Death K

Notes (Please Read)

 Notes
You can run this against any 1AC that states that the impact is death.
IMPORTANT: Please dont copy and paste the entire file but just the parts that
you need into a separate doc
Note: Might be a good idea to read some metaphysics of death books before
you read this
Note: Unless you actually understand the math behind Quantum Mechanics,
you probably shouldnt read it. Its really confusing and you will most
likely get destroyed if you have no clue what youre doing. If you want to run
that, some things you are going to have to answer are:
1) How does quantum mechanics apply on a large scale (Tegmark
suggests quantum mechanics applies to larger objects as well as
smaller objects)
2) If we havent proved many worlds, why should we believe it
3) All of the ATs in the quantum part that have nothing in them
4) What the fuck the argument is talking about
The following list is some good questions in the first cross-ex (very important
because you can simply add on fire in the CX Add on fire Section- great args)
1) Ask if they think death is bad or fear death
a. If they say yes ask-> plan supporting immortality or an afterlife
in any form
i. If they say yes to that ask what type of immortality (one,
group, all- either way read Nussbaum)
1. One person should get immortality
2. A group should get immortality
3. Everyone should get immortality
ii. If they say people should live the longest they can specify
natural causes
1. Most likely they will say that the extra human life
has value, you cant get too much more from them
so stop this line of questioning (once they say this
read AT Deprivation)
b. If they say no just ask why is extinction an impact (instant win)
2) When is a persons death a harm to them?
a. Priorism (Before Death)
b. Concurrentism (Bad at the time they die)
c. Subsequentialism (After death)
d. Eternally (Eternalism)
e. Indefinitism (Bad but at no definite time)
Whatever response they give to that question just read the block for it
Here are some ways to win the debate:
 1) Epic + CX Add on -> Presumption (harder to pull off but its a good last
ditch attempt- if everything else fails say the aff cant prove time of
harm of death so it cant be a harm presumption)
2) Fear of Death Add On -> 1AC Unethical (doesnt let us be happy-
causes stress)
3) Suicide -> Takes away our human rights (definitely the strongest arg in
the file)
4) SCARE -> The best arg in the whole file for sure and only 4 cards,
always read (Strauss 16 is absolute fire).
Things to work on:
Add more stuff in cross x stuff
Top Shelf
 1NC Epic

Death gives birth to beauty- the aff presents their plan as

an eradication of death which destroys the beauty in life
Nussbaum 13 - 2013 She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. From
1986 to 1993, Ms. Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics
Research, Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee on International
Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women of the American Philosophical Association, and
currently chairs its new Committee for Public Philosophy. She has been a member of the Association's
(Martha C. Nussbaum, The Damage of Death, The Metaphysics
National Board.
and Ethics of Death)
What I had in mind (using the lives of the Homeric gods as my stalking horse)
was that there can be no human courage without the ability to risk death, no
friendship and love of the sort we currently value without the possibility of
running such risks for the sake of those we love, and so forth. More generally,
human love and friendship have a temporal structure in which aging, the
different phases of the human life cycle, and the possibility of loss are central
structures, conditioning the particular sort of value they have. In addition, I
argued, a kind of intensity and dedication with which we pursue many of our
activities cannot be explained without reference to the awareness that our
opportunities are finite, that we cannot choose these activities indefinitely
many times. Quoting Wallace Stevens, I concluded that Death is indeed
the mother of beauty. It was reasonable for Odysseus, thinking in this way, to decline Calypsos
offer of immortality: For the life he loved and valued, his own life, could not exist without that choice. When
he repeatedly insists that he wants his own home, what he more generally means is that he wants his own
life. He finds a life with struggle and change exciting; an unchanging woman and life, however beautiful,
cannot hold his interest. Its not as if there is nothing in this argument. We
can indeed agree that
the lives of the Homeric gods, who can easily do anything they want any time
they want, do seem lacking in intensity, depth, and commitment. They cant
even run a race, or show any other athletic excellence, because there is no
struggle for them; they just whisk themselves away to the finish line. They
also seem, I now add, to be deficient in a sense of humor, because humor
(much of it, anyway) appears to be predicated on a sense of the limits of the
body and the many absurdities it gets one into.

Death cant harm us so fearing it is irrational

Taylor 13 - 2013 TCNJ Associate Professor, MA, St. Andrews University; M.LITT, St. Andrews
University; MA, Bowling Green State University; Ph.D., Bowling Green State University, serves as the
Managing Editor (with exclusive responsibility for book reviews) of The Journal of Value Inquiry, and a
member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy and HEC (Healthcare Ethics
Committee) Forum, published numerous Op-Eds on bioethical issues in publications such as the Los
Angeles Times, the New York Daily News and USA Today, an occasional contributor to NPR debates on
ethical issues, and have been quoted in, and interviewed for, multiple publications (including The
Times and the New York Times) on both bioethical issues and the morality of markets. (James Stacy
Taylor, Introduction, The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death)
This Epicurean argument is:
1. An event or a state of affairs can only harm a person when she exists.
Thus,
2. An event or a state of affairs must either be contemporaneous with, or occur
prior to, the time at which a person exists for it to harm him.
3. Persons are either antemortem persons (i.e., persons whose deaths have
not yet occurred) or postmortem persons (i.e., persons whose deaths have
occurred).
4. An antemortem person (i.e., a person whose death has not yet occurred)
exists.
5. A postmortem person (i.e., a person whose death has occurred) does
not exist.
Thus, from (1), (2), and (5):
6. Postmortem persons cannot be harmed by their own deaths.
And from (2) and (4):
7. Antemortem persons cannot be harmed by their own deaths.
Thus, from (3), (6), and (7): Therefore, persons cannot be harmed by their
own deaths.

Even if we can only prove death isnt to be feared, neg

wins by presumption we take out their impact if we do
not fear death there is no reason to vote aff

Smelko 13 [Former debate competitor, current judge. Everything you need to know about
Policy Debate, Chicago Debate League, http://chicagodebateleague.org/wp-
content/uploads/2010/10/Debate-101.pdf]

In most every debate round, the negative team goes into the round armed
with the presumption that the status quo should be maintained until the
affirmative proves a prima facie case for change to the plan. A prima facie
case is one that establishes all of the stock issue elements required to move
the judge to vote for the affirmative team . . . that there is a significant problem [or some
compelling ADVANTAGES that would be generated by adopting the affirmative plan] (SIGNIFICANCE), that
the status quo is not solving and cannot solve the significant problem, [or is not generating or cannot
generate the substantial advantages] (INHERENCY), that the affirmative plan can solve or prevent the
significant problem, [or can generate or create the substantial advantages] (SOLVENCY), without creating
any disadvantages that would be worse than the problems being solved [or the advantages being created]
if the AFF proves that a significant problem exists,
through adoption of the plan. So,
but does not prove that the plan can solve the problem, then the NEG would
win because of the presumption that until the AFF proves a complete prima
facie case for change, the status quo is and should remain the best policy
alternative. Since the status quo is a very important part of the negative
teams pie going into the debate round, if by the end of the debate round the
status quo remains the best policy option, then the negative wins the debate
round on presumption, which the negative team possesses until the affirmative team overcomes
the negative teams presumption by establishing a prima facie case for change. Differently phrased, the
question in nearly every debate round for the judge to answer is whether or not the affirmative team has
proven in the debate round a prima facie case for change, and that the change should be made to the
affirmative plan. If the judge feels that any element of the affirmative teams prima facie case has not
been established in the debate round, then in a typical, stock issues debate model, presumption would
dictate that the judge should vote negative.
The alternative is to reject impacts that frame the harm in
death and frame the harm in loss of quality of life instead

*This card has been edited- The word hell has been replaced with the word
misery*

Our alternative shifts the focus away from quantity of life

to quality of life which is a more ethical and selfless
position our alternative promotes an acceptance of
death that leads to more happiness for all
Stayman 15 2/20/15 Experienced Death Firsthand, Writes for the Duke Chronical. (Max
Stayman, Duke Chronical, http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2014/09/end-
life-care-balancing-money-time-and-quality-life#.VOKnJVPF-Xw)

The thesis of my column was basically the followingall the new

technologies, medicines and devices are great, but sometimes their use puts
patients and families through hell [misery] at the end of their life in the name
of gaining a little more time. My worry was that if my family had to make that
choice, I would sing a different tune. About six weeks ago, shortly before my
grandpas ninety-second birthday, he got into a car accident and had to be
hospitalized. In hindsight, this acute event was clearly the beginning of the
end. In comparison to his life before the accidentplaying tennis until
recently and teaching multiple bridge lessons per week he became tired and
stopped eating very muchalthough still totally mentally lucid, he was a
different person. Those few weeks, complete with the gravity of hospital stays
and the relief of being sent home, were definitely a roller coaster for him and
the family at large. He kept wondering when he would get back to driving,
and when he would return to teaching his classes. In the wake of such an
immediate transition from full self-sufficiency to needing a lot of help with
basic activities of daily living, his frustration and confusion regarding the slow
pace of his recovery were understandable . In the beginning, the doctors tried
a lot of treatments to make him well again. But, as time wore on, they, and
our family, became wary of subjecting him to invasive procedures that had
little chance of making a difference. On that final night in the hospital, when
it was clear he was nearing the end, the doctors asked my grandmother if she
wanted them to try revive him. Her initial response was yes, but when it
came to that, she told them to let him go. I am really proud of her for that
decision, as incredibly difficult as it must have been. Not only would the CPR
have been excruciatingly painful for himbreaking ribs and bruising muscles
but the quality of life he would have been faced with afterwards , if it were
successful, was not what he would have wanted. This was a man who lived to
take care of himself, his family and his friends. A few extra months of being
totally dependent on others would not only have been demoralizing, but
contrary to everything he had been about for over ninety-two years . I share this
story not to try to write a depressing column. Instead, I share it because I think it illustrates well what I
The death of our loved ones is deeply difficult. It stops time
talked about last fall.
for us while we watch the rest of the world keep spinning. And yet, we have
no choice but to accept it. By focusing our energy on celebrating his life,
rather than trying futilely to extend it, we have been able to better honor him
and what he stood for as a husband, a father and a grandfather. So did my earlier
comments hold up when put to the test? Largely, yesalthough I have noticed one major omission now
that I am in this situation. The cost of end-of-life care was a large portion of my previous column, and it
makes no appearances here. When its your family, system-wide medical spending ceases to be a factor.
What was before a conversation about balancing money, time and quality of life, becomes one of simply
doing what is best for your loved ones.
 1NC Scare
Interpret the 1AC as a fear tactic designed to influence
our perceptions on death negatively in this case we fear
death this changes our perception from a peaceful
release to an absolute horror to be avoided at all costs
Wikipedia 7 - September 2007 - A free encyclopedia edited by the people who use it
(Wikipedia, Fear
Guess what! Theres bots and panels of experts to maintain high quality!
Mongering, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_mongering)

Fear mongering or scaremongering is the deliberate use of fear based tactics

including exaggeration and usually repetition to influence the public in order
to achieve a desired outcome. It is a tactic used to scare or put fear into
those viewing a campaign/advertisement and influence the outcome based
on fear.

These fear tactics are an extremely effective measure to

brainwash us aff is trying to make us become sheep of
society and reject death
Navarro 15 - 10/24/15 - A reporter for Tech Times. Tech Times covers news on technological
innovation and how business and technology intersects, influences and impacts different markets and
industries to bring about cultural transformation in our lives, and how that is relevant in our increasingly
(Alyssa Navarro, Fear Mongering,
interconnected world.
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/99176/20151024/study-confirms-scare-
tactics-work-and-are-more-effective-on-women.htm)

Fear-inducing tactics have been found to be more effective on women, a new

study revealed. Somehow, when even the most subtle form of fear is applied
to a strategy, the desired goal, which includes changing a person's behavior
or mindset, will be achieved. Psychologists conducted a comprehensive
analysis of 50 years' worth of research regarding fear appeals. Commonly
used in marketing strategies, fear appeals are messages that persuade the
readers to focus on the possible harm and danger that can happen if they fail
to adopt the recommendations of the messages. In a study published in the
American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin journal,
researchers had analyzed 127 articles which contained 248 individual
samples and more than 27,000 respondents from studies conducted during
1962 to 2014. After a huge meta-analysis, researchers concluded that fear is
indeed an effective tactic, especially if used on the female audience, and if
they contained one-time only recommendations. Fear appeals are also most
effective when they describe how to avoid several threats. Dr. Dolores
Albarracin, lead author of the study, explained that fear appeals can cause a
significant albeit small shift in a person's attitude and perception.
The affs use of fear tactics is an abuse of their
responsibility to use media to educate us they threaten
to destroy society and replace it with a fear culture
Boyd 12 2/20/15 Experienced Death Firsthand, Writes for the Duke Chronical. (Max
Stayman, Duke Chronical, http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2014/09/end-
life-care-balancing-money-time-and-quality-life#.VOKnJVPF-Xw)

Fear is a powerful emotion. When people are afraid, they react. It can also be
put to use. When people have a vested interest in motivating other people to
react, they may try to capture their attention through fear. Thanks to the
Internet, people have more access to more information at their fingertips
than ever before in human history. Yet, this creates a new challenge for those
who are trying to produce and disseminate information. What has emerged is
an "attention economy," where capturing people's attention can often be
challenging. Organizations that depend on peoples attention including
news media go to great lengths to seize their focus by any means possible.
In a fast-moving information landscape, fear can sell almost as well as sex.
Fearful headlines draw people in by capitalizing on their concerns and
anxieties. Politicians, pundits, and journalists use fear mongering to draw attention to issues, often
justified as informing the public. The more limited the channel or the more likely that someone will walk
on by the more tempting it is to use exaggerated and fear-producing frames. From soundbytes to
headlines to tweets, quick and dirty messages are designed to provoke reaction. TV news and radio talk
show programming use auditory queues, linguistic patterns, and segment cliffhangers in order to entice
people to stay attentive.Fear is regularly employed because it works. Fear
generates attention and helps draw in an audience . As our society grows
increasingly networked, our attention faces a critical crossroads. On one
hand, we are presented with increasing volumes of information and our
access to available sources of information continues to grow. Meanwhile, our
time and attention is still severely limited and, increasingly, commoditized.
Given these conflicting trends, the battle for peoples attention is likely to
grow. But at what costs? And with what implications? Democracy depends on
an informed citizenry and, ideally, the role of the journalist is to inform the
public. But, in a capitalist-oriented society, the product of a journalists efforts must be valued in
commercial terms. Thus, journalists and editors are not simply pursuing stories to inform the public; they
are selecting for narratives that will entice desirable viewers in order to appease advertisers. Given these
very real pressures, how should we understand the ethics of using fear to increase attention? ...The
attention economy provides fertile ground for the culture of fear. In the 1970s, the scholar Herbert Simon
argued that "in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a
scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it
consumes the attention of its recipients." His arguments give rise both to the notion of "information
overload" but also to the "attention economy." In the attention economy, people's willingness to distribute
their attention to various information stimuli create value for said stimuli. Indeed, the economic
importance of advertisements is predicated on the notion that getting people to pay attention to
something has value. News media is tightly entwined with the attention economy. Newspapers try to
capture peoples attentions through headlines. TV and radio stations try to entice people to not change the
channel. And, indeed, there is a long history of news media leveraging fear to grab attention, often with a
reputational cost. Yellow journalism tarnished newspapers' credibility with scary headlines intended to
generate sales. The history of radio and television is sullied with propaganda as political ideologues
leveraged social psychology to shape the public's opinion. Now, along comes social media. Social media
brings with it massive quantities of information - unscripted, unedited, and uncurated. Going online is like
swimming in an ocean of information. The very notion of being able to consume everything is laughable,
even as many people are still struggling to come to terms with "information overload." Some respond by
avoiding environments where theyll be exposed to too much information. Others try to develop
complicated tactics to achieve balance. Still others are failing miserably to find a comfortable relationship
with the information onslaught. Given the increase of information and media, those who want people to
consume their material are fighting an uphill battle to get their attention. Anyone who does social media
marketing knows how hard it is to capture peoples attention in this new ecosystem. The more stimuli
there are competing for your consideration, the more that attention seekers must fight to incentivize you
to look their way. More often than not, this results in psychological warfare as attention-seekers leverage
any and all emotions to draw people in. ... When I was a child, the size of the paper and the length of the
news hour limited the amount of information that a news media outlet could disseminate. When CNN took
news to a 24-7 format and talk radio emerged, more news was needed to fill the time. Rather than using
that time to unpack complex geopolitical news, most news channels took to increasing their coverage of
juicy stories gossip about celebrities, biopics on everyday people, and stories about the grotesque,
The local news mantra If it bleeds, it leads went to another
bizarre, or esoteric.
level such that people heard about horrible things happening outside of their
local world. The shift to the Internet has only increased this trend, as news
media outlets report on man-eating snakes and meth-addicted parents letting
their kids starve to death. Are these stories enticing? Definitely. But are they
typical? Definitely not. Yet, when people hear stories of people, they imagine
these people to be close to them. News media is leveraging the Internet to broadcast stories
and attract attention from viewers. To enable this, they often make it easy for viewers to spread stories via
email, Facebook, or Twitter. What circulates is often the content with the least geopolitical consequence.
When journalists are
Fearful messages spread, particularly stories that play into parental anxieties.
rewarded for viewership, theres a perverse motivation to play into peoples
attraction to freak shows and horror, regardless of the broader social
consequences. Journalists and news media are responding to existing
incentives. Theyre incentivized to generate audiences that they can then sell
to advertisers. Theyre incentivized to capture attention by any means
possible. The underlying incentive to inform and educate is still there, but its
muddied by the corporatized incentives to increase eyeballs. Left unchecked
and incentivized to increase viewership at whatever costs, news media will
continue to capitalize on fear and increase the culture of fear in the
process. ...In an attention economy, the brokerage of attention is a form of
power. What news media covers and how it covers it matter. Theres a fine
line between creating an informed citizenry and creating a fearful citizenry.
Just as journalists think through the consequences of covering suicides in their reporting, so too must they
be thoughtful about how they choose to cover issues that induce, promote, or spread fear. Capturing
peoples attention is critical, but increasing societal fear in order to capture attention has significant
consequences that must be considered. Journalists and news agencies have an ethical responsibility to
account for the externalities of their reporting. As we fully embrace a networked society, we need to
consider what guiding principles should influence decisions about the spread of information. I would argue
that three principles should be at the center of contemporary journalistic practice: Journalists always make
choices about what to cover and what not to cover. Maintain a commitment to creating an informed and
healthy society and focus on stories that help the public better understand the complex world in which we
live. Seek to avoid distortion and strive for nuance and accuracy, even when focused on soundbyte
messaging.Never forget that journalism is a public good. All communication is
impression management. Use language and messaging to combat fearful
impressions and increase the publics understanding. Just as societies are
dependent on information to enable citizenry, societies can be undermined
and fragmented through fear. There is nothing neutral about the practice of
reporting and it behooves journalists to draw from anthropologists and
reflexively account for how their work affects the communities they serve. As
our society gets increasingly networked, we need to hold onto the importance
of creating a healthy citizenry. Key to that is a commitment to not allow fear
to take over.
Their fear culture on death creates a political cult that
promotes irrational decision making and hostility
lowering our quality of life - this turns the entire case
you cant respond to this card
Strauss 16 10/6/16 Contributor to RollingStone Maganize, an American
biweekly magazine that focuses on popular culture. Not to mention this article has other scientific
(Neil Strauss, Why Were Living in the Age of Fear,
citations too!
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/why-were-living-in-the-age-of-
fear-w443554)

Several of Jost's conclusions are consistent with a concept that is key to

understanding the factionalism, tribalism and nationalism of today: "terror
management theory." One of the most important ideas in social psychology of
the past three decades, it is predicated on the notion that as adult human
beings, we have a desire to live, yet we know that at a time and by a cause
unknown to us we are going to die. To manage this existential anxiety, we
embrace a cultural worldview that provides us with order, meaning,
importance and, ultimately, self-esteem. The effectiveness of this strategy
depends on the agreement of others who share our beliefs. Meanwhile, the
existence of other people with beliefs and values that differ from our own can
subtly undermine the protection this worldview provides. So, according to the
theory, when these beliefs are threatened, we will go to great lengths to
preserve and defend them. University of Colorado psychology professor Tom
Pyszczynski, one of the three researchers who came up with terror
management theory in 1986 and co-author of The Worm at the Core: The
Role of Death in Life, believes that this concept explains the right-wing
extremism in this election cycle. "I suggest that one of the things frightening
them is the de-whitening of America," Pyszczynski continues. "I don't think
people are afraid of illegal immigrants committing crimes against them but
they're bothered by certain kinds of immigrants diluting the whiteness of the
country and the American identity that people get their sense of security
from. The idea of 'taking our country back' after having a black president is a
prime example of that." One of the related tenets of terror management
theory is that when people are reminded of their mortality, whether through
questions about what happens after death or bringing up tragedies like 9/11,
they can become more prejudiced and more aggressive toward people with
different worldviews. In a 1998 study, for example, Pyszczynski and his
colleagues devised a clever means of measuring aggression: seeing how
much hot sauce participants were willing to feed others who expressed a
clear distaste for spicy food. And after being asked questions about their own
death, liberals fed conservatives twice as much "painfully hot salsa" as they
did to fellow liberals, and vice versa. In some cases, they gave one another
the maximum amount of hot sauce possible in the experiment. When the
groups weren't asked about death, this effect didn't occur. Several other
studies have led to a similar and tragic conclusion: After death reminders,
people are more antagonistic toward those with different beliefs and values.
In addition, political beliefs shift to support militaristic policies, charismatic
nationalists and increased domestic surveillance. Another study showed that
George W. Bush's approval rating rose and dropped in near-tandem with the
terror threat level in the country. Naturally, one would assume that this effect
would similarly benefit Trump, who regularly calls the country's current
leaders weak and promises toughness, strength and greater punishment if he
is elected ("If they could expand the laws, I would do a lot more than
waterboarding"). And sure enough, earlier this year, Pyszczynski's colleague
Sheldon Solomon found that college students, after being asked to reflect on
their own deaths, were more likely to support Trump , regardless of their
political affiliation. But, of course, these are just laboratory studies. It's not
like we have death reminders coming at us every day, right? Senko's claim
that her father was brainwashed by Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and Bob Grant
isn't just anecdotal. There is hard evidence of her father's transformation
from a sweet, passive man to an angry, argumentative ideologue in Senko's
documentary about him, The Brainwashing of My Dad. In some scenes, he is
so angry, the viewer feels sorry for him and concerned for his health. " It was
almost like he'd joined a cult or had a new religion," Senko recalls. "He
became enraged and unreachable." She believes the tactics used by right-
wing hosts, combined with her father's independent streak, caused his shift.
"As human beings, when listening alone for long periods of time, we are
susceptible to being swayed by a confident voice speaking authoritatively,
especially if it's the only thing you consume," she says. "So they would say
things that provoked my dad to anger and indignation , and once that got
going, he'd stop thinking rationally." Eventually, Senko's dad became
someone his family and she couldn't recognize. He'd get apoplectic on a
regular basis about his new beliefs that "most black people were on welfare
and that there was too much government; that global warming was a hoax
and 'Al Gore was an asshole'; and that he should be head of the household
and his wife should wait on him. He even joined the NRA, although he never
owned or used a gun. Everything was antithetical to how he was before."
Inherent in the ways the news is both reported and received are a number of
biases that guarantee people are not informed, but rather misinformed. The
first problem with the news is that it must be new. Generally, events that are
both aberrations from the norm and spectacular enough to attract attention
are reported, such as terrorist attacks, mass shootings and plane crashes. But
far more prolific, and thus even less news-worthy, are the 117 suicides in the U.S. each day (in comparison
with 43 murders), the 129 deaths from accidental drug overdoses, and the 96 people dying a day in
automobile accidents (27 of whom aren't wearing seat belts, not to mention the unspecified amount
driving distracted). Add to these the 1,315 deaths each day due to smoking, the 890 related to obesity,
and all the other preventable deaths from strokes, heart attacks and liver disease, and the message is
clear: The biggest thing you have to fear is not a terrorist or a shooter or a deadly home invasion. You are
the biggest threat to your own safety. It would make logical sense, then, that if Americans were really
choosing politicians based on their own safety, they would vote for a candidate who stresses seat-belt
campaigns, programs for psychological health to decrease suicide, and ways to reduce smoking, obesity,
But our fears are
prescription-pill abuse, alcoholism, flu contagion and hospital-acquired infections.
not logical. In 2002, a law professor and former White House adviser named
Cass Sunstein coined the term "probability neglect." It suggests that when
people are emotionally stirred by something, especially something they can
vividly imagine, they will fear its outcome even if it is highly unlikely to
happen. So, the fear of domestic ISIS-spawned terrorist attacks, for example,
becomes far greater than the fear of everyday experiences that are much
more likely to result in a fatality. There are countless examples from
psychological research of how bad we are at decision-making, responding
more to emotional impact than actual facts: A 1993 study demonstrated that
people were willing to pay more for flight insurance to protect them from
terrorism than they were to pay for flight insurance covering "all causes." One
of the dangers of probability neglect is that, in the face of a highly visceral
event or fear, Americans are more likely to accept invasions of privacy and
restrictions of freedom that they otherwise wouldn't accept , such as the
passing of the Patriot Act weeks after 9/11.
 1NC Suicide

These fear tactics have been extremely valuable in

maintaining the Wests irrational resistance in accepting
death
Benatar 13 - 12/26/16 - David Benatar is a professor of philosophy and head of the
Department of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. He is also the director
(David Benatar, Suicide: A Qualified Defense, The
of the bioethics center.
Metaphysics and Ethics of Death)

Although some cultures have been relatively accepting of suicide and even
regarded it as virtuous in some circumstances, the opposite is true of many
other cultures, including most contemporary Western cultures. In those
societies that frown upon suicide, it is generally either morally condemned or
pathologized.

The affs fear tactics contribute to the US irrational

resistance against assisted suicide while other nations are
moving towards assisted suicide being a human right
this subjugates many of us who cant commit suicide
ourselves to suffer unnecessary and unconstitutional
harm depression is our medical condition that permits
us to carry out suicide

Morris 15 - 2015 - Professor Morris is a member of the Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences Research Committee and a member of the Management Committee of the Asia Studies Institute,
former academic vice-president AUS VUW branch and a former elected member of
the Arts Faculty Planning Committee. He was the Convener of the review panel for the Review of Social
Work and a member of the Council Working Party on Academic Quality. Paul Morris has been a member of
the British Association for the Study of Religions, and is a former President and conference committee
member of the New Zealand Association for the Study of Religions. He is a member of the American
Academy of Religion (Section Chair 1998-2003), the International Association for the History of
Religions (member of the Executive Committee 2000-2005), and is on the editorial boards
of Numen, Implicit Religions, Postscripts, and Beliefs and Values. He is also co-editor of the journal, Human
Rights Research.

(Paul Morris, The Right to Die: The International Human Rights Context,
Human Rights Research Journal,
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/law/centres/nzcpl/publications/human-rights-
research-journal/publications/vol-10/Paul-Morris-HRR-2015.pdf)

However, on 6 February 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada in Carter v

Canada (AG) ruled that Denying the right to assisted suicide is
unconstitutional, thus striking down the countrys law against Physician-
assisted suicide by the unanimous ruling of all nine judges. (Specifically, sections 14
and 241b of the Criminal Code, Article 14 states that no person is entitled to consent to have death
inflicted on him and section 241b forbids anyone from counselling, aiding or abetting someone to commit
suicide.) The Court recognised the right of clearly consenting adults who are enduring intolerable physical
or mental suffering to end their lives with the aid of a physician. The Canadian government established a
panel in June 2015 to consult the public. The Supreme Court gave a year for legislative change by the
Federal Government, although in the first week of December 2015 the Attorney Generals office requested
a minimum of six months extension. The impetus for the delay comes from support from Nova Scotia,
Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan and Ontario, i.e. five of the 10 provinces. In January 2016,
the Court granted an additional four month extension in order for the new Federal Government to engage
in further public consultation and prepare draft legislation. As a stop gap measure the Court also ruled that
applications for euthanasia can be approved by provincial courts until the new law is enacted. The
Unlike other polities Canada
language used by the Supreme Court in its ruling is problematic.
has not restricted its deliberations to those already terminal , i.e. dying, or
expected to die, imminently or within a short given time, or at any time at all.
Suitable patients do have to be a competent adult person who clearly
consents to the termination of life and has a medical condition that is
grievous and irremediable, including an illness, disease or disability, that
causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the
circumstances of his or her condition. In December 2015 , a spokesman for the Prime
Minister of Canada , Justin Trudeau , reported that the new government would draw inspiration from the
right to die legislation passed by the National Assembly of Qubec in 2014 (Bill 52). The law was scheduled
to take effect on 10 December 2015, but the week before Qubec Superior Court judge, Michel
Pinsonnault, claimed that a number of sections contradict the Criminal Code of Canada and that provincial
Qubec's three - judge Court of Appeal panel
law must be in line with federal law.
overturned the Qubec Superior Court judgment on 22 December 2015 ,
ruling that the Qubec law does not contravene sections of the Criminal Code
related to assisted dying because they were struck down by Canadas
Supreme Court last February. So, the situation in Canada is very much up in
the air at this time but clearly moving towards physician-assisted suicide. I
now consider Britain (England and Wales), with the recently published
decision by Mr Justice MacDonald. Technically this is not a physician-assisted
suicide case , but rather one concerned with the mental capacity to decide to
forgo medical interventions required to ensure survival. This was the
November 2015 case of the 50-year-old woman, described in court as C.
Hers was described as a life of excess and hedonism, and drinking. The four
times married, mother of three , overdosed on paracetamol (acetaminophen)
and champagne in a suicide attempt after learning that she had breast
cancer in September 2015 . She was diagnosed as requiring dialysis for the
organ damage caused in order to secure a near full recovery. Normally courts
approve of life-saving treatments in the interests of a rational patient unless
there is demonstrable likely loss of functions or unbearable pain.
Justice MacDonald ruled that the Court of Protection (a superior court of
record under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 with jurisdiction over the
property, financial affairs and personal welfare of people who it deems
lack the mental capacity to make decisions for themselves) could not
compel her to undergo dialysis. Londons Kings College Hospital asked the
court to impose the treatment on her, using sedation if necessary. Justice
MacDonald concluded that she was mentally competent that her argument
that she did not want to live sans her sparkle and suffering the side
effects of chemotherapy was accepted. He said that the womans decision
to refuse treatment could be characterised as unwise , and some might
even consider it immoral , but she was the sovereign of her own body
and mind and thus entitled to make such a decision. The Court of
Protection decided on 11 December 2015 to extend Cs name
suppression even though she died on 2 8 November 2015 as a direct
result of her refusal to undergo treatment. The Suicide Act 1961 makes it an offence to
encourage or assist a suicide or a suicide attempt in England and Wales anyone doing so faces up to 14
years in prison. There is a similar law in Northern Ireland. MPs in England and Wales voted 330 to 118
( 74% versus 72% in 1997; some 2015 public polls reported 82% support ) against the Assisted Dying
No. 2 Bill 2015 - 16 ( proposed by Rob Marris, Labour, Wolverhampton South West Private Members
Bill, essentially Lord Falconers Bill from June 2014 during the last parliament) in a free vote (
conscience ) in the House of Commons on 11 September 2015 . The failure of the Bill to pass its
second reading means that it will make no further progress. The ( Hansard ) debate is fulsome with a
clear contrast between supporters and opponents, and some real anxieties about safeguards,
especially for the vulnerable. The Bill proposed that people with fewer than six months to live
could be prescribed a lethal dose of drugs, which they had to be able to take themselves , with
The
each case being separately approved by two independent doctors and a High Court judge.
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) already has to approve any
assisted suicide court action in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In
2010 , Keir Starmer, then the DPP, issued guidance that made it clear that
family or friends who travelled with a loved one to the Swiss suicide
group Dignitas would not risk prosecution. The guidelines were the result of a case
brought by Debbie Purdy, a terminally ill woman, who in 2009 won a House of Lords ruling requiring the
DPP to set out whether her husband would be committing an offence if he accompanied her to Dignitas to
end her life. Scotland is a little different as there is no specific law on assisted suicide generating a degree
of uncertainty. MPs rejected the Assisted Suicide Scotland Bill in May 2015 by 82 votes to 36
( nine did not vote) following a free vote at Holyrood. The Bill would have allowed those with terminal
illnesses to seek the help of a doctor to end their own life. It is not illegal to attempt
suicide in Scotland, but helping someone take their own life can lead to
prosecution. The Supreme Court has determined that no right exists for
physician-assisted suicide. States , however, can enact laws that allow it . Currently ,
Oregon is the only state that allows physician - assisted suicide. Technically, however, a death
under that states Death with Dignity Act 1994 is not deemed suicide, assisted suicide or
homicide.This law has successfully survived a number of legal challenges since it was enacted .
In January 2006 , former Attorney General John Ashcroft attempted to argue that it was illegal
In 1997, President
under federal law in the US Supreme Court ( Gonzales v Oregon ) .
Clinton signed the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act of 1997 . This
law was designed to clarify Federal law with respect to restricting the
use of Federal funds in support of assisted suicide, euthanasia or mercy
killing . The Act banned the funding of assisted suicide through
Medicaid, Medicare, military and federal employee health plans,
veterans health care systems and other federally funded programs. It
also prohibited the use of taxpayer funds to subsidize legal assistance
or other advocacy in support of legal protection for assisted suicide. In two
cases from 1997, the US Supreme Court ruled that physician-assisted suicide
is not a protected liberty interest under the Constitution.

The affs portrayal of death as a harm to be feared fuels

Western views that suicide is taboo this attempt to force
people to live creates emotional conflict as the subject
feels stripped away of their right to carry out suicide
reddit user 12/26 - 12/26/16 - Cynical-Skin, Person with depression, no need for more
(Cynical-Skin, I didnt ask
credentials dont even try to tell us we dont have enough credentials
to be here or be me. Why does everyone force me to live?,
https://www.reddit.com/r/depression/comments/5kg28z/i_didnt_ask_to_be_her
e_or_to_be_me_why_do_people/)

I didnt ask to be here or be me. Why does everyone force me to live? I never
asked to be here. I was forced onto this planet against my will. So, why
should I have to fulfill the obligation of staying alive. I didn't choose this life,
so why shouldn't I be allowed to leave?

Suicide is a human right their 1AC is an attempt to strip

away our human rights and force us to keep living thats
unethical
White 11 - 1/24/11 - Rome based reporter for LifeSite News, Reports Pro-Life issues in the US,
(Hillary White, Suicide a human right, but not state assisted
Canada, and the UK
suicide: European Court of Human Rights,
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/suicide-a-human-right-but-not-state-
assisted-suicide-european-court-of-huma)

In a high-profile assisted suicide case, the European Court of Human Rights

(ECHR) has ruled that while there is a human right to suicide, the state has
no obligation to provide citizens with the means to commit suicide. In its
January 20 ruling, the court cited a previous ruling in the case of Pretty v.
United-Kingdom, saying that the right of an individual to decide how and
when to end his life, provided that said individual was in a position to make
up his own mind in that respect and to take the appropriate action, [is] one
aspect of the right to respect for private life under the European Convention
on Human Rights.

You vote neg to weigh human rights above lifespan the

aff is stripping away our humanity and happiness a life
without human rights is not a life worth living
Council of Europe 2k - 21st Century - The Council of Europe is the continent's
leading human rights organisation. It includes 47 member states, 28 of which are members of the
(Council of Europe, What are human rights?,
European Union.
http://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/what-are-human-rights-)

Human rights are inalienable. This means that you cannot lose them, because
they are linked to the very fact of human existence , they are inherent to all
human beings. In particular circumstances some though not all may be suspended or restricted.
For example, if someone is found guilty of a crime, his or her liberty can be taken away; or in times of
national emergency, a government may declare this publicly and then derogate from some rights, for
Human rights are indivisible,
example in imposing a curfew restricting freedom of movement.
interdependent and interrelated. This means that different human rights are
intrinsically connected and cannot be viewed in isolation from each other. The
enjoyment of one right depends on the enjoyment of many other rights and
no one right is more important than the rest. Human rights are universal.
Which means that they apply equally to all people everywhere in the world,
and with no time limit. Every individual is entitled to enjoy his or her human
rights without distinction of "race" or ethnic background, colour, sex, sexual
orientation, disability, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or
social origin, birth or other status.
 1NC Fear

The aff presents death as something to be feared - that

causes anxiety and irrational desires
Stanford Philosophy 5 - 1/10/5 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(David Konstan, Epicurus,
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/epicurus/ )
The philosophy of Epicurus (341270 B.C.E.) was a complete and
interdependent system, involving a view of the goal of human life (happiness,
resulting from absence of physical pain and mental disturbance), an
empiricist theory of knowledge (sensations, together with the perception of
pleasure and pain, are infallible criteria), a description of nature based on
atomistic materialism, and a naturalistic account of evolution, from the
formation of the world to the emergence of human societies. Epicurus believed that,
on the basis of a radical materialism which dispensed with transcendent entities such as the Platonic Ideas
or Forms, he could disprove the possibility of the soul's survival after death, and hence the prospect of
He regarded the unacknowledged fear of death and
punishment in the afterlife.
punishment as the primary cause of anxiety among human beings, and
anxiety in turn as the source of extreme and irrational desires. The
elimination of the fears and corresponding desires would leave people free to
pursue the pleasures, both physical and mental, to which they are naturally
drawn, and to enjoy the peace of mind that is consequent upon their
regularly expected and achieved satisfaction.

The reading of their 1AC is an unethical act as it promotes

a fear of death that prevents us from being happy
Draper 13 - 2013 - Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Delaware, Researches
Ethics and Epistemology and is an expert in the fields of Logic, Ancient Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and
(Kai Draper, Epicurus on the Value of Death, The Metaphysics
Philosophy of Law
and Ethics of Death)

Happiness is the end, and equanimity toward death is the means to that end.
The means to that equanimity, in turn, is the assurance that death merits
equanimity. My interest here is Epicurus argument to the conclusion that
death merits equanimity, specifically, that it does not merit fear or dread or
sadness or disappointment or some other sort of emotional distress.

The aff promotes a fear of death that is not only nonsense

but makes life miserable
Epicurus 270 270 BC Greek philosopher, author of an ethical philosophy of simple
pleasure, friendship, and retirement. He founded schools of philosophy that survived directly from the 4th
century bc until the 4th century ad. (Epicurus, Letter to Menoceus)
Make yourself familiar with the belief that death is nothing to us , since
everything good or bad lies in sensation, and death is to be deprived of
sensation. Hence the right recognition that death is nothing to us makes the
mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding infinite duration to it but by
removing the desire for immortality. For there is nothing to be feared in
living, for one who has truly comprehended that there is nothing to be feared
in not living. So one who says he fears death, not because it will hurt when it
is here, but because it hurts when it is coming, talks nonsense, since
whatever does not hurt when it is present hurts for no reason when it is
expected. So that most fearful of all bad things, death, is nothing to us, since
when we are, death is not present, and when death is present, then we are
not. So it is nothing to the living and nothing to the dead, since with regard to
the former, death is not, and as to the latter, they themselves no longer are.

The aff promotes behaviors that choose quantity over

quality of life that leads to misery and eternal agony
Emanuel 14 October 2014 - Ezekiel J. Emanuel is an oncologist, a bioethicist, and a vice
provost of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author or editor of 10 books, including Brothers
Emanuel and Reinventing American Health Care.

(Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Why I hope to die at 75, The Atlantic,

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-hope-to-die-at-
75/379329/-)

But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is
also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining,
a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs
us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It
transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important,
remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as
feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.

The affs endorsement of an irrational fear of death

causes us to chase immortality - making our lives
miserable one example is cryogenics
Chrisafis 6 - 3/16/2006 - The Guardian's Paris Correspondent (Angelique Chrisafis,
Freezer Failure Ends Couples Hopes of Life after Death,
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/mar/17/france.internationalnews)

Raymond Martinot and his wife were the toast of the world cryonics
movement. For years they were France's best preserved corpses, lying in a
freezer in a chateau in the Loire valley, in the hope that modern science could
one day bring them back to life. But the French couple's journey into the
future ended prematurely when, 22 years after his mother's body was put
into cold storage, their son discovered the freezer unit had broken down and
they had started to thaw. The couple's bodies were removed from their faulty
freezer and cremated this week. Under French law a corpse must be buried, cremated or
formally donated to science. But the couple's son had vowed to go to the European court of human rights
to be allowed to keep his frozen parents in his cellar. If he failed, supporters in Nederland, near Denver,
Colorado, had offered to take them in. Yesterday Rmy Martinot said he had no choice but to cremate his
parents' bodies after the technical fault had seen their temperatures rise above the constant level required
of -65C (-85F). "I realised in February that after a technical incident their temperature had risen to -20C
probably for several days. The alert system [on the freezer] had not worked and I decided at that point that
 "I don't feel any more
it was not reasonable to continue," he told Agence France Presse.
bereaved today than I did when my parents died, I had already done my
grieving. But I feel bitter that I could not respect my father's last wishes.
Maybe the future would have shown that my father was right and that he was
a pioneer." Raymond Martinot, a doctor who once taught medicine in Paris,
spent decades preparing for his demise in the belief that if he was frozen and
preserved scientists would be able to bring him back to life by 2050 . In the
1970s he bought a chateau near Samur in the Loire valley and began
preparing a freezer unit for himself. But his wife, Monique Leroy, died first, of
ovarian cancer, in 1984, and was the first to enter the intricate stainless steel
freezer unit in the chateau's vaulted cellars. She remained in the freezer for
almost 20 years while Dr Martinot met his high refrigeration bills by allowing
paying visitors to visit the cellar. He once told reporters that ideally he would
like to open his wife's freezer every day and tell her "Hello, I'm so glad to see
you", but that it was better it stayed shut. He said he opened it to check it
every five years.

This is also seen in the American Immortal the aff

promotes a lifestyle to devote our lives to trying to cheat
death only to get a few miserable diseased years in return
Emanuel 14 October 2014 - Ezekiel J. Emanuel is an oncologist, a bioethicist, and a vice
provost of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author or editor of 10 books, including Brothers
Emanuel and Reinventing American Health Care.

(Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Why I hope to die at 75, The Atlantic,

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-hope-to-die-at-
75/379329/-)

Americans seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles,

consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets, and
popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and
prolong life as long as possible. This has become so pervasive that it now
defines a cultural type: what I call the American immortal. I reject this
aspiration. I think this manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided
and potentially destructive. For many reasons, 75 is a pretty good age to aim
to stop. What are those reasons? Lets begin with demography. We are
growing old, and our older years are not of high quality. Since the mid-19th century,
Americans have been living longer. In 1900, the life expectancy of an average American at birth was
approximately 47 years. By 1930, it was 59.7; by 1960, 69.7; by 1990, 75.4. Today, a newborn can expect
to live about 79 years. (On average, women live longer than men. In the United States, the gap is about
five years. According to the National Vital Statistics Report, life expectancy for American males born in
In the early part of the 20th century, life
2011 is 76.3, and for females it is 81.1.)
expectancy increased as vaccines, antibiotics, and better medical care saved
more children from premature death and effectively treated infections. Once
cured, people who had been sick largely returned to their normal, healthy
lives without residual disabilities. Since 1960, however, increases in longevity
have been achieved mainly by extending the lives of people over 60. Rather
than saving more young people, we are stretching out old age. The American
immortal desperately wants to believe in the compression of morbidity.
Developed in 1980 by James F. Fries, now a professor emeritus of medicine at
Stanford, this theory postulates that as we extend our life spans into the 80s
and 90s, we will be living healthier livesmore time before we have
disabilities, and fewer disabilities overall. The claim is that with longer life, an
ever smaller proportion of our lives will be spent in a state of decline.
Compression of morbidity is a quintessentially American idea. It tells us
exactly what we want to believe: that we will live longer lives and then
abruptly die with hardly any aches, pains, or physical deteriorationthe
morbidity traditionally associated with growing old. It promises a kind of
fountain of youth until the ever-receding time of death . It is this dreamor
fantasythat drives the American immortal and has fueled interest and
investment in regenerative medicine and replacement organs. But as life has
gotten longer, has it gotten healthier? Is 70 the new 50? NO T QUITE. It is true
that compared with their counterparts 50 years ago, seniors today are less
disabled and more mobile. But over recent decades, increases in longevity
seem to have been accompanied by increases in disabilitynot decreases.
For instance, using data from the National Health Interview Survey, Eileen
Crimmins, a researcher at the University of Southern California, and a
colleague assessed physical functioning in adults, analyzing whether people
could walk a quarter of a mile; climb 10 stairs; stand or sit for two hours; and
stand up, bend, or kneel without using special equipment. The results show
that as people age, there is a progressive erosion of physical functioning.
More important, Crimmins found that between 1998 and 2006, the loss of
functional mobility in the elderly increased. In 1998, about 28 percent of
American men 80 and older had a functional limitation; by 2006, that figure
was nearly 42 percent. And for women the result was even worse: more than
half of women 80 and older had a functional limitation. Crimminss
conclusion: There was an increase in the life expectancy with disease and a
decrease in the years without disease. The same is true for functioning loss,
an increase in expected years unable to function. This was confirmed by a
recent worldwide assessment of healthy life expectancy conducted by the
Harvard School of Public Health and the Institute for Health Metrics and
Evaluation at the University of Washington. The researchers included not just
physical but also mental disabilities such as depression and dementia. They
found not a compression of morbidity but in fact an expansionan increase
in the absolute number of years lost to disability as life expectancy rises.
How can this be? My father illustrates the situation well. About a decade ago, just shy of his 77th
birthday, he began having pain in his abdomen. Like every good doctor, he kept denying that it was
anything important. But after three weeks with no improvement, he was persuaded to see his physician.
He had in fact had a heart attack, which led to a cardiac catheterization and ultimately a bypass. Since
then, he has not been the same. Once the prototype of a hyperactive Emanuel, suddenly his walking, his
talking, his humor got slower. Today he can swim, read the newspaper, needle his kids on the phone, and
still live with my mother in their own house. But everything seems sluggish. Although he didnt die from
the heart attack, no one would say he is living a vibrant life. When he discussed it with me, my father said,
I have slowed down tremendously. That is a fact. I no longer make rounds at the hospital or teach.
As Crimmins puts it, over the past 50 years,
Despite this, he also said he was happy.
health care hasnt slowed the aging process so much as it has slowed the
dying process. And, as my father demonstrates, the contemporary dying
process has been elongated. Death usually results from the complications of
chronic illnessheart disease, cancer, emphysema, stroke, Alzheimers,
diabetes. Take the example of stroke. The good news is that we have made
major strides in reducing mortality from strokes. Between 2000 and 2010, the
number of deaths from stroke declined by more than 20 percent. The bad
news is that many of the roughly 6.8 million Americans who have survived a
stroke suffer from paralysis or an inability to speak. And many of the
estimated 13 million more Americans who have survived a silent stroke
suffer from more-subtle brain dysfunction such as aberrations in thought
processes, mood regulation, and cognitive functioning. Worse, it is projected
that over the next 15 years there will be a 50 percent increase in the number
of Americans suffering from stroke-induced disabilities. Unfortunately, the
same phenomenon is repeated with many other diseases. So American
immortals may live longer than their parents, but they are likely to be more
incapacitated. Does that sound very desirable? Not to me. The situation
becomes of even greater concern when we confront the most dreadful of all
possibilities: living with dementia and other acquired mental disabilities.
Right now approximately 5 million Americans over 65 have Alzheimers; one
in three Americans 85 and older has Alzheimers. And the prospect of that
changing in the next few decades is not good. Numerous recent trials of
drugs that were supposed to stall Alzheimersmuch less reverse or prevent
ithave failed so miserably that researchers are rethinking the whole disease
paradigm that informed much of the research over the past few decades.
Instead of predicting a cure in the foreseeable future, many are warning of a
tsunami of dementiaa nearly 300 percent increase in the number of older
Americans with dementia by 2050.
 2NC O/V
The aff presents a doomsday scenario and carelessly uses
the term extinction in an attempt to present a more
convincing argument. This is unethical for many reasons-
There are several reasons why death should not be the
impact:
1. Shouldnt be fearedDeath is neither good nor bad
under Epicurean philosophy, which has been shown
to be complete-Thats Stanford 5. If the aff fails to
take down one of our premises which weve clearly
stated twice- our conclusion should be true as well.
2. A Fear of Death is simply unhealthy the aff restricts
our happiness (thats Draper 13) and they promote
an unhealthy search for immortality that ends in
more suffering thats Chrisafis 5 and Emanuel 14
3. A Fear of Death creates Political Death Cults where
we alienate other people and transform into our
most evil selves in an attempt to ward off the fear of
death thats our Strauss 16 card
4. Denies us suicideThe affs use of death as a harm
promotes the fear of death which is passively but
effectively preventing us from committing suicide - a
basic human right. Therefore even if aff manages to
win everything else you have a moral obligation to
vote neg because the 1AC is unethical.

Our alternative supports death acceptance and not fear

weve already shown many net benefits beauty, human
rights, happiness, fear culture, and believing the
irrational. If we can prove any of these benefits, that
should outweigh the entire case of the aff. These are all
violations that the aff has committed when they frame
their impact in terms of death and not quality of life. In
the world of the alt, plans can still have extinction
impacts but must have a solid link to loss of quality of life
something that the aff doesnt have.
You can add more points for all the other add ons read
It is irrational to fear death under Epicurean Reasoning- if
the aff fails to disprove our line of logic then they cant
deny our conclusion
Nussbaum 13 - 2013 She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. From
1986 to 1993, Ms. Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics
Research, Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee on International
Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women of the American Philosophical Association, and
currently chairs its new Committee for Public Philosophy. She has been a member of the Association's
(Martha C. Nussbaum, The Damage of Death, The Metaphysics
National Board.
and Ethics of Death)
I reconstructed his argument as follows
1. An event can be good or bad for someone only if, at the time when the
event is present, that person exists as a subject of at least possible
experience.
2. The time after a person dies is a time at which that person does not exist
as a subject of possible experience.
3. Hence the condition of being dead is not bad for that person.
4. It is irrational to fear a future event unless that event, when it comes, will be bad for one.
5. It is irrational to fear death.

Its important to have a healthy relationship with death

since it gives birth to beauty the aff tries to prevent this
causing tensions in our lives reject their entire argument
based on this premise
Doughty 11 8/28/11 Los Angelos based Mortician, Death Theorist, and Creator of The
Order of Good Death. The Order is about making death a part of your life. Staring down your death fears
whether it be your own death, the death of those you love, the pain of dying, the afterlife (or lack thereof),
grief, corpses, bodily decomposition, or all of the above. Accepting that death itself is natural, but the
(Caitlin Doughty, On The Fear of Death,
death anxiety of modern culture is not.
http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/fear-of-death)
Fritzl, for all his monstrosity, was correct. Relationships require constant
nurturing and upkeep like flowers in a garden. Ignored, they will wither and
die. Death is the most important relationship you will ever have. It will not do
to ignore it. When I first began working at a mortuary four years ago, I was
faced with mortality fears I hadnt even realized were there. The cold, dead
bodies told me that everyone I knew, from my mother to my dear friends to
myself, were going to die. Some sooner rather than later. Cruelly annihilated
out of my life. It is hard to begin a relationship with someone you consider so
capricious and unfair. If Death were a man, my friends would tell me to break
up with him. But alas, with Death there is no such option. We must do the
best we can. There are countless How-to-Wikihow-Cosmo-Seventeen magazine articles on the vast
interweb that give us steps to a better relationship. I share with you now the hokey but useful ones that I
There is
used to improve my relationship with death and my own mortality. I cannot stress this enough.
absolutely nothing wrong with being interested in mortality and death. Dont
let anyone ever tell you you are sick or morbid or deviant. It is patently
untrue. Death is where every single one of us will end up. To feign disinterest
in such a fundamental thing is denial , plain and simple. Read everything you
can about death. Read the philosophers, read the scientists. Figure out
what you (not your culture or your religion) believe happens to a body after
death and what rituals make sense to you. In this case, ignorance is not bliss.
With death, ignorance is fear. Forgive Death. As much as it feels like its
aimed at you its just well not. Death doesnt play favorites. Just as
God isnt really present for every football touchdown, Death is not truly a
vengeful creature lying in wait for a chance to murder your happiness.
Natural disasters or accidents are just that natural or accidents. Its not
Death smiting you specifically. The mere fact that today could be the day you
die is what makes life beautiful. What is it that you want out of your own
death? Because the universe wont know if you dont tell it. I want to die with
my affairs in order. I want to die with my family and friends knowing how
much I love them. I want to die having made peace with death. Those are my
expectations. But knowing what you want out of a good death is not
enough. Its up to you to make sure that it happens. Its my responsibility to
have my funeral arrangements in place and my bank statements stored
neatly and my friends recently told that they are strange delirious perfection.
I make my own good death. That is power. The last few months Ive been so
busy I havent been spending time with Death like I used to. This was
obvious last weekend when the thought came to mind of finding out I had
terminal cancer and would be dead in four months. I was horrified. I sat for
two hours, first being angry and scared and then shifting to how I could
perhaps use four months of life. How I could make videos addressing the end
of life, how I would get to see all my old friends in a sort of weirdo Victorian
hospice visitors salon, how one of my best friends just bought a 1969
seafoam green Land Cruiser which could be used to drive my body up to the
natural burial cemetery in Marin when I died. I sat with the thought until I
reconciled myself to it. I sat with it until the anxiety went away and I was
once again at peace with it. Be with your death anxiety until you move
through it. As they say, the only way out is through. Many of us have
thoughts of death, but we dont see them to the end. We get stuck in loops,
reliving the scary part over and over, but never the resolution. Do not be
afraid to delight in death. Of course I do not mean you are happy when
someone dies, or happy to see someone in pain or mourning. But the vast
majority of your life isnt spent in mourning. Its spent living. And while youre
living, it will not hurt you to have a fun, positive relationship with Death.
Death is fascinating. Chaotic and ordered at the same time. There are strange
rituals and art to be explored. The never-ending cultural entertainment of what death does to people, to
relationships, to society. I dont just pretend to love death. I really do love death. I bet you would too if you
got to know him.
 2NC Framework (Foundation)
Our interpretation is that the judge should be an
intellectual grading the foundation upon which the 1ACs
impact stems from if we win the foundations of the Aff
are suspect, we should win irrespective of hypothetical
enactment of a plan.
The net benefit is Fear of Death and Suicide debate has
become pedagogically bankrupt and trapped in cycles of
policy debate absent a discussion of whether or not
these impact arguments belong in the activity, were
doomed to continue problematic practices thats both a
DA to excluding our K and an impact turn to all of their
education arguments
We internal link turn education the 1AC was 8 minutes
and the plan text was 10 seconds, which means they
should have defend their broader pedagogical choices
they could have not read death impacts which solves all
their offense
Logically, if we prove that either
1) the reading of the 1AC was an actively unethical act
that promotes an unhealthy fear of death, or
2) the reading of the 1AC was an actively unethical act
that is an active attempt to wrestle away our human
right of death, or
3) The 1ACs death impact is nothing to be feared
it is inexcusable for you as an educator to not vote them
down
Focus on catastrophe without prior questioning dooms
policy-making
Carollo 03 [Kevin, asst prof of English at U Minnesota, Moorhead, Bad Subjects, Issue #64,
September, http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2003/64/carollo.html]

The much-heralded individualist spirit of American society relies on nurturing a fear of other people .
Fear of public spaces where anyone can hang out in turn supports the proliferation of private property and restricted
access locations. Fear of public transportation means more and more privately owned cars on the road. The rhetorical
necessity of slogans such as "United We Stand" are countered by the ongoing national zeitgeist of "Leave Me and My
Family Alone." The implication embodied in "United We Stand" is that we have some (un-American) Other to be united
against. A suggestive correlation between the isolation of mental illness and political isolationism can be found in the
The individualization of panic disorder corresponds to the media-savvy
rhetoric of "going it alone."
militarization of American politics. Panic inspires pre-emptive attacks on whatever
violates the sanctity of private life. As we regulate childhood, so we map out the appropriate parameters of
adulthood. Television often plays on the prevalent anxieties of adolescence, treating its viewers like children in need of
constant rules and warnings. Local Fox News promises the viewer "Stories that Affect You," but the news itself offers such
in-depth detritus as exposs on the dangers of car airbags and "that Duluth prostitution ring we've been keeping you
informed about." I'm not suggesting that danger doesn't exist, but local television news has largely
become a venue that creates a catalogue of fears for citizens everywhere. In addition, local formats adhere to a
national formula for what constitutes newsworthiness, and what should affect local populations. We locate panic at
the extreme end of the anxiety spectrum, as the awful truth of a phobia, the end result of what psychiatrist Robert L.
DuPont refers to as the "what if?" of horrific possibility. The possibility of panic, however, covers a much
broader band of the spectrum. The news media may not want panic attacks to actually occur, but they like us to routinely
consider the possibility that something awful might happen if we do not maintain a healthy level of anxiety and keep
watching the news for updates. Witness coverage of the scare of African killer bees a few years ago, recently featured in
Bowling for Columbine. Be alert. Get scared. This anxiety constitutes a sort of pre-emptive strike, if you will, on the panic
state. Awful things often do happen. A smoking gun does not need to be fired; the suggestion of a gun's potential is
The very possibility of weapons of mass destruction, for example, can inspire a state
enough.
of panic. The weapons don't need to be there. Panic has dominion over the future. The past may inspire
panic attacks, but only as the harbinger of what may perhaps come again. As we get further away from cataclysmic
government, the entertainment industry, or
events, their ability to inspire terror becomes attenuated. This means
news media need to regularly create new things to fear. Whether the hand that rocks the cradle is the
government wishing to sell a new military solution to the world's problems, or an entertainment industry that wants us to
believe that "a nation lost its innocence" after Pearl HarborTM, we find ourselves in the business of selling and consuming
panic of one sort or another. Though post-9/11 panic no longer governs America in the same way it did in late 2001, the
Hence the
government still uses the Trade Center bombings as a way to gain support for future military initiatives.
pandemic of global terrorism, a phenomenon that sees 9/11 as a significant event in a
never-ending continuum of potential danger. Just as we ritually lose our innocence, so we must honor
our worst fears. The current government encourages us to believe that no historical precursors exist to muddy the
squeaky-clean innocence of America, but it also must instill in us the sense that America's illusory innocence could be our
undoing. If we don't act now, then our worst fears may well be realized. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III)
first distinguished "panic disorder" from anxiety neurosis in 1980, although anxiety has been treated since the late
nineteenth century. The process of naming illness is a curious one: though the goal is distinction and specificity, it also
creates a potential reservoir for future pandemics. Naming panic disorder in order to cure it stands as a necessary
paradox of the field. Curiously, the medical recognition of "panic disorder" as a distinct anxiety state occurred at the
same time the array of independent media sources in America were drastically reduced. Of course, the corporatization of
media does not necessarily require the distinction of panic disorder, but it can certainly utilize it. What is the crude end
result of big, format-driven media? Fear of the local. This fear may not completely succeed in getting the masses to
consume only "mass" products, but in the last 20 years we have seen a new generation of people educated to mistrust
products that lack a brand signature or commercial support. To be sure, this is not an entirely new phenomenon except
in terms of degree. Today's education begins with the trappings of corporate consumption, and youth must work hard to
find real, local alternatives. Chabon's local neighborhood becomes a site of panic, and people fear that which is not
immediately recognizable. The isolation of illnesses such as panic disorder signifies an increasingly isolated public a
locale where people do not know each other. In this way, the rise of panic disorder signifies a new world order, just as
deregulation creates a new form of mass regulation. Media deregulation in the 1990s has enabled the rise of media giants
like Clear Channel, who promote formulaic, non-local radio programming as they sponsor pro-war rallies. To be sure, the
"local" functions like a brand name, or like slogans such as "United We Stand"; they are necessary rhetorical strategies
that further conceal a less united, more corporate reality. Witness the YA novel by M.T. Anderson, Feed, which cogently
depicts a future in which corporations have so promoted the fetish of individual-as-consumer that adolescent education is
geared to create "individualized" corporate identity. Youth are identified according to their consumer profiles, their brand-
name wants and needs. Of course, the future is now when talking about the local and individual as fetish. Like Fox News'
stories that affect you, a Clear Channel billboard in my neighborhood boasts: "Giving Local Heroes A Voice." Proclaiming
local affinity is necessary to further non-local standardization. The standardization of anxiety disorders refers to a
historical relationship between military and psychological ways of describing the world. Anxiety has, according to H.
Michael Zal, "taken on a bewildering number of diagnostic labels which seem to be related to, and to change following
each major war." He gives the following list: Cardiac neurosis Effort syndrome (World War I) Soldier's heart
Neurocirculatory asthenia (World War I) Nervous exhaustion Vasomotor neurosis Aviator's syndrome Anxiety
state (World War II) Reading through this list, one has the impression that reaching the "Anxiety state" of WWII has been a
chronological endeavor requiring ever more advanced troops and machinery to establish dominion over an ever-shifting
enemy populace. The conflation of fighting illness and enemies seems to move forward through time, in line with the
perceived evolutionary progress of science and civilization. These labels also inspire the type of futurism praised by F.T.
Marinetti and the Italian futurists. They reveled in a combination of aggression and adrenaline, and were among the
founders of the Fascist movement. Soldiers, velocity, machines, and war: for the Marinetti of the first half of the twentieth
century, Zal's list contains the future, and it is beautiful. As the above list suggests, major events in world history redefine
the parameters of the world's illnesses. World conflict directs the definition of such illnesses as post-traumatic stress
disorder and Gulf War Syndrome, and we can easily understand panic as an immediate response to the horrors of war. But
panic doesn't stop there. A worldview predicated on various cataclysms terrorism, nuclear
holocaust, killer bees, SARS encourages panic to become part of the ordinary citizen's
reservoir of emotion, the potential endpoint of daily fear . One cannot underestimate the power of
military ideology to redefine a citizenry. To see the world as a never-ending series of conflicts with
other nations and peoples is very narrow-minded but it's how we teach American history, and how the
current government defines the agenda for American foreign policy. It also defines how
we view the future of security in general. As we develop greater means by which to treat illness and
vanquish terrorists, the future should seem brighter but it can't seem too bright. With the promulgation of Patriot Acts
and Total Information Awareness, the distinction between military and psychological notions of panic is becoming scant
our worst fears are always on the verge of
indeed. The sensation that someone is always watching, that
being realized, and that somehow our private lives are being infiltrated by Big Brother this may be the Orwellian
reality of the future, but it sounds like today's domestic policy to me. Keep in mind that 1984 was taught in American high
schools during the Cold War as a warning against the dangers of communism. True patriots like myself, however, tended
to read texts like Brave New World and To Kill A Mockingbird as commentaries on the problems of American society as
well. I became anxious watching films about the possibilities of World War III. From watching Henry Fonda in Fail-Safe to
the 80s TV-movie The Day After, I did not grow up immune to the idea that we could be our own worst enemy. "At least we
were talking about it in class," I remember thinking at the time. Of course, talking doesn't seem like sufficient treatment
for anxiety or depression in today's "Prozac nation." The early practitioner of psychopharmacology, Donald Klein,
experimented and treated anxiety patients with imipramine in the late 1950s and 60s. But before the 1980 DSM-III
established the definition of panic disorder, treatment had a Freudian, psychoanalytic bias to it people talked out their
panic attacks, preferably on sofas. The isolation of panic disorder from anxiety neurosis corresponded to the development
of anti-anxiety medications. Having effective drugs to treat mental illness means a revolution in terms of how illness is
perceived, treated, and manipulated. Peter Kramer states in Listening to Prozac: "With a convenient, effective drug
available [Xanax], doctors saw panic anxiety everywhere. Patients told one another about the drug, and the mass media
spread the news. Panic anxiety and panic attack became bywords." Psychopharmacology has become the preferred
means of attacking panic attacks individualized drug therapy for the masses. Like terrorists, panic is everywhere,
preparing to attack. Kramer notes: "Panic anxiety has been shown in surveys to be among the most prevalent of
psychiatric disorders." Don't get me wrong. Along with psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison and countless others, I have
experimented with and benefited from the wonders of drug therapy. But it gives me the panic to find myself discussing
medication within ten minutes of meeting a therapist for the first time. Undoubtedly, expediency is a consideration in
The turn to
these matters, as many people are panicky and depressed and psychologists are overbooked.
expedient solutions, however, corresponds to the hasty, undemocratic way in which
American politics currently operate. Rather than acknowledge the collective dimensions
of panic inspired by threats of war, economic downturns, environmental holocaust ,
general greed and corruption, and so on, psychopharmacology aims to find the appropriate pill for an individualized
illness. Like the "one person, one vote" approach to democracy, psychopharmacology may have good effects, but it is not
geared to make the world a hospitable place. It won't bring back the sense of neighborhoods earlier generations enjoyed
as children, for that requires a trust in one's neighbors. Treating the symptoms of illness allows us to
more or less dismiss its larger social causes. If panic is treated primarily as something located within individual
psyches, then the world doesn't have a problem. The advice of W. after 9/11 business as usual, go out and spend is
offered as a sort of panacea for panicked America. To those who already felt insecure and panicky . . . well, just watch
your TV screens. We've got a new reality show on CNN we're sure you're going to love. Behind the scenes, however, the
safety measures introduced by current regime have more to do with the erosion of civil rights than with the protection of
innocent civilians. As a consequence, I find the rhetoric of national security quite frightening. Perhaps the greatest irony
of the American obsession with weapons of mass destruction is that our government seems to need them in order to
eliminate them a similar paradox to that of naming illness. The DSM defined panic disorder at the beginning of the
The conflation of
Reagan years coincidence? If it didn't already exist, it would have had to be invented.
military-industrial ideology and entertainment media has resulted in a perennial crisis of
global proportions and a TV audience primed to watch it. Disarmament is a one-way street, an imperative not
practiced by example. This should inspire panic. When aforementioned films like The Day After functioned as the collective
Afterschool Special of American consciousness, the necessary road for security involved actually getting rid of our
weapons of mass destruction. Now that is beginning to seem more and more like a radical proposition. Go figure. In turn,
news media have to simultaneously focus on one area of terror (let's say Iraq) while nurturing the multifarious sense of
potential panic (i.e. Iraq stands as but one of the many regimes that envy our freedom). The obsession with ratings
inspires sensationalist coverage to a certain degree, but it doesn't completely explain why coverage is so in line with
various military initiatives and the rhetoric of fear. People can also get excited about critiquing the lust for war, as popular
media satires like The Daily Show and The Onion illustrate. Perpetual war for perpetual peace, to borrow
Gore Vidal's phrase, requires a reservoir of panic catalysts , and the results are often absurdly comic. Again,
news media do not create panic as much as create a buffet table of panic for individuals to sample from. This, in turn,
enables the national palate for paranoia. As individual paranoia involves the "irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness
of others," so too does news media thrive on the next big terror. But it doesn't have to be like that. Does it?
What is left when panic is taken out of the American equation? To be honest, I'm not sure. I have tried to intimate a
number of connections between growing up in America, visual and print media, the military-industrial complex, and the
current treatment of panic disorder. Ideally, being able to explain the roots of illness helps one to overcome it. But we're
not there yet. At best, there may exist a sort of solidarity in panic, a starting point for redescribing the world. Certainly,
panic can cripple the potential for activism. But with the recognition of panic itself as a
pandemic comes the necessity of believing in a better world. This better world is not necessarily a
panic-free world. If, as psychotherapist Adam Phillips suggests, "the art of psychoanalysis is to produce interesting
redescriptions," then panic can show how the threat of nuclear holocaust is made more real by the unilateral attack
aspirations of Bush & Co. Panic can be redirected. Psychoanalyst Thorkil Vanggaard once told a patient: "From a
therapeutic point of view it is a good sign that your reaction was one of panic, as this shows the presence of important
conflict matter." Because Panic American Style has come into its medical, military, and media fullness, it cannot be
dismissed as simply the result of an overactive imagination. If panic is here to stay, then I would like to believe in a
generalized anxiety disorder that compels us all to re-evaluate the contemporary moment. Perhaps this disorder could
only when we recognize each other's ultimate fears may we treat one
suggest the following:
another like human beings. The recognition of panic unites us more than we know, for it forces us to imagine a
better world than the inhospitable one we're stuck with now.
 FW Knowledge Production 1st
As we have already turned this into a philosophical
debate, the judge should evaluate the debate in terms of
two interlocutors presenting competing ways of knowing
the world and helping each other reach the truth. Even if
you vote aff, nothing will happen outside this room, so
naturally education should come first.
[Voting affirmative means creating the judge space as a
security intellectual depoliticizing conflict and making
any violence possible in the name of efficiency. The
alternative is to reject security as valuable intellectual
labour] replace

------ Incomplete ------

 CX Add on
VERY IMPORTANT: ONLY RUN IF YOU HAVE ASKED IN CROSS X AS
STATED IN THE NOTES
 1NC Immortality Bad

Note: You always read the first card then add one of the three cards after
depending on the affs response

Death gives birth to beauty- the aff presents their plan as

an eradication of death which destroys the beauty in life
Nussbaum 13 - 2013 She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. From
1986 to 1993, Ms. Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics
Research, Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee on International
Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women of the American Philosophical Association, and
currently chairs its new Committee for Public Philosophy. She has been a member of the Association's
(Martha C. Nussbaum, The Damage of Death, The Metaphysics
National Board.
and Ethics of Death)
What I had in mind (using the lives of the Homeric gods as my stalking horse)
was that there can be no human courage without the ability to risk death, no
friendship and love of the sort we currently value without the possibility of
running such risks for the sake of those we love, and so forth. More generally,
human love and friendship have a temporal structure in which aging, the
different phases of the human life cycle, and the possibility of loss are central
structures, conditioning the particular sort of value they have. In addition, I
argued, a kind of intensity and dedication with which we pursue many of our
activities cannot be explained without reference to the awareness that our
opportunities are finite, that we cannot choose these activities indefinitely
many times. Quoting Wallace Stevens, I concluded that Death is indeed
the mother of beauty. It was reasonable for Odysseus, thinking in this way, to decline Calypsos
offer of immortality: For the life he loved and valued, his own life, could not exist without that choice. When
he repeatedly insists that he wants his own home, what he more generally means is that he wants his own
life. He finds a life with struggle and change exciting; an unchanging woman and life, however beautiful,
cannot hold his interest. Its not as if there is nothing in this argument. We
can indeed agree that
the lives of the Homeric gods, who can easily do anything they want any time
they want, do seem lacking in intensity, depth, and commitment . They cant
even run a race, or show any other athletic excellence, because there is no
struggle for them; they just whisk themselves away to the finish line. They
also seem, I now add, to be deficient in a sense of humor, because humor
(much of it, anyway) appears to be predicated on a sense of the limits of the
body and the many absurdities it gets one into.

Pick a card

The aff projects their plan with a utopia in mind of one

person being immortal-which is inappropriate and leads to
unhappiness for both the immortal person and the mortal
people
Nussbaum 13 - 2013 She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. From
1986 to 1993, Ms. Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics
Research, Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee on International
Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women of the American Philosophical Association, and
currently chairs its new Committee for Public Philosophy. She has been a member of the Association's
(Martha C. Nussbaum, The Damage of Death, The Metaphysics
National Board.
and Ethics of Death)
If only one person is immortal and everyone else is mortal, this could lead to
much unhappiness, through the sense of being unfairly singled out for an
amazing benefit or having had a piece of luck that is quite inappropriate. I
can imagine some people choosing to end their lives just to be living on the
same terms as everyone else, especially those they love. Although I probably
would not have the courage to make such a choice, I think it might be morally
the right one. (Much would depend on how ones immortality came about, whether by sheer luck or
by someones unfair favor. But even in the windfall case, it seems like a benefit that one has no right to
keep.)To this moral issue one can also add the sadness and isolation of
outliving all ones loved ones, which could easily blight the life of the
immortal person.

The aff projects their plan with a utopia in mind of a group

of people being immortal-which is a world that is straight
up horrifying
Nussbaum 13 - 2013 She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. From
1986 to 1993, Ms. Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics
Research, Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee on International
Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women of the American Philosophical Association, and
currently chairs its new Committee for Public Philosophy. She has been a member of the Association's
(Martha C. Nussbaum, The Damage of Death, The Metaphysics
National Board.
and Ethics of Death)

Still worse would be a world in which one entire group or class of humans
gets to be immortal and most humans dont, a world toward which we are
edging through the unequal distribution of access to medical care and the
likely inequalities in access to future genetic therapies. Kazuo Ishigurus
wonderful novel Never Let Me Go (2005), which appeared as a film in 2010,
imagines a world in which an underclass is used as organ donors for the
superior class, with the result that the latter become very long-lived , though
not, finally, immortal. This is obviously a horrible world, and it would be still
more horrible were the superior class to be immortal.

The aff projects their plan with a utopia in mind of

everyone being immortal-which is a world that is not only
impossible but terrible
Nussbaum 13 - 2013 She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. From
1986 to 1993, Ms. Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics
Research, Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee on International
Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women of the American Philosophical Association, and
currently chairs its new Committee for Public Philosophy. She has been a member of the Association's
(Martha C. Nussbaum, The Damage of Death, The Metaphysics
National Board.
and Ethics of Death)
Suppose, then, that everyone gets to be immortal. Now Lucretius population
argument becomes pertinent. We either have a world that gets more and
more overpopulated, until nobody has enough to eat and drink, or we have a
world in which nobody has children any more. The first , Malthusian
alternative seems very bad. We can grant that most Malthusian fantasies
about overpopulation are hysterical and inaccurate, given our growing ability
to use agricultural technology to feed more people, while yet acknowledging
that the carrying capacity of the earth is not limitless . So people would have
to pursue the second alternative, drastically limiting the chance to have
children or making all reproduction illegal. That world looks pretty bad too. It
lacks all sorts of valuable activities connected with relations among the
generations, and it also lacks a distinctive type of freedom to which we
currently attach considerable importance.

And, the affs image of everyone being immortal is a

complete failure to imagine the horrors of such a world
Fleuren 15 9/15/15 Quora Philosopher, 2.7k answer views (Jonathan Fleuren,
What if everyone in the world suddenly became immortal? And what if
animals become immortal too?, https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-
if-everyone-on-earth-suddenly-became-immortal-And-what-if-animals-
became-immortal-too)
There would be a slight change in population, however there would be
limitations. Removal of ovaries/testicles would be a mandatory requirement
at a certain age. This would be population control. Immortal animals/mammals would
show affects towards economies. Where red meat is the biggest seller in the food industry in most
countries, due to the inability to harvest meat people will have to adapt to being vegans until the human
body adjusts to a mass carbohydrate diet. You certainly need energy but food would no longer be a
The lack of population growth will cause an effect on technological
survival tool.
advances, medical advances and the economy. The effect on the economy
would show loss in the food industries (10-50 years) technological industries
(75-100 years) and medical (20-25 years). After all diseases like cancer or
AIDS can not kill you. Death row would be something like dropped in a
volcano or launched into space. Within 100 years earth would be at a
standstill and life would become worthless.
 1NC Subsequentialism

Note: This section is for the claim that death is bad because the dead are
wretched because they have been deprived of life, or not at all.

The aff creates a contradiction in their own premises that

destroys their entire argument
Warren 13 - 2013 Reader in Ancient Philosophy, Teaches at University of Cambridge,
Chancellor's medal for proficiency in Classical learning, Author of 6 books and 42 papers, Expert in Greek
(James Warren, The Harm of Death in
and Roman Philosophy and Philosophy of Death
Ciceros First Tusculan Disputation, The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death)
The principal concern is that this explanation involves a simple contradiction.
It asserts
that the dead are and that they are not. A. claims he does not want to say
that those who
are not are, but M. insists that he must at least imply this, because, as he
puts it: For they ought to be if they are wretched (sint enim opportet si miseri
sunt ).This assertion that nonexistence is incompatible with being wretched
or with having any state of well-being, as a matter of fact, whether positive or
negativeis, of course, the central premise of the famous Epicurean
argument that death is nothing to us because when it is we are not; when we
are, it is not (Ep. Men. 125). A. seems perversely to have accepted the Epicurean view that
death is indeed annihilation but to have drawn precisely the opposite conclusion from theirs. M. reasonably
M. is clearly
objects, again in a dialectical fashion, that in order to be wretched someone needs to be.
no Epicurean, but he does think that at least on this point the Epicureans are
consistent (albeit mistaken about the nature of death) in a way that A. is not.
 1NC Priorism

Note: This section is for the claim that death is bad before a persons death,
or during their lifetime.

A Nagelian rejection deals no damage to our claims

because there is no such thing as an irreducible relational
harm
Vallicella 10 12/20/10 Maverick Philosopher, Selected for the The Times of Londons
(Bill Vallicella, Death as a Relational Harm?,
Best 100 Blog List
http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/12/deat
h-as-a-relational-harm.html)
Suppose I promise a dying man that I will take good care of his young and
healthy dog. But I renege on my promise in order to save myself the hassle
by having the dog euthanized. Epicurus in hand, I reason, "There is no harm
to my friend since he doesn't exist, and there is no harm to the dog because
its transition to nonexistence will be quick and painless. Caring for the dog,
however, is a harm to me. Sure, I will break my promise, but on
consequentialist grounds, what's wrong with that?" Thomas Nagel would
disagree and call my reneging "an injury to the dead man." ("Death"
in Mortal Questions, Cambridge UP, 1979, p. 6) For Nagel, "There are goods
and evils which are irreducibly relational; they are features of the relations
between a person, with spatial and temporal boundaries of the usual sort,
and circumstances which may not coincide with him either in space or in
time." (p. 6) Death is such an evil. Being dead is a circumstance that does
not temporally coincide with the decedent. In other words, a thing can have
properties at times at which it does not exist provided it once existed. (Few if
any would claim that a thing can have properties at times at which it does not
exist if it never existed. And so it is not an evil for Schopenhauer's never-
existent son 'Will' that he never existed.) A Nagelian rejection of (3) is
respectable and plausible as a means of turning aside the Epicurean
argument. But it is scarcely compelling. For the Epicurean can simply insist
that there are no relational harms . After all, there is something
metaphysically murky about maintaining that a person who is nothing is yet
the subject of a harm or injury simply on the strength of his having once
existed. If you are now nothing, then you are now nothing: why should your
once having been be relevant?

Their claim involves backwards causation and if the

harm is fear of death, that proves that their argument is
unethical
Draper 13 - 2013 - Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Delaware, Researches
Ethics and Epistemology and is an expert in the fields of Logic, Ancient Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and
(Kai Draper, Epicurus on the Value of Death, The Metaphysics
Philosophy of Law
and Ethics of Death)
Thus, death should not trouble us, for there is no time at which it can make
us unhappy. It cannot make us unhappy prior to its arrival (for that would
involve backward causation), and once it arrives, our nonexistence precludes
our unhappiness.

Backwards causation is a logical paradox there is no way

to respond to this card without creating more paradoxes

Stanford Philosophy 1 - 2001 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Kai Draper,

Epicurus on the Value of Death, The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death)

Two years later, Max Black (1956) presented an argument against backward
causation, which became known as the bilking argument, and later attempts
to meet the argument seemed to generate all kinds of paradoxes. Imagine B
to be earlier than A, and let B be the alleged effect of A. Thus we assume that
A causes B even though A is later than B. The idea behind the bilking
argument is that whenever B has occurred, it is possible, in principle, to
intervene in the course of events and prohibit A from occurring. But if this is
the case, A cannot be the cause of B; hence, we cannot have backward
causation.

And dont let the aff change when death is a harm to a

person because that makes them a moving target and
allows them to spit out large phrases such as death and
extinction without consequence. They have clearly failed
to tell us when death is a harm which means that death
isnt a harm.
 1NC Eternalism

Eternalism is absurd nobody is always incurring harm

Stanford Philosophy 2 - 5/22/2 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Steven Luper, Death, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/death/#Con
Feldman (1991) seems to argue for the eternalist view that my death is
always bad for me if bad for me at all. If my death harms me, it harms me
while I am alive, while I am dead, and even before I came into existence.
However, theorists (among them Lamont 1998, Silverstein 2000 and Feit
2002) who interpret Feldman this way argue that he is wrong to accept
eternalism. Suppose I stubbed my toe, and we ask when was the stubbing
bad for me? What exactly do we want to know? Perhaps we want to know
when it is true that the stubbing was bad for me. If so, the answer is:
eternally, if ever. However, our question might be: at which times do I incur
harm for which the stubbing was responsible? If so, the answer is: I incur
that harm at all and only those times when my toe is throbbing as a result of
the stubbing. A question concerning the timing of deaths harmfulness might
be similarly ambiguous. In asking, when is Lincolns death bad for him? we
might want to know when it is true that his death is bad for him. The answer
is presumably that it is an eternal truth. Feldman appears to answer this first
question. But his critics are looking for an answer to a second question,
namely this: at which times does Lincoln incur the harm for which his death
is responsible? To this latter question it is absurd to reply that Lincoln is
always incurring harm.
 1NC Concurrentism

Death is too short for there to be harm

Luper 9 - 2009 Steven Luper is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department, Trinity
University. He is author of Invulnerability: On Securing Happiness (1996) and his most recent edited
volumes include Essential Knowledge (2004), The Skeptics: Contemporary Essays (2003) and Existing: An
Introduction to Existentialist Thought (2000). (Steven Luper, The Philosophy of Death, pg
134
As a solution to the timing puzzle, concurrentism appears to face an
objection: death occurs too quickly for it to harm its victims during the brief
time it transpires.
Answers To Suicide
 AT Suicide = Murder

Suicide is permissible and different from murder

Benatar 13 - 12/26/16 - David Benatar is a professor of philosophy and head of the

Department of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. He is also the director
(David Benatar, Suicide: A Qualified Defense, The
of the bioethics center.
Metaphysics and Ethics of Death)

One compelling explanation of why murder is wrong is that it thwarts

interests that the victims have a right to have respected. If that is so, then
suicide may be permissible, at least when two conditions are met: (1)
Continued life is not in a persons interests; and (2) the relevant right, the
right to life, does not preclude taking that persons life. These conditions are
typically met in cases of rational suicide. In such cases, life has become so
burdensome that continued life is either not in that persons interests or not
reasonably thought to be in his interests. Moreover, because the person who
dies has consented to be killedfor that is what rationally killing oneself
impliesthe right to life has not been violated. There is more than one way to
understand why ones right to life is not violated when one kills oneself. If one
understands rights in such a way that the correlative duties are borne only by
those other than the right-bearer, then the right-bearer has no duty to
himself. On this view, my having a negative right to life implies that others
have correlative duties not to kill me. It does not imply that I have a duty not
to kill myself. Thus, when a person rationally kills himself, he has not violated
his own rights.
 AT God

This claim condemns the suicidal to unbearable suffering

based on unverifiable grounds
Benatar 13 - 2013- David Benatar is a professor of philosophy and head of the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. He is also the director of the
(David Benatar, Suicide: A Qualified Defense, The Metaphysics
bioethics center.
and Ethics of Death)

Given this, some opponents of suicide might deny that the wrongfulness of
murder is best explained as a violation of a right to life. They may argue,
instead, that murder is wrong because it violates a duty to God rather than to
the person who is killed. However, this argument suffers from the usual sorts
of problems faced by religious arguments. Most important, the underlying
assumptions are highly controversial. These include not only the claim that
God exists but also, if he does, that the prohibition on murder includes a
prohibition on suicide. Given that the burdens endured by those who
contemplate suicide are more easily demonstrable than are the assumptions
of the religious argument, the former should weigh more heavily than the
latter, at least for those who do not share the assumptions. To suggest
otherwise is to condemn the suicidal to unbearable suffering on grounds that
cannot be verified.
 AT Suicide = Irrational

Suicide is the only rational choice for the suicidal

Benatar 13 - 2013 - David Benatar is a professor of philosophy and head of the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. He is also the director of the
(David Benatar, Suicide: A Qualified Defense, The Metaphysics
bioethics center.
and Ethics of Death)

The claim that all suicide is irrational can be understood in different ways,
corresponding to different senses of irrationality. One way in which somebody
might be irrational is by adopting means that do not, and should be known do
not, secure their ends. Thus, for example, to attempt to quench ones thirst by shaving ones head
is irrational because head-shaving is obviously not an appropriate means for quenching ones thirst. In
contrast, drinking a glass of water is rational because it is clearly one means of attaining ones end.
Following this ends-means view of rationality (and irrationality), some suicides clearly are irrational.
Suicide is not an effective means to every end. Thus, when it does not serve ones end, it is irrational.
However, it should be equally clear that suicide may also often be entirely
rational under the ends-means conception of rationality. If ones end is to
avoid those of lifes burdens that can only be avoided by the cessation of
ones life, then not only is suicide a rational action, it is the rational course of
action.

Death is a rational end burdens of the suicidal focus the

mind and not cloud it
Benatar 13 - 2013 - David Benatar is a professor of philosophy and head of the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. He is also the director of the
(David Benatar, Suicide: A Qualified Defense, The Metaphysics
bioethics center.
and Ethics of Death)

Perhaps, then, the suicide critics conception of irrationality is different.

Perhaps they understand as irrational any end to which suicide is the means.
On this view, suicide is irrational not because it is a hopelessly ineffective
means to attaining the desired goal, but rather because it is a means to an
irrational end. Although it may be rational, as a means, to kill oneself if one
wants to die, it is not rational to want to die. If the claim is that it is never (or
even almost never) rational to want to die, then again it is difficult to sustain.
It implies that life is never (or almost never) so bad that death is preferable to
continued life in such a condition. This view must certainly be a dogma rather
than an informed response to the range of horrific conditions in which
humans can and regularly do find themselves. These include excruciating pains that
when palliated (if suitable medications are available) are alleviated only by dulling ones consciousness
and thereby diminishing ones independence and exacerbating ones indignity. They also include terminal
diseases that steadily sap ones life, and irreversible degenerative conditions that cause an inexorable loss
of either ones mind or the use of ones body; nor should we forget those who suffer grinding poverty or
massive injuries and hideous disfigurements, and those who are paralyzed or who irreversibly lose bowel
or bladder control. Although not everybody in such situations would rather die than
continue to live in such a condition, the preference of those who would rather
die is not unreasonable. This refutes the suggestion that those who are
suffering the burdens of life are not in a fit state to judge whether death is
preferable to continued life. Those burdens do not cloud the mind, rendering
sound judgment impossible. Instead, the burdens are entirely germane to
decisions about whether life is worth continuing. Indeed, in such
circumstances, the burdens may not so much cloud the mind as focus it.
 AT Suicide Unnatural

We turn the affs objection against them in a beautiful

annihilation of their own plan they now have the burden
of proving that their plan of extending lives is not
unnatural
Benatar 13 - 2013 - David Benatar is a professor of philosophy and head of the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. He is also the director of the
(David Benatar, Suicide: A Qualified Defense, The Metaphysics
bioethics center.
and Ethics of Death)

Closely related to the claim that suicide is irrational is the objection that it is
unnatural. The argument that a practice is immoral on account of being
unnatural occurs in many contexts, but it is deeply flawed and succumbs to
well-known objections. There are at least two ways in which suicide is said to
be unnatural. First, suicide leads to ones dying sooner than one would have
died if nature had been allowed to take its course. Second, suicide is contrary
to the natural instinct to continue living. The first version of the argument
assumes that a persons taking his own life is not part of nature . It assumes,
therefore, that the actions of moral agents are not natural in the relevant
sense. That is a controversial claim, but we may grant it for the moment. If
suicide were morally problematic because it leads to an earlier death than
would naturally have occurred, then saving lives , at least those threatened by
moral agents, is also morally problematic because it too subverts a persons
natural fate. It leads him to die later than he would have died if nature had
been allowed to take its course. There are some people who are willing to
embrace this conclusion, but most see it as a reductio ad absurdum of the
argument. Those who are prepared to accept the implication for saving lives
need to explain why it is immoral to alter the time at which one would
naturally have died. What normative force does nature have? And if nature
does have such force, why may we interfere with nature in other ways , by
building houses or by farming, for example? The second version of the
argument is not any better. Although humans (like other animals) do have a
natural instinct to continue living, it is also the case in some circumstances
that people naturally lose the will to continue living. Nor is it clear why we
ought to comply with our natural instincts. Instincts to violence or sex are
regularly thought to be instincts that should be kept in check, even by those
who think that we ought not to act contrary to the instinct to continue living.
 AT Cowardice

Suicide isnt cowardice its courageous

Benatar 13 - 2013 - David Benatar is a professor of philosophy and head of the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. He is also the director of the
(David Benatar, Suicide: A Qualified Defense, The Metaphysics
bioethics center.
and Ethics of Death)
A fourth way in which suicide is criticized is by claiming that it is a cowardly act. The idea is that the
person who kills himself lacks the courage to face lifes burdens and thus takes the easy way out.
Courage, on this view, requires standing ones ground in the face of lifes adversities and bearing these
One way to respond to this criticism is to deny that accepting lifes
with fortitude.
burdens is always courageous. This will seem odd to those who have a crude
conception of courage according to which the unswerving, fearless response
to adversity is always courageous. More sophisticated accounts of courage,
however, recognize that the steely response may sometimes be a failing. This
is what lies behind the adage that sometimes discretion is the better part of
valour. On the more sophisticated views, too much bravado ceases to be
courageous and is instead foolhardiness or even foolishness. Once we
recognize that courage should not be confused with its simulacra , the
possibility arises that some of lifes burdens may be so great and the point of
bearing them so tenuous that enduring them further is not courageous at all
and may even be foolish. Simply because a suicidal person judges death to
be less bad than continued existence does not mean that bringing about
ones own death is easy. There is obviously a sense in which he has judged it
to be easier than continuing to live, but that sort of relative
claim can be made, in the reverse direction, of the person who judges
continued life in a burdensome condition to be less bad than the alternative
of taking his own life. Yet the advocate of the cowardice objection does not
claim that the one who endures lifes burdens is for that reason cowardly.
That one option is preferable to another does not mean that the preferred
option is easy. Indeed, neither living with significant burdens nor taking ones own life is without
difficulty. Although one may be judged preferable to the other, it is preferable in the sense of being less
Those who accuse suicides of cowardice fail to see just
bad rather than more good.
how demanding the task of killing oneself can be. Suicide is difficult because
of the formidable life drive that animates most people , even most of those
who eventually take their own lives. Even if some people lose all will to live,
many others who kill themselves would like to continue living if only
continued living were not so burdensome. They have to overcome their will to
live in order to take their lives. This is not easy at all. It is thus unsurprising
that more people contemplate suicide than attempt it, and there are more
attempted suicides than successful ones. Given the resolve that some people
have to muster in order to take their own lives, combined with the futility or
severity of their circumstance, it may well be that suicide is at least
sometimes the more courageous option than the alternative .
 AT Interest of Others

The objection that suicide violates duties to others is a

selfish standpoint we destroy these misconceptions and
move us forward into a more rational world

Benatar 13 - 2013 - David Benatar is a professor of philosophy and head of the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. He is also the director of the
(David Benatar, Suicide: A Qualified Defense, The Metaphysics
bioethics center.
and Ethics of Death)

A fifth critique of suicide is that the person who kills himself violates duties he
has to others. In earlier times, suicide was not only morally condemned but
also criminalized because the person who took his own life thereby deprived
the king of one of his subjects. Thus, suicide was viewed as a kind of theft
against the monarch. Today, this view seems at best quaint, but more likely
repugnant, because it implies the kings ownership of his subjects. The idea
can be made more palatable to modern sensibilities if one shifts from
speaking of the kings ownership of his subjects to the states interest in the
life of the citizen. However, this version of the view seems harder pressed to
rule out all suicide. Even if the state does have an interest in each of its
citizens, it is surely the case that the interest each citizen has in himself is
going to outweigh the states interest in him. If his life has become so
burdensome to him that continued life is not in his interests, it is hard to see
how the states interest in his continued life would be sufficient to render
suicide wrong. I am not suggesting that there could be no such
circumstances, but they could hardly be the norm. The argument that suicide
may violate duties to others assumes its strongest form when the relevant
others are close family, friends or, sometimes, those to whom one has special
obligations. These sorts of people stand to suffer profound loss if one takes ones own life. Not only are
ones family and friends bereaved, but the loss may be heightened by the fact that one took ones own life.
This may be exacerbated by feelings of guilt that they may experience over ones suicide. Moreover, ones
death may preclude ones fulfilling duties that one had toward them. Ones children may be deprived of a
parent and the fulfillment of ones parental duties (even if ones spouse remains alive). Ones friends may
be deprived of ones company or counsel, and ones patients, clients, or students may be deprived of ones
care, services, or instruction. For these reasons, some people have been inclined to view suicide as selfish.
The suicide is said to think only of himself and not of those who are left
behind. As was the case with the earlier arguments, this one is inadequate to
rule out all suicide. There probably are suicides where the person who kills
himself has given his own interests excessive weight relative to the interests
of others. Some burdens of life are insufficient to defeat the duties one owes
others. Suicide in such circumstances may indeed be selfish. But this is surely
not always the case. The greater the burdens of a life are, the less likely that
the interests of friends and family will carry sufficient moral weight to defeat
the prospective suicides interest in ceasing to exist. It would be indecent, for
example, for family members to expect a loved one to remain alive in
conditions of extreme pain or degradation merely so that they can have him
alive. In such circumstances, it is unlikely that he would be able, even if he
remained alive, to fulfill many or most of his erstwhile duties to them.
Although they will miss his presence if he dies, his condition is too
burdensome to require his continued presence. In such circumstances, what
is selfish is the insistence that the prospective suicide remain alive , not that
he seek his own demise. The argument about selfishness can backfire in
another way. Just as it is sometimes

the case that those who kill themselves have accorded insufficient weight to
the interests of others, so it is sometimes the case that those who do not kill
themselves make this error. Consistent with what I have already said, I do not
think that the interests of others are decisive. Nevertheless, there are
situations in which a persons interest in continued life is negligible , because
he will die soon anyway, and the quality

of his life is appalling. If seeing out his days , rather than taking his own life
earlier, would spell financial ruin for his family (because of the costs of his
medical care), then it may well be unduly selfish not to take ones own life.
 AT Finality

Suicide is appropriate adopting an irreversible = bad

mindset leads to logical breakdowns
Benatar 13 - 2013 - David Benatar is a professor of philosophy and head of the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. He is also the director of the
(David Benatar, Suicide: A Qualified Defense, The Metaphysics
bioethics center.
and Ethics of Death)

From the indisputable premise that death is final or irreversible, some people
infer that for this reason we should not carry out suicide. This argument takes
a number of forms. One version of the argument notes that there are
alternatives to death that do not close off options in the way that suicide
does. Thus, one might try to enjoy life despite the burdens, perhaps by trying to distract oneself. This
need not involve becoming oblivious to the burdens, but rather seeking relief by not dwelling on them. A
second possible response is to accept lifes burdens and endure them quietly or perhaps ironically. A third
response is to protest against ones predicament (even though doing so cannot possibly undo or even
ameliorate that predicament). What distinguishes this response from mere acceptance is that protest is a
kind of intolerance of lifes burdens. When others are responsible for ones burdens, one could protest
against them. However, ones protests need not be directed at anybody. It can be a generalized anger
about an unfortunate state of affairs for which nobody is responsible. There is indeed something to be said
for each of these non-lethal responses to lifes burdens, and thus one or another of them may well be the
most appropriate response in some circumstances. For example, if ones burdens are minor and the costs
of suicide (to others or oneself) are great, then enjoying ones life despite the burdens may indeed be the
most reasonable reaction. If the burdens are greater but still bearable and carrying out suicide would
impose still greater burdens on those to whom one is obligated, then acceptance of (and sometimes even
However, noting these alternatives is
protest against) ones condition may be preferable.
insufficient to show that they are always preferable to suicide. If ones
condition is bad enough, then it may make no sense to continue living , even
if continued life enabled one to continue protesting. Why continue to bear
and even to protest an unbearable condition if one could bring it to an end ,
albeit by bringing oneself to an end? A second version of the finality
argument notes an interesting difference between suicide and the other
options. If one kills oneself, then there is no opportunity to change ones mind
later and choose one of the other options instead. In contrast, if one chooses
one of the non-lethal alternatives, one can, at any time, reverse ones
decision and choose another course, including suicide. Recognizing this is
important for understanding the momentous nature of a suicide decision.
However, an action cannot be judged unacceptable merely because it is
irreversible. First, if we always deferred to a reversible course of action , then
there is one sense in which the reversible decision becomes irreversible. That
is to say, if one should never choose a course of action that cannot be
reversed, then at each juncture that one reconsiders one is precluded from
choosing suicide and thus one may never really switch to suicide from one of
the non-lethal responses to lifes burdens. If one may never switch to suicide
then, though one may change ones mind and shift from one non-suicidal
response to another, opting for a non-suicidal response becomes irreversible .
Second, and more important, there is nothing about irreversible decisions
that precludes their being the best decisions. We only have to be extra sure
when making such decisions that they are the right ones. A third version of
the finality argument states that while one is alive, there is still hope that
ones condition may improve, whereas once one is dead, all hope is lost. One
problem with this version is that it often misses the point of suicide. The
person who carries out suicide need not think that his condition will not be
alleviated. He may merely judge his current condition to be unacceptable and
conclude that no matter how much his situation may improve later, that
outcome is simply not worth what he would have to endure in the interim.
Moreover, even when the decision to kill oneself is based on a judgment
about ones future prospects, it is not always rational to err on the side of
continued life. Sometimes there is no realistic hope of improvement. In such
situations, one may be faced with a choice between the remotest of
possibilities that ones condition will improve and the certainty that one will
suffer terrible burdens in the interim. Those who wager rationally do not
consider only the quality of the competing options but also their probability.
At least sometimes, then, suicide may be appropriate even when not all hope
is lost.
Answers To Epic
 AT 4D Framework
Just ask in cross ex why we should prefer a 4D Framework
over a 3D one. If the author also happens to be
Silverstein, you can read AT Silverstein too.

Theres no reason to prefer a 4D framework over a 3D

one- after all, a 3D framework makes the most amount of
sense since we live in 3D
Taylor 13 - 2013 TCNJ Associate Professor, MA, St. Andrews University; M.LITT, St. Andrews
University; MA, Bowling Green State University; Ph.D., Bowling Green State University, serves as the
Managing Editor (with exclusive responsibility for book reviews) of The Journal of Value Inquiry, and a
member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy and HEC (Healthcare Ethics
Committee) Forum, published numerous Op-Eds on bioethical issues in publications such as the Los
Angeles Times, the New York Daily News and USA Today, an occasional contributor to NPR debates on
ethical issues, and have been quoted in, and interviewed for, multiple publications (including The
Times and the New York Times) on both bioethical issues and the morality of markets. (James Stacy
Taylor, Introduction, The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death)
Unless there is an independent reason (i.e., one that does not appeal to the
formers [4D] ability to solve the problem of how to hold that a persons
death could be a harm to her in the face of the Existence Variant of the
Epicurean argument) for preferring the 4D framework to the 3D framework,
Silversteins preference for this approach is simply ad hoc.
 AT Silverstein

Silverstein makes a flawed claim of harm

Taylor 13 - 2013 TCNJ Associate Professor, MA, St. Andrews University; M.LITT, St. Andrews
University; MA, Bowling Green State University; Ph.D., Bowling Green State University, serves as the
Managing Editor (with exclusive responsibility for book reviews) of The Journal of Value Inquiry, and a
member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy and HEC (Healthcare Ethics
Committee) Forum, published numerous Op-Eds on bioethical issues in publications such as the Los
Angeles Times, the New York Daily News and USA Today, an occasional contributor to NPR debates on
ethical issues, and have been quoted in, and interviewed for, multiple publications (including The
Times and the New York Times) on both bioethical issues and the morality of markets. (James Stacy
Taylor, Introduction, The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death)
The Epicurean could continue to refine her account of well-being, and hence
of what could constitute a harm to person A, in order to undercut the first
component of Silversteins argument against her view. Thus, she could argue
that the relationship between something x and a harm that A was subject to
must be a causal one, such that x caused harm to A, thus challenging
Silversteins claim that for something x to harm A, x need not be the possible
cause, but only the object, of As experience or feelings.

Silverstein fails to acknowledge abstract approaches

taken by Epicureans- therefore his arg fails to undermine

Insert mentioned Rosenbaum card here (talks about

abstract vs concrete)
 AT Deprivation

The aff creates a contradiction in their own premises that

destroys their entire argument
Warren 13 - 2013 Reader in Ancient Philosophy, Teaches at University of Cambridge,
Chancellor's medal for proficiency in Classical learning, Author of 6 books and 42 papers, Expert in Greek
(James Warren, The Harm of Death in
and Roman Philosophy and Philosophy of Death
Ciceros First Tusculan Disputation, The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death)
It is now much clearer that A. is not asserting that nonexistence per se is an
evil. Rather, his concern about death is driven by a concern that it involves a
loss, namely the loss of existence itself; these people are wretched because
they are not, although they once were (quia non sint, cum fuerint, eo miseros
esse ). (Presumably, therefore, because A. thinks that all the dead are
wretched, he must also think that life is good, or that life is a sufficient
condition for some goods; he does not appear to allow there to be anyone for
whom death is better than continued life, since for such a person, no longer
beingalthough they once weremight not be a harm.) Of course, this
proposed explanation will not itself help A. terribly much, above all because
of what he chooses to say has been lost and therefore constitutes the harm of
death and mortality.
Indeed, there are two problems he must face. The first problem is common to
a number of positions related to but not identical with A.s own. Any account
of the harm of death as a kind of deprivation that accepts no postmortem
existence will have to come up with some account of loss that does not
require the subject of the loss to persist after death.

According to their views, life itself is a harm and not a

benefit, therefore their impact of death is actually a good
thing
Warren 13 - 2013 Reader in Ancient Philosophy, Teaches at University of Cambridge,
Chancellor's medal for proficiency in Classical learning, Author of 6 books and 42 papers, Expert in Greek
(James Warren, The Harm of Death in
and Roman Philosophy and Philosophy of Death
Ciceros First Tusculan Disputation, The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death)
In his view, it is a harm to be deprived of a life one once had, and it is
therefore also
harmful to be alive and subject to the imminent deprivation of a life one
currently possesses.

Dont let the aff change their expression of the phrase to

be by giving only subject-predicate and leaving out the
verb to be
Warren 13 - 2013 Reader in Ancient Philosophy, Teaches at University of Cambridge,
Chancellor's medal for proficiency in Classical learning, Author of 6 books and 42 papers, Expert in Greek
(James Warren, The Harm of Death in
and Roman Philosophy and Philosophy of Death
Ciceros First Tusculan Disputation, The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death)
The problem, rather, is a logical one, and therefore M. proceeds to give a
brief, elementary logic revision class. The terminology he uses is, broadly speaking, taken
from the Stoic propositional logic of the Hellenistic period, but the point M. needs is very simple. In
brief, he simply points out that every assertion (here Cicero tentatively off ers
pronuntiatum as a translation of the Greek term axima but says that he will
find a better equivalent later if he can) must take a certain form in order to
be either true or false. In order to be a complete assertion, it must take the
basic form X is F, because only then will it have a content that can be
evaluated for its truth or falsehood. So wretched Crassus (Crassus miser)
must mean Crassus is wretched if it is to be an assertion at all. And as A.
wishes this assertion to be true, whether or not he expresses the required
part of the verb to be is irrelevant; it must be understood, even if it is not
explicitly included. Strictly speaking, Cicero need not commit himself at this
point to any position about the necessity for every proposition to be either
true or falsea position that, as he knows well enough himself, was in fact
denied by the Epicureans. Since the point he has in his sights is just that A.
wishes to hold that the assertion Crassus is wretched (and what he takes to
be a more innocent equivalent, wretched Crassus) is true, then it would be
enough for M. simply to insist that a necessary condition for the truth of any
assertion is that it is of the general form X is F. However M. characterises
his objection, it is true that As tactic of simply omitting the off ending word is
not very promising. What matters is not that his sentence includes a form of
esse but that he is asserting that something is true of the dead while saying
that the dead do not exist.

Even if we are to take the affs argument as true,

deprivation arguments deal no damage to Epicurus
arguments as they misconstrue his argument our
original claim still stands that death and its effects should
not be feared as they have no harm
Draper 13 - 2013 - Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Delaware, Researches
Ethics and Epistemology and is an expert in the fields of Logic, Ancient Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and
(Kai Draper, Epicurus on the Value of Death, The Metaphysics
Philosophy of Law
and Ethics of Death)

Although Epicurus has many contemporary critics, I believe that few of them
have actually addressed that argument. The contemporary philosophical
literature on the value of death is dominated by those
who argue that death can be bad for its subject in virtue of depriving her of
the benefits of survival. The standard deprivationist response to Epicurus is
to argue that even though neither death nor its consequences can be painful,
death can deprive one of a pleasurable future and so (even on the
assumption that hedonism is true) can be bad in the comparative sense of
being worse than the alternative. What many deprivationists overlook,
however, is that their conclusions do not by themselves
undermine Epicurus position. Epicurus did not deny that death can deprive
its subject of pleasure, nor did he deny that death can be comparatively bad.
He argued that because neither death nor its consequences can be
intrinsically bad in the absolute (i.e., non-comparative) sense of bad, death
does not merit emotional distress.

Nobody fears comparative harms the aff is still

promoting an irrational fear
Draper 13 - 2013 - Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Delaware, Researches
Ethics and Epistemology and is an expert in the fields of Logic, Ancient Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and
(Kai Draper, Epicurus on the Value of Death, The Metaphysics
Philosophy of Law
and Ethics of Death)

I doubt, therefore, that Epicurus needs to make more than minor

qualifications to his conclusion that neither death itself nor deaths
consequences can be intrinsically bad for the one who dies. Accordingly, I
suspect that any serious critique of Epicurus position on death must address
his inference from that intermediate conclusion to his final conclusion that it
is irrational to be troubled by ones own death. Here, it might seem that the
deprivationists are poised to kill, for it is tempting to suppose that if death
can be comparatively bad, then it follows immediately that it can be rational
to be troubled by death. It is a mistake , however, to suppose that it is rational
to be troubled by any and all comparatively bad things. It is comparatively
bad for me that I cannot run a mile in less than two minutes, that Donald
Trump still has not supported my philosophical research with a million dollar
grant, and that I am not at this moment receiving a pleasant massage as I
work. However, none of those deprivations merit distress. Or suppose that I
am receiving a massage, a wonderful massage from Bjorn at Bjorn and Svens
House of Swedish Massage; suppose further that were I not enjoying that
massage, I would be enjoying an even better massage from Bjorns even
more talented partner Sven. Then my receiving a wonderful massage from
Bjorn is comparatively badworse, because less good, than the alternative.
Nevertheless, I should expect no pity if I am troubled by the comparative
badness of my wonderful massage. Similarly, I should expect no pity from an
Epicurean if I am troubled by dying sooner rather than later (or never at all).
To die sooner rather than later is, in some cases, to receive less of a good,
but less good neednt be bad in any troubling sense.
 AT Instrumental Badness (Feldman + Bradley)

Go Read AT Deprivation too.

Epicurus knows what instrumental bad is and didnt deny

life was bad in that sense
Draper 13 - 2013 - Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Delaware, Researches
Ethics and Epistemology and is an expert in the fields of Logic, Ancient Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and
(Kai Draper, Epicurus on the Value of Death, The Metaphysics
Philosophy of Law
and Ethics of Death)

However, I see no reason to suppose that Epicurus was interested in denying

that death can be instrumentally bad in that comparative sense. Again, he
believed that he could reach his final conclusion that there is no reason to be
troubled by death by establishing that neither death itself nor its
consequences can be intrinsically bad in the absolute sense of bad.
Moreover, it appears that Epicurus himself was committed to the proposition
that death can be instrumentally bad in the comparative sense (i.e., that the
consequences of survival can be better than the consequences of death), for
he held both that the consequences of death are neither good nor bad for the
one who dies and that the consequences of survival can be good for the one
who survives (life is desirable). Nor can one justly accuse Epicurus of
misunderstanding the nature or significance of instrumental value. He
certainly thought that ones overall assessment of a choice or state of affairs
must take into account both the value of that state of affairs itself and the
value of its consequences. Thus, he urged his followers to consider the
consequences of their choices, pointing out that we should avoid pleasures if
we get a larger amount of what is uncongenial from them, and we should
pursue pains if a greater pleasure follows for a long while if we endure the
pains. He did not, however, use the terms good and bad in a
comparative sense to capture the fact that, for example, avoiding a pleasure
can have better consequences than pursuing it and avoiding a pain can have
worse consequences than enduring it. Nor was there any reason for him to do
so, for better and worse are adequate to that purpose.
 AT Project End (Furley)
Just read CX Add on Subsequentialism and Deprivation
 AT Hurt Others
Neg doesnt have to prove that death can be a harm to
others
Taylor 13 - 2013 TCNJ Associate Professor, MA, St. Andrews University; M.LITT, St. Andrews
University; MA, Bowling Green State University; Ph.D., Bowling Green State University, serves as the
Managing Editor (with exclusive responsibility for book reviews) of The Journal of Value Inquiry, and a
member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy and HEC (Healthcare Ethics
Committee) Forum, published numerous Op-Eds on bioethical issues in publications such as the Los
Angeles Times, the New York Daily News and USA Today, an occasional contributor to NPR debates on
ethical issues, and have been quoted in, and interviewed for, multiple publications (including The
Times and the New York Times) on both bioethical issues and the morality of markets. (James Stacy
Taylor, Introduction, The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death)

Before moving to consider these Epicurean views in more detail, four points
are worth noting. First, the arguments in this introduction that are derived from Epicurus views
should be considered to be Epicurean, rather than attempts to provide accurate exegeses of the views of
Second, the proponent of the Epicurean view of death need
the historical Epicurus.
only deny that a persons death could not be a harm to her; he need not deny
that it could visit great harm upon others , such as those who loved her. Third,
the defender of the Epicurean view of death only holds that death is not a harm to the one who dies. It is
perfectly compatible with this view to hold that the process of dying might be harmful to the one who
undergoes it; a lingering death from lung cancer, for example, will certainly be harmful to a person who
suffers from it, in that it will adversely affect her experiences.

And if we truly fear our own deaths, a fear that it will

harm others is nonsense. Even if our deaths do harm
other people, that will only occur after our deaths, when
we will not be around to perceive others being hurt- in
other words, it may as well have not occurred.
 AT Death Painful

Any pain that comes from the process of death will

naturally be counteracted and overtaken by the joy of
recollection
Epicurus 270 270 BC Greek philosopher, author of an ethical philosophy of simple
pleasure, friendship, and retirement. He founded schools of philosophy that survived directly from the 4th
century bc until the 4th century ad. (Epicurus, Deathbed Letter)

On this truly happy day of my life, while at the point of death, I write this to
you. The disease in my bladder and stomach are pursuing their course,
lacking nothing of their natural severity: but against all this is the joy in my
heart at the recollection of my conversations with you. Do you, as I might expect form

your devotion from boy hood to me and to philosophy, take good care of the children of Metrodorus.
 AT Not Aware No Harm (Nagel)

These claims deal no damage because they fail to address

Epicurus main point- that there is no more you after
death
Nussbaum 13 - 2013 She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. From
1986 to 1993, Ms. Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics
Research, Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee on International
Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women of the American Philosophical Association, and
currently chairs its new Committee for Public Philosophy. She has been a member of the Association's
(Martha C. Nussbaum, The Damage of Death, The Metaphysics
National Board.
and Ethics of Death)
But now let us turn to the case of death. What I said in 1994 was that it is utterly unlike the
other two cases, because there is no subject in the world to which the idea of a good or a bad can be
attached. Nagels examples, even if convincing on their own terms, do no
damage to Epicurus contention, because Epicurus whole point is that after
death there is no you there any longer. As he says with characteristic pungency, Where
death is there, we are not, and when we are there, death is not. When we judge that the
predicament of the brain-damaged person is bad, our judgment is directed at
the surviving damaged individual, and we are presuming that this individual
is one and the same as the individual who was thriving before the accident.
(As Nagel constructs the case, the person is plainly alive and functioning in lots of other ways, but just
lacks higher mental functioning.)

A Nagelian rejection deals no damage to our claims

because there is no such thing as an irreducible relational
harm
Vallicella 10 12/20/10 Maverick Philosopher, Selected for the The Times of Londons
(Bill Vallicella, Death as a Relational Harm?,
Best 100 Blog List
http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/12/deat
h-as-a-relational-harm.html)
Suppose I promise a dying man that I will take good care of his young and
healthy dog. But I renege on my promise in order to save myself the hassle
by having the dog euthanized. Epicurus in hand, I reason, "There is no harm
to my friend since he doesn't exist, and there is no harm to the dog because
its transition to nonexistence will be quick and painless. Caring for the dog,
however, is a harm to me. Sure, I will break my promise, but on
consequentialist grounds, what's wrong with that?" Thomas Nagel would
disagree and call my reneging "an injury to the dead man." ("Death"
in Mortal Questions, Cambridge UP, 1979, p. 6) For Nagel, "There are goods
and evils which are irreducibly relational; they are features of the relations
between a person, with spatial and temporal boundaries of the usual sort,
and circumstances which may not coincide with him either in space or in
time." (p. 6) Death is such an evil. Being dead is a circumstance that does
not temporally coincide with the decedent. In other words, a thing can have
properties at times at which it does not exist provided it once existed. (Few if
any would claim that a thing can have properties at times at which it does not
exist if it never existed. And so it is not an evil for Schopenhauer's never-
existent son 'Will' that he never existed.) A Nagelian rejection of (3) is
respectable and plausible as a means of turning aside the Epicurean
argument. But it is scarcely compelling. For the Epicurean can simply insist
that there are no relational harms . After all, there is something
metaphysically murky about maintaining that a person who is nothing is yet
the subject of a harm or injury simply on the strength of his having once
existed. If you are now nothing, then you are now nothing: why should your
once having been be relevant?
Answers To Quantum
 AT Randomness
The MWI does explains why we perceive randomness
Tegmark 97 [Swedish-American Cosmologist, a professor at MIT and the
scientific director of the Foundational Questions Institute, and co-founder of
the Future of Life, THE INTERPRETATION OF QUANTUM MECHANICS: MANY
WORLDS OR MANY WORDS?, Institute for Advanced Study, September 15
1997, https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9709032v1.pdf]
Everetts brilliant insight was that the MWI does explain why we perceive randomness even though the
To avoid linguistic confusion, it is crucial
Schrodinger equation itself is completely causal.
that we distinguish between [9] the outside view of the world (the way a
mathematical thinks of it, i.e., as an evolving wavefunction), and the inside
view, the way it is perceived from the subjective frog perspective of an
observer in it. and have by definition perceived two opposite
measurement outcomes from their inside views, but share the same memory
of being in the state :/ moments earlier. Thus describes an observer who
remembers performing a spin measurement and observing the definite
outcome |>. Suppose she measures the z-spin of n independent atoms that all have spin up in the
x-direction initially, i.e., = = 1/ 2. The final state corresponding to equation (2) will then contain 2n
terms of equal weight, a typical term corresponding to a seemingly random sequence of ups and downs, of
Thus the perceived inside
the form 2 n/2 | |> (3)
view of what happened according to an observer described by a typical
element of the final superposition is a seemingly random sequence of ups
and downs, behaving as if generated though a random process with
probabilities p = 2 = 2 = 0.5 for each outcome. This can be made more formal if we
replace by 0, replace by 1, and place a decimal point in front of it all. Then the above
observer state | i = |.0010111001...i, and we see that in the limit n ,
each observer state corresponds to a real number on the unit interval (written in binary) .
According to
Borels theorem on normal numbers [10,11], almost all (all except for a set of
Borel measure zero) real numbers between zero and one have a fraction 0.5
of their decimals being 1, so in the same sense, almost all terms in our
wavefunction describe observers that have perceived the conventional
quantum probability rules to hold. It is in this sense that the MWI predicts
apparent randomness from the inside viewpoint while maintaining strict
causality from the outside viewpoint.
 AT Superposition

Decoherence destroys Macrosuperpositions

Tegmark 97 [Swedish-American Cosmologist, a professor at MIT and the
scientific director of the Foundational Questions Institute, and co-founder of
the Future of Life, THE INTERPRETATION OF QUANTUM MECHANICS: MANY
WORLDS OR MANY WORDS?, Institute for Advanced Study, September 15
1997, https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9709032v1.pdf]
The Everett postulate doesnt! Since the state corresponding to a superposition of a pencil lying in two
macroscopically different positions on a table-top is a perfectly permissible quantum state in the MWI, why
Indeed, if we were to balance a pencil exactly on its
do we never perceive such states?
tip, it would by symmetry fall down in a superposition of all directions (a
calculation shows that this takes about 30 seconds), thereby creating such a
macrosuperposition state. The inability to answer this question was originally a serious weakness
of the MWI, which can equivalently be phrased as follows: why is the position representation so special?
Why do we perceive macroscopic objects in approximate eigenstates of the position operator r and the
momentum operator p but never in approximate eigenstates of other Hermitian operators such as r + p?
environment-induced
The answer to this important question was provided by the realization that
decoherence rapidly destroys macrosuperpositions as far as the inside view is
concerned, but this was explicitly pointed out only in the 70s [12] and 80s
[13], more than a decade after Everetts original work. This elegant
mechanism is now well-understood and rather uncontroversial [14], and the
interested reader is referred to [15] and a recent book on decoherence [16]
for details. Essentially, the position basis gets singled out by the dynamics
because the field equations of physics are local in this basis, not in any other
basis. Historically, the collapse postulate was introduced to suppress the off-
diagonal density matrix elements elements corresponding to strange
macrosuperpositions (cf. [17]). However, many physicists have shared Gottfrieds view that
the reduction [collapse] postulate is an ugly scar on what would be beautiful theory if it could be
removed [18], since it is not accompanied by any equation specifying when collapse occurs (when the
Everett postulate is violated). The subsequent discovery of decoherence provided precisely such an explicit
mechanism for suppression of off-diagonal elements, which is essentially indistinguishable from the effect
of a postulated Copenhagen wavefunction collapse from an observational (inside) point of view (e.g. [19]).
Since this eliminates arguably the main motivation for the collapse postulate, it may be a principal reason
for the increasing popularity of the MWI.
 AT Infinite Minds

We identify strongly with one mind

Barrett 95 [Jeffrey A. Barrett is Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of
California, Irvine. The Single Mind and Many Mind Versions of Quantum Mechanics,
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jabarret/bio/publications/SingleMindManyMinds.pdf]

Even if I had an infinity of minds, I identify so strongly with one mind that I
wouldn't much care whether or not the infinity of minds together in some way
supervened on my physical state. Being counterintuitive is not a fatal flaw in
a physical theory.
 AT Doesnt Make Sense
We identify strongly with one mind

Barrett 95 [Jeffrey A. Barrett is Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of
California, Irvine. The Single Mind and Many Mind Versions of Quantum Mechanics,
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jabarret/bio/publications/SingleMindManyMinds.pdf]

Being counterintuitive is not a fatal flaw in a physical theory.

The affs inability to understand our argument cannot be treated as
a flaw in the argument.
AT No Mechanics on Large Scale
AT Unethical
AT Anthropic Principal
AT Conscious Flow
AT Infinite Lifespan
Answers To Generic
 AT Trump = Nuke
Trump doesnt want nuclear war
Trump 4/28 2016 President Elect. (Donald J. Trump, NBC Today
(4/28/16))
I dont want to rule out anything. I will be the last to use nuclear weapons. Its
a horror to use nuclear weapons. I will be the last to use it, I will not be a
happy trigger like some people might think. I will be the last, but I will never
ever rule it out.

Even if Trump is trigger happy, there are checks keeping

him in place
Gady 11/16 Associate Editor of the Diplomat. Senior Fellow with the EastWest Institute where
he edits the Policy Innovation Blog. Franz-Stefan has reported from a wide range of countries and conflict
zones including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. His writing and photos have appeared in The International
New York Times, BBC News, Foreign Affairs Magazine, The National Interest, Vice News, The Middle East
Eye, The Christian Science Monitor, Profil, Der Standard, and Die Presse among other publications. (The
Diplomat, http://thediplomat.com/2016/11/could-trump-actually-start-a-nuclear-war/)

Nevertheless, while Trump would be able to get the United States into a war,
Congress can cut off funds if it believes that the president has misled them or
that the military engagement is not in the interest of the U nited States.
Fighting modern war is expensive and has so far always required special
funding legislation. If Congress opposes military action, it could just refuse to
pass a law funding the presidents military adventure rather than actively
passing legislation to reduce the size of the military or cut the defense
budget. Consequently, Trumps war powers in the long run will depend on
how well he will be able to work together with the Republican majority in both
the House and Senate. The question of war and peace under a Trump presidency becomes
imminently more pressing when discussing the use of nuclear weapons. In the summer, an American talk
show host claimed that Donald Trump repeatedly asked a foreign policy expert why, given that the United
States possesses nuclear weapons, it cannot use them. (Trump denied the veracity of the story.) President
Barack Obama repeatedly stated he would not trust Trump with the nuclear launch codes for U.S.
intercontinental nuclear ballistic missiles given the latters temperament. Rather than being guided by
deliberate and rational thought when making a decision that could annihilate the lives of millions,
emotions could take the better of the president-elect and cloud his judgement, resulting in a nuclear
While China (and potentially North Korea) could hit the United States
holocaust.
with nuclear weapons (keeping in mind that Beijing maintains a so-called
minimum nuclear deterrent, however, with a no-first-use policy), it is a
nuclear conflict with Russia that poses the greatest danger to the United
States given current U.S. nuclear war strategies . For example, the United States
maintains a so-called Launch Under Attack capability, which demands that the U.S. military detect the
launch of Russian ICBMs and launch retaliatory nuclear strikes before Russian missiles take out U.S. land-
based missile silos on the continental United States. (As recently as 2013, the president ordered the U.S.
Department of Defense to retain this capability under its Nuclear Employment Strategy.) Under such a
scenario, laid out in great detail by Jeffrey Lewis and Dave Schmerler in August 2016, President Trump
would have less than eight minutes from the first call to the White House until the last moment he can act
and decide to launch the 400 land-based nuclear-armed ICBMs before Russian missiles have started to
detonate on American soil and destroy U.S. missile silos. Under such a scenario, the presidents options are
limited and there is practically no time for deliberations (e.g., trying to find out whether it is a false alarm).
The system is designed for speed and decisiveness. It is not designed to debate the decision, retired
General Michael Hayden said in an interview this August. In a Launch Under Attack scenario, it is unclear
whether any president would have much time for deliberations (three to four minutes at most) before
However, given the size and diversity of the
making a decision that could kill millions.
U.S. nuclear arsenal it will be virtually impossible for Russia to succeed in
dealing a knockout blow to the United States and destroying the majority of
missile silos, bombers, and ballistic missile submarines. In addition, there is
also no U.S. policy in place that would require the president to promptly
launch nuclear weapons in retaliation even after the confirmation of a Russian
nuclear attack. As a consequence, no immediate decision on the launch of
nuclear retaliatory strikes is required to preserve a counterstrike capability.
Trump could choose to, but would not need to, order a launch on warning.
President Trump, if still alive after the very-hypothetical Russian nuclear
attack, would thus need to deliberate carefully with his national security team
over whether to launch retaliatory strikes or not. It is difficult to assess how
he would react under such circumstances and whether he would rely on
experienced national security staff to formulate a proportionate response or
not.
Links
2NC/1NR Links
 Impact Death
They cant really say no link we link to their impact and plan as long as
their impact is death.
Add on
 1NC Quantum
We live in a multiverse
Wolchover and Byrne 10 Natalie Wolchover is a senior writer at Quanta
Magazine covering the physical sciences. Previously, she wrote for Popular Science, LiveScience and other
publications. She has a bachelors in physics from Tufts University, studied graduate-level physics at the
University of California, Berkeley, and co-authored several academic papers in nonlinear optics. Her writing
was featured in The Best Writing on Mathematics 2015. She is the winner of the 2016 Excellence in
Statistical Reporting Award and the 2016 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for young science journalists. Peter
Byrne is an investigative reporter and science writer based in Northern California. He is the author of The
Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III: Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a
Nuclear Family and a co-author of The Everett Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. (QUANTA
MAGAZINE)

If modern physics is to be believed, we shouldnt be here. The meager dose

of energy infusing empty space, which at higher levels would rip the cosmos
apart, is a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion
trillion times tinier than theory predicts. And the minuscule mass of the Higgs
boson, whose relative smallness allows big structures such as galaxies and
humans to form, falls roughly 100 quadrillion times short of expectations.
Dialing up either of these constants even a little would render the universe
unlivable. To account for our incredible luck, leading cosmologists like Alan
Guth and Stephen Hawking envision our universe as one of countless bubbles
in an eternally frothing sea. This infinite multiverse would contain universes
with constants tuned to any and all possible values, including some outliers,
like ours, that have just the right properties to support life . In this scenario,
our good luck is inevitable: A peculiar, life-friendly bubble is all we could
expect to observe. Many physicists loathe the multiverse hypothesis,
deeming it a cop-out of infinite proportions. But as attempts to paint our
universe as an inevitable, self-contained structure falter, the multiverse camp
is growing.

Every observer has an infinite set of minds- the single

mind theory has too many holes to be viable

Barrett 95 [Jeffrey A. Barrett is Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of
California, Irvine. The Single Mind and Many Mind Versions of Quantum Mechanics,
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jabarret/bio/publications/SingleMindManyMinds.pdf]

Albert and Loewer are ultimately dissatisfied with the single-mind theory.
Their primary worry is that it does not generally allow mental states to
supervene on physical states - that is, a complete description of the physical
world would generally fail to determine the mental state of an observer. The
physical state Il/Il)P+S, for example, is consistent with either Bp(1, t) or Bp(1,
~). Albert and Loewer describe this type of non-physicalism as " especially
pernicious," and they tell us that is it this lack of mental supervenience that
leads them to consider the many-minds theory (Albert and Loewer 1988,
206). The many-minds theory asks us to suppose that "every sentient
physical system, every observer, has associated with it not a single mind but
rather an infinite set of minds" (Albert and Loewer 1988, 206). Let 'i:jJ be the
set of minds associated with observer P, let X" be the set of minds with a
mental state where Bp(n, x), and let IJ- be a measure on fI' such that IJ-U,,)
equals the norm squared of the coefficient on the term I(n, x) . . . ) when the
physical state is written out in one of P's belief bases. Albert and Loewer
interpret IJ-(X,,) as the measure of P's minds with a mental state where Bp(n,
x). In other words, one can determine the distribution of mental states of an
observer's minds by expanding his physical state in one of his belief bases
then associating a set of minds with a measure equal to the norm squared of
the term's coefficient with each of the terms that describe him as having a
determinate mental state. The state of each mind is then described by the
term with which it is associated. The time-evolution of the mental state of
each of an observer's minds is probabilistic, where the probability that the
post-measurement state of a particular one of an observer's minds being
correctly described by B(n, x) is In, x) . . . 11/I,,)f. On the other hand, the
observer's "global mental state" is given by the measure IJ-. Albert and
Loewer argue that since IJ- is determined by the quantummechanical state,
the observer's global mental state supervenes on his physical state and that
consequently the time-evolution of this mental state is deterministic Consider
an x-spin measurement again. The observer begins in an eigenstate of being
ready to make an x-spin measurement of a system in an eigenstate of z-spin
and ends up with a physical state that describes his brain as being in a
superposition of belief eigenstates corresponding to mutually incompatible
beliefs. One of these states describes him as believing that the result was x-
spin up, and the other describes him as believing that tht: result was .t-spin
down. On the many-minds theory, all of his minds have determinate beliefs
concerning the result of his observation, but not the same determinate
beliefs. Here measure-one of the observer's minds would begin in mental
states with the belief that he is ready to make a measurement, and with
probability one, half of the observer's continuous infinity of minds would end
up believing that the result was x-spin up and half would end up believing
that the result was x-spin down. Albert and Loewer argue that the many-
minds theory has several advantages over other interpretations of Everett
and other versions of quantum mechanics generally. The many-minds theory
is true to Everett's fundamental idea that the time-evolution of the entire
universe and every physical system is completely and accurately given by
the linear dynamics: "There is no need to postulate collapses or splits or any
other non-quantum mechanical physical phenomena".s The many minds
theory is "in accord with our very deep conviction that mental states never
superpose". It "entails that the choice of basis vectors in terms of which the
state of the world is expressed has no physical significance".6 Also unlike the
many-worlds interpretation, the many minds theory encounters no special
problems interpreting probability: "Probabilities are completely objective,
although they do not refer to physical events but always to sequences of
states of individual minds" (Albert and Loewer 1988, p. 208). Finally, its
dynamical laws can be expressed in a local, Lorentz-invariant form, which
means that the many-minds theory meshes well with relativity (Albert and
Loewer 1988, pp. 209-10). There is, however, another virtue that might be
added to this list: the mental dynamics is strongly constrained by the
properties of the linear dynamics mentioned in Section 2. The many-minds
theory has two dynamical laws. The linear dynamics describes the time-
evolution of the physical world, and the mental dynamics describes how the
observer's minds evolve given the evolution of his physical state. At first
glance, the mental dynamics looks ad hoc - it looks like an arbitrary rule
cooked up just to make the theory consistent with our actual quantum-
mechanical observations. It turns out, however, that the linear dynamics does
not allow one much of a choice for the mental dynamics - that is, the
evolution of the physical state in the many-minds theory strongly constrains
the mental dynamics independently of specific empirical considerations. The
many-minds theory stipulates that an observer's physical state always
evolves according to the linear dynamics. It follows then from the relative
frequency and randomness properties described in Section 2 that if a many-
minds observer measures the same observable on each of an infinite
sequence of systems all in the same initial state, he would approach an
eigenstate of reporting that his results were randomly distributed with the
standard relative frequencies in the limit as the number of observations gets
large. If one requires that measure one of the observer's minds end up with
beliefs consistent with this report in the limit, then this strongly constrains
how the observer's minds might evolve from measurement to measurement.
If one further requires every length n sequence of measurement results to
correspond to a possible mental state of each mind after n measurements
and if one requires the mental dynamics to be trial-independent, then the
postmeasurement state of a particular mind must be randomly determined
with the usual quantum probabilities, which is just what the many minds
theory says! The basic idea here is that the mental dynamics looks much less
ad hoc than it might because the linear dynamics tells us that an observer
would report the usual statistics in the limit and we have reasons that are
independent of specific empirical considerations for supposing that an
observer's mental state is generally compatible with his reports. Albert and
Loewer consider the many-minds theory to have a decided advantage over
the single-mind theory because the many-minds theory allows an observer's
global mental state to be uniquely fixed by his physical state. As they
describe the deal, "We have purchased supervenience of the mental on the
physical at the cost of postulating an infinity of minds associated with each
sentient being" (Albert and Loewer 1988, p. 207). It is not quite right,
however, to say that an observer's global mental state supervenes on his
physical state. The mental state of each of the observer's minds is a random
function of his physical state and independent of the states of his other
minds. This means that the observer's global mental state almost always
evolves deterministically. Likewise, his global mental state almost always
supervenes on his physical states. This lack of strict supervenience does not
seem to be a very serious problem, but the type of mental supervenience
that the many minds theory provides is puzzling. If one wants mental
supervenience, one presumably wants the mental state that one is capable of
introspecting right now, the mental state that one has epistemic access to, to
supervene on one's physical state. I believe that I have a more-or-less
definite mental state characterized by a single set of more-or-less consistent
beliefs. But the many-minds theory tells me that I am associated with an
infinite set of minds that most likely have wildly contradictory beliefs and
whose mental states I cannot generally know. What comfort is it supposed to
give me that my global mental state supervenes on my physical state when I
don't even know what my global mental state is? This is made especially
puzzling by the fact that neither my physical state nor my global mental state
determine the state of the only mind I do know. In order to get an observer's
global mental state to supervene on his physical state to the extent that it
does, his global mental state is characterized by the measure of his minds
with each possible mental state, not by a description of which minds have
which mental states. This means that there are an infinite number of different
ways to assign what might be called local mental states to an observer's
minds that would all correspond to the observer having the same global
mental state. In other words, the global mental state associated with an
observer fails to determine the local mental state of any of his minds.

That means were all immortal- Removes the extinction

impact of the aff

Halpern 14 [Paul Halpern is an American Professor of Physics, and Fellow in the Humanities at
the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. Halpern received a Ph.D in theoretical physics, an M.A. in
physics and a B.A. in physics and mathematics. He was also the recipient of a Guggenheim
Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship, and an Athenaeum Society Literary Award. Halpern is a popular author of
science. Quantum Immortality, https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/quantum-immortality-
5a74caaa0f64#.l3huufkl2]

What about human survival? We are each a collection of particles, governed

on the deepest level by quantum rules. If each time a quantum transition took
place, our bodies and consciousness split, there would be copies that
experienced each possible result, including those that might determine our life
or death. Suppose in one case a particular set of quantum transitions resulted
in faulty cell division and ultimately a fatal form of cancer. For each of the
transitions, there would always be an alternative that did not lead to cancer.
Therefore, there would always be branches with survivors. Add in the
assumption that our conscious awareness would flow only to the living copies,
and we could survive any number of potentially hazardous events related to
quantum transitions.

Therefore neg is winning by presumption

Smelko 13 [Former debate competitor, current judge. Everything you need to know about
Policy Debate, Chicago Debate League, http://chicagodebateleague.org/wp-
content/uploads/2010/10/Debate-101.pdf]
In most every debate round, the negative team goes into the round armed
with the presumption that the status quo should be maintained until the
affirmative proves a prima facie case for change to the plan. A prima facie
case is one that establishes all of the stock issue elements required to move
the judge to vote for the affirmative team . . . that there is a significant problem [or some
compelling ADVANTAGES that would be generated by adopting the affirmative plan] (SIGNIFICANCE), that
the status quo is not solving and cannot solve the significant problem, [or is not generating or cannot
generate the substantial advantages] (INHERENCY), that the affirmative plan can solve or prevent the
significant problem, [or can generate or create the substantial advantages] (SOLVENCY), without creating
any disadvantages that would be worse than the problems being solved [or the advantages being created]
if the AFF proves that a significant problem exists,
through adoption of the plan. So,
but does not prove that the plan can solve the problem, then the NEG would
win because of the presumption that until the AFF proves a complete prima
facie case for change, the status quo is and should remain the best policy
alternative. Since the status quo is a very important part of the negative
teams pie going into the debate round, if by the end of the debate round the
status quo remains the best policy option, then the negative wins the debate
round on presumption, which the negative team possesses until the affirmative team overcomes
the negative teams presumption by establishing a prima facie case for change. Differently phrased, the
question in nearly every debate round for the judge to answer is whether or not the affirmative team has
proven in the debate round a prima facie case for change, and that the change should be made to the
affirmative plan. If the judge feels that any element of the affirmative teams prima facie case has not
been established in the debate round, then in a typical, stock issues debate model, presumption would
dictate that the judge should vote negative.
 2NC Serial Policy Failure
Supremacy of policy-making crowds out critical
questioning causes serial policy failure
Biswas 7 (Shampa, Professor of Politics Whitman College, Empire and
Global Public Intellectuals: Reading Edward Said as an International Relations
Theorist, Millennium, 36(1), p. 117-125)
The most serious threat to the intellectual vocation, he argues, is
professionalism and mounts a pointed attack on the proliferation of specializations and the cult of
expertise with their focus on relatively narrow areas of knowledge, technical formalism,
impersonal theories and methodologies, and most worrisome of all, their ability and
willingness to be seduced by power.17 Said mentions in this context the funding of
academic programmes and research which came out of the exigencies of the Cold War18, an area in which
there was considerable traffic of political scientists (largely trained as IR and comparative politics scholars)
with institutions of policy-making. Looking at various influential US academics as organic intellectuals
involved in a dialectical relationship with foreign policy-makers and examining the institutional
relationships at and among numerous think tanks and universities that create convergent perspectives and
interests, Christopher Clement has studied US intervention in the Third World both during and after the
This is not
Cold War made possible and justified through various forms of intellectual articulation.19
simply a matter of scholars working for the state, but indeed a larger question of intellectual
orientation. It is not uncommon for IR scholars to feel the need to formulate
their scholarly conclusions in terms of its relevance for global politics, where relevance is
measured entirely in terms of policy wisdom . Edward Saids searing indictment of US
intellectuals policy-experts and Middle East experts - in the context of the first Gulf War20 is certainly
even more resonant