affirmed (you can't vote PRO) because it is an impossible scenario. My opponent makes a list of costs of taking this particular action, and he reserves the right to add more costs to the list. The problem, however, is that he provides no benefits and actually says that he will allow his opponent to provide the benefits. In the case that I don't provide a list of benefits, he hasn't provided a list of benefits, and he didn't reserve the right to list benefits in the future, it must be assumed that there are no benefits to taking this action. Thus, remember, if there are no benefits, then the costs can't outweigh the benefits: you can't compare something to something which doesn't exist.

Second, there is no way to weigh between these costs and benefits. Even IF my opponent is able to win that some benefits exist (but remember, I told you why this is impossible), the round must go to the CON. This is because my opponent provides no way to weigh between the costs and the benefits. At the point at which we have no weighing mechanism to make a comparison between the two, he can't tell you that the costs outweigh the benefits. This is because it is an unwarranted claim; if we don't know how to weigh between the two, then it is impossible to say that one outweighs the other. Since my opponent doesn't provide a weighing mechanism through which we can determine that the resolution is true, then it can't be affirmed (you can't vote PRO). Thus, you vote CON.

Remember, all I have to do as the CON is prove that the resolution is not true. If I prove that the resolution can not be proven true, that is sufficient to vote CON. Because of the two points I just highlighted, the resolution can't be proven true, so you negate (vote CON).

My opponent offers an interesting opening argument, but it does not disprove the resolution.

She opens with a statement that is true but is applied wrong. She says that all she has to prove is that there is no truth in the statement. BUT, in order to prove that there is no truth in the statement, you must provide benefits. (speaking on a level of philosophy) in my last speech, I offered 20 pounds of costs. In her last speech, she provides no benefits. She assumes that since no benefits were provided then I can't prove that they truly are outweighed. But the voters (at least a good voter) will not come into this round with their own argument but simply the arguments presented. If I believed abortion to be wrong and made a resolution about it and the other debater never posted an argument, voters would have no choice but to vote for me, WHY? because the opponent never proved anything else. Does that mean that me winning makes that final, no... but the only thing that the voters ought to be concerned with is what is presented in this round. So, how do you prove that there is no truth in this statement, you simply MUST provide the benefits to outweigh (or equal for con) the costs. But as of now, the 20 pounds of costs outweigh the lack of benefits.

Off her first point--> She ADMITS that there are no benefits, and she continues to say that you can't outweigh something that doesn't exist. That is not true. What weighs more? Me, or my son..... just so all of you know, I don't have a son. But my weight is still heavier than my son's weight of nothing. Nothing has a weight of nothing... Something weighs more than nothing. Also, there are benefits (such as people being able to do what they want in their last three months), but those benefits are so lacking that they simply can not outweigh the costs.

Off her second point--> She says that there is no way to make it final. But remember, debate is generally about debating opinions, not facts. Just because I win the debate of abortion as being wrong, doesn't make it a fact. It is an opinion proven at that point in time. Same as in this resolution. If I happen to win, doesn't mean that there are actually more weight in the costs than benefits. It simply says that in this debate there were more costs than benefits.

In the end, something weighs more than nothing. My costs flow through this round and the benefits do not exist. I urge you to see that if I am on a teeter totter and my son (that does not exist) is on the other end of the teeter totter, that he will go up and I will be like the fat kid on the bottom. So please vote Pro.

Thank You!

My opponent claims that I do not disprove the resolution. However, this is untrue. I specifically stated in my last argument that "Nowhere is it stated that the CON debater must prove the converse of the resolution true; rather, the con simply must prove the negative of the resolution true. That is, it is legitimate for me to win if I prove the following to be true: Resolved - The costs of informing the public of the world ending do NOT outweigh the benefits" Thus, in order to negate, all I have to do is prove that the resolution is not true. I need not prove that the benefits outweigh the costs, because there is no resolutional burden to do so. Rather, I simply must prove that the resolution is flawed.

Here's why this is true: to vote PRO means that the resolution has been proven true in it's entirity. To vote CON means anything other than that. Thus, the CON side has multiple possible courses of action: I can either prove the converse of the resolution true, or I can simply prove the resolution NOT TRUE. That is all that I am obligated to do. Insofar as I meet that burden, you always vote CON. So, if there is even reasonable doubt that the resolution is not true, you vote CON, because a PRO vote means that the entirity of the resolution has been definitively proven true.

Now on to the actual argumentation.

Johnicle compares the "weight" of costs and benefits to the physical weight of human beings. However, this is a false analogy. When discussing the metaphysical "weight" of two things, the laws of physical weight cease to have meaning. Here is an example: the laws of nature tell us that if thing 1 weighs more than thing 2, and both are dropped from the same point at the same time with any amount of wind resistance, thing 1 will fall more quickly than thing 2. Don't believe me? Go drop a feather and a penny out of a window.
The way this plays into the debate is as follows: if we drop the costs and the benefits... nothing happens. Because we CAN'T do that. Why not? Because they are not physical things, but rather metaphysical "things". Johnicle tries to use the physical laws of weight (that is, "something weighs more than nothing") in the context of this debate. However, since we aren't debating the PHYSICAL properties of costs and benefits (as this would be impossible) this argument CAN'T be true.

