I've had a look at the other team's (basically MornirKirara) reaction to our post, and I'm pleased to say, that there's something to be said for threadbare rebuttals. They can hardly rebut a thing of ours.
15 years ago
Sun Sep 07 2008, 01:39pm
Hey guys - just letting you know you are allowed to edit your post (you've probably seen that the Affirmative team have changed theirs a bit) Just keep it reasonable, i.e. don't make major changes 3 days down the track when other arguments are starting to be posted up, it'll make it too difficult to follow otherwise.
OK, YAY! Helena could you please fix up that typing error?
And should we start thinking about our secong speaker now? Who is going to post up our second speech?
Wanderer Guilden
15 years ago
Wanderer Guilden
Mage
i've already done it....
i think they other team just put up the same post? .......um.....right
TSC, there is something to say about air-tight arguments ;D go us!
I want to know why the other team has posted their intro twice....
Mystic Guildmistress
15 years ago
Sat Sep 06 2008, 10:08pm
Mystic Guildmistress
Mage
Lol have they? Oh well, they'll realise it soon enough.
On sepakers: Nef has agreed to do either 2nd or 4th, Ravyn has offered to do 3rd and Queen Arwen has said she can do any leftover. So either Nef or Queen Arwen, or if they're not willing anymore, is there anyone else who would like to do it. I'll collect all our arguments about learning from the past in this post :)
EDIT:
Schis: Misfit Schis: Obviously, by learning about the past, ie looking at the Beforetime technology, new methods can be learnt that will benefit today's generation. Hence, the existence of the Teknoguild, to learn about the past.
But, as the affirmative are likely to point out, if we rely to much on the technology, a re-occurrence of the Great White could happen. But again, there are arguments for this in that eventually the past technoogy will be researched by some generation (if not our generation, the possibly anotehr one in the future) and that if we look into the past, responsibily and learn what lead to the Great White, we can attempt to prevent it from ever happenign again. By just covering up the past, it incentive remains to try and work out what happened in the past, and so either way, a catastrophic event is a possibility that weaponmachines do lend themselves to.
And obviously, not all the machinery was bad... hence why only some of it is classified as weaponmachines...
Arcana: 1. Learning the lesson; it is known that the weapon machines (Beforetimer technology) caused the Great White. Little more is known of this event in the history – even though it is probably the greatest to have ever occurred. To ignore the destructive ability of the human mind and the willingness of humanity to destroy them in order to destroy others must be understood in order for an event of such magnitude to be avoided in the future.
Schis: As Arcana said, we need to uncover the technology so we can prevent the Great White happening again. Simply leaving technology in the past isn't going to prevent the Great White happening again, so research into the technologies of the Beforetime is necessary to prevent the possibility of any re-occurence. Simply leaving them as they are doesn't fix anything, because eventually, someone else will be curious as to our past and want to work out what happened.
Firefall: I think the main thing, though, is this idea that the past won't go away. There are plenty of physical disadvantages to a lack of technology in the Land (no way to fight disease or sanitise taint, etc.), but there is also a mental one: curiosity. There are always going to be curious people, whether knowledge-thirsty like the teknoguilders or bent on destruction like Ariel, and attempting to simply whitewash history is leaving them an opening to stumble across the dangers the whitewashing was trying to make everyone avoid. Ignorance is dangerous: it's better to embrace technology with the added gain of experience to make one cautious, than to try and pretend the past never happened and let ignorant or malicious people do what they will with dangerous forces.
Maruman: learning from the past. That could mean a range of things, such as, learning from the books and other references of the past, learning from the mistakes of the past (the Great White) or maybe learning from people of the past, which is insanely impossible, though some people believe its possible. Some of the futuretellers or people who have true dreams may also learn from the past. So learning is a very big argument we have, all we have to do is round out some of the edges. If you don’t understand what I mean about edges, I’m basically saying to expand on the weak spots of our argument.
Here’s some of the “edges†of our argument: learning from the past:
- how do we learn, we have to find sources and references, this will be hard because of what extent would we go to, to find these resources? Dangers, problems or will a life be risked?
- What if we come across the wrong sorts of information, making us greedy for more or greedy for weaponmachines. What if there is something that tells us how to use the weaponmachines and makes us hungry to find them.
- What if the sources we find (above) get into the wrong hands as arcana said (was it arcana?)
- Destroying the sources that we tried so hard to find? It be a total waste, and I can’t see any tecknoguilder agreeing to it.
- As Schis said, we have to take risks to achieve, but are these risks really worth it? What if it costs the lives of all the people of the land? And if we do burn it wouldn’t there be more?
Avialle: 1. Learning from the past. We have to learn from the mistakes that the beforetimers made in order to prevent a Great White occurring in the future.
Possible affirmative rebuttal: The affirmative team could say that seeking knowledge is different than seeking technology.
This would be quite easy to rebut, because we could say in our definition of the topic that we difine the topic as -
"That we should bury all knowledge of beforetime technology."
EI: 1. Learning from the past: Ignorance may be bliss but I'd rather be knowledgible than not know anything at all. And technology comes from knowledge, technology is usually an accumulation of ideas wrought into one design/device. Therefore technology comes hand in hand with knowledge and through the tecknoguilders, the misfits actively seek knowlegde of the beforetime, along with its technology. They obviously don't think the past should stay in the past.
Wanderer Guilden
15 years ago
Wanderer Guilden
Mage
lol they have deleted it now...
what point/s are we going to introduce into the next one?
Wanderer Guilden
15 years ago
Wanderer Guilden
Mage
1. we could modify our resources to suport it...or...
2. we could modify the tech. to be suported by our resources (as i said above)
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1. our natural development was, before the Great white, what we are shunning now....or..
2. how do they know what our natural develpoment COULD be if we used/ modified/ invented around the Beforetime tech.?
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thats all i have so far..... ~:|
Ok, so looking at all our comments, basically our main 2 points for "learning from the past" are:
a) Learning about ways to improve the current state of the land (eg medicinal technologies)
b) Learning about the mistakes the beforetimers made, so that we will not make them ourselves
Umm, as for rebuttals, I'm with Helena on the first points- like modifying our resources or modifying the technologies. The teknoguilders have a light in their cave, and Madame Vega and Alexi used a beforetime machine, the Zebkrahn...these machines have to be powered by something- obviously they've found a way to do it.
As for the natural development point- By reading a book, I'm interfering with my own natural development? Almost everything we learn has been done by someone else before us; tieing your shoes, mathematics, cooking. Sure, people also innovate and come up with new things- but we're only able to innovate by knowing what has already been discovered. Developing is all about growing and learning. You're not going to be able to do that by living in a bubble and being ignorant.
Resources - realy no resources? then how does the Zebkrahn operate, or INES for that matter. I know of no fuel dumps existing in the land that would supply the power for these devices - I'm guessing renewable resources are the go...?
I'm happy to be the fourth speaker ... I like it when people can't argue back.
lol, Nef.
You'd be great as fourth speaker. You could add some of that Comic Relief...
Wanderer Guilden
15 years ago
Wanderer Guilden
Mage
lol what about we have something like a play for one of the remaining posts?
like:
A: tech is bad
B: (offers a situation)(then a really cheesy Monty python-ish play happens, with said situation)
-----
kinda stupid, but it would be entertaining....
Could we do that for the last one?
Nef's "comic relief": If you don't mind, of course, Nef.
Would we losepoints for that? I shouldn't think so, but maybe we should ask the Moonfairy?
Wanderer Guilden
15 years ago
Wanderer Guilden
Mage
i don't think we would loose points for it, after all, the opp. did something of the sort, with the band, but that was a bit different...i'll pm the Moonfairy about it...
15 years ago
Sun Sep 07 2008, 08:56am
Exactly! :D
Don't forget to look at the store of stuff we've got, further up the page, everyone. I sves looking wildly around the thread, trawling for stuff.
Sorry guys! I completely forgot about this thread - and I have been running around for the past 48 hours organizing father's day/best friends birthday - please excuse my absence! :)
All the thoughts you guys have put up in rebuttal have been fantastic - but reading them collectively I've noticed that we have challenged their smaller supporting arguments rather than the collective foundation which the 1st speaker's arguments were founded upon.
There are two underlying assumptions in all of the arguments proposed by the affirmative team in the debate;
1. That technology in itself is inherently 'bad' - or at least any possible goodness in technology cannot be determined without allowing the inherently 'bad' technology to co-exist.
2. Humans are inherently 'bad' in the sense that they are power-hungry and thus will be ultimately corrupted by the inherent 'bad' nature of technology as a result.
The first argument centers around the concern that if beforetime technology was uncovered and used as second 'Great White' (or something of its equivalent) would occur. The question I ask is, is the possible chance of destruction justification for not trying to obtain the benefits that beforetime technology has to offer? Is the risk of 'annihilation' so great that society is willing to sacrifice greater understanding of the human body in order to provide improved medical treatment? Is society willing to sacrifice the knowledge and ability to mass produce food and water for the people in times of scarcity? Is society truly to afraid of possibility to take that risk?. I would ask where would we be today if our ancestors had not taken the risk to build a rotating circle that would lead to quick transportation for produce and people, or if our ancestors had decided that the flame that burns was too dangerous to permit us to use? Yes it is true that fire can cause great destruction - man-made fire in particular as it is not the natural cause of things BUT without it we would have no way to warm ourselves in the cold or a way to cook our meat to prevent contraction of bacteria. We as a society took that risk because of the possible benefits even though there were serious harms which the invention of fire could cause. To leave beforetime technology in the past is to declare widely the state of fear that we as a people live in and to demonstrate how that fear has controlled our aspiration.
2. It is assumed that if 'bad' beforetime technology was discovered it would inevitably fall into the hands of the 'evil' or the 'corruptible'. Thus to protect ourselves from such individuals we should hinder those who seek to achieve good with such technology - or even worse assume that such individuals do not exist. If this is the case, and if this is an accepted argument once again I ask why? This state of fear of destruction has suffocated society's aspiration to achieve greatness, to be better. But most importantly, if we assume that beforetime technology will eventually be used to destroy society by one such as Ariel, then what we are truly saying is that there is no hope. There is no hope that we can learn from the past, that we can be the beforetimers betters because of their mistakes, that we can do all that they sought to do to benefit the community at large without the destruction. We have the opportunity to seize their knowledge and do good because that is what we hope to do. The affirmative team may suggest that such a hope is idealistic or a false hope - that individuals are simply that selfish and corruptible. And yes, to the cynic such hope is idealistic but it is not false. There can be false promises or statements or smiles - but there is no such thing as false hope - there is simply hope. If Pandora almost destroyed the world by opening up her box - but managed to save it by shutting the box before hope escaped - then to give up on the hope of being a greater society than that which has come before us is ironically achieving what we hope to prevent - the destruction of the world.
But I will leave you with this thought - a once heard a statement which has always stuck with me 'Aim for the stars and you'll make it to the moon. Aim for the moon and you will never make it through the atmosphere'. To not make it out of our own world based upon two assumptions of inherent evil and the the sacrifice of the notions dreams, aspirations and hope is destruction of our society in itself.
Okay - once again ranting ;D. I like rebutting arguments by stealing the moral high ground :)
I think that's okay...the second post can raise it in rebuttal to anything they raise (great thing about being able to introduce new information at the rebuttal stage ;).
We are going to most likely go around in circles in the argument about are people evil, will all people be corrupted by power etc. argument - and I think the only way to take it is with the a moral high ground argument (not necessarily what I have ranted about, but something along those lines).
I have been doing some sneaking |:| And the affirmative team is about to hit use harder with the resources/energy consumption argument and inside of it the argument that even though INES is clearly powered by something we do not know anything about the power source.
Thought I'd give us a bit of a heads up to make sure that we can brainstorm some rebuttal...but my brain is fried after my last rant...sorry guys, I'll try and get back to it all after work tonight.
My brains fried... not that I've done much.
Aaah.
Half of the other team is working on their stuff right now... they're so far ahead of us. not that it really matters.