The above is the ONLY argument my opponent provides in his last speech: that something weighs more than nothing. However, since I've proven that this only applies to physical weight and not metaphysical weight, you disregard this argument. This means that my opponent is left with no offense.

Remember, we aren't discussing the physical laws of weight because costs and benefits are not physical. Johnicle may weigh more than his non-existant son, but we can't say that something abstract has more "weight" (that is, be more beneficial) than something else if we CAN'T compare the two. We know that Johnicle's non-existant son has no weight. However, the con simply holds that the costs and benefits can not be compared.

The first reason they can't be compared is because no one put forth the benefits. Insofar as we assume there are no benefits, we can't weigh between the two; we don't KNOW what we're weighing if they don't exist. The warrant fot his was explicit: "you can't compare something to something which doesn't exist." Although you may be able to do so in the physical world, you can not in the metaphysical world, so the argument still holds. This means that you can vote CON right now.

But even if you don't buy that, the second and more important point goes TOTALLY uncontested.

I explained that, "my opponent provides no way to weigh between the costs and the benefits. At the point at which we have no weighing mechanism to make a comparison between the two, he can't tell you that the costs outweigh the benefits. This is because it is an unwarranted claim; if we don't know how to weigh between the two, then it is impossible to say that one outweighs the other. " What this means is that since my opponent doesn't tell you how to weigh between costs and benefits (remember, we're not using a physical scale), we can not say that one outweighs the other. In the absence of a weighing mechanism, it is non-sensical to say that something carries more "weight" than something else. To use an example from the physical world, we can't say that Johnicle weighs more than me if we don't have a way to determine that to be true. Similarly, we can't say that the costs outweigh the benefits if we don't have a way to prove it true.

All my opponent says is that we debate opinions, not facts. However, ONLY facts are what can give opinions any meaning; in a debate about abortion, someone who is pro-choice might state the FACT that banning abortions limit free choice of the mother, while someone who is pro-life would counter with the FACT that abortions kill fetuses or embryos. So, in order for any of my opponent's arguments to matter at all, he must provide SOME way to determine truth. But further, this argument doesn't take out my point that he gives no weighing mechanism, so if we can't weigh between the two, you can't definitively say that one outweighs the other.

Since Johnicle doesn't give a weighing mechanism to determine that the costs have more "weight" than the benefits, it is IMPOSSIBLE to prove the resolution true. My opponent NEVER sufficiently responded to this argument, so it has to be assumed to be true in the context of this round.

This means that it is automatically impossible to vote PRO (since he can't say that one weighs more than the other without a way in which we determine this); thus, you vote CON.

The point of this resolution is to examine if the costs outweigh the benefits or not. My answer is simply yes, they do. All of my costs go uncontested... flow these through the round. My opponent has refused to give any benefits whatsoever, however, last round I offered one benefit in my last speech of, "people being able to do what they want in their last three months." There is also the benefit of being able to prepare for your death. These are two benefits, but are easily outweighed by all of the costs. She claims that I don't give a weighing mechanism, however the weighing mechanism is simply which is more. In order to "outweigh" you simply have to have a greater amount. I have 6 costs and 2 poor benefits, therefore, the costs outweigh the benefits. You have to see that there are some benefits whether she offers them or not, since she says I have to in order to weigh them, I did, and you CAN weigh these two things. I only used the human weight comparisons as examples. But now you can see that if the world were to end in 3 months, the costs of informing the public do in fact outweigh the benefits. I would go argument by argument but I don't see it as necessary, the round only comes down to what I have addressed, therefore, I can only see a Pro vote.

Thank You!

My opponent's last speech/argument/round/whatever has a few major flaws.

The first is where he claims that he provided some benefits, therefore the costs the provided outweigh the benefits. The PROBLEM with this is that i clearly explained previously that he neither provided benefits in the beginning NOR reserved the right to provide benefits later in the debate. Thus, the benefits he brought up later in the round are 100% irrelevent to our debate.

The second flaw is that he claims we don't need a weighing mechanism; he simply advocates counting up the benefits and comparing that number to the costs. The problem with this is that not all things carry equal weight; we wouldn't say that the benefit of not punishing any innocents cancels out the costs of getting rid of our penal system. What this means is that we NEED a weighing mechanism to determine if the costs really do outweigh the benefits. Since my opponent NEVER provides you with such a mechanism, we have NO WAY of knowing if the costs really do outweigh the benefits.

To illustrate this, I provided the example of how we would be unable to determine whether or not Johnicle weighs more than me if we don't have a way to determine that. The same way, we have no way to determine if the costs outweigh the benefits if he doesn't provide us with a way in which we can determine this.

This has a HUGE IMPACT on the round: if he can't tell us how we determine (or weigh) between two different things, he can't claim that one outweighs the other. This makes it IMPOSSIBLE to affirm (vote pro on) this resolution. This means that you vote CON.

*TO SUMMARIZE*

As I've stated in every posting I've made, Johnicle doesn't tell us how to weigh between the costs and benefits. If we can't way, he can't say that one outweighs the other. EVEN IF he wins that there are some costs, he doesn't win that they OUTWEIGH the benefits (which is what the resolution asks him to do) if he can' tell us HOW to WEIGH. This means that the resolution can not be proven true.
Thus, vote CON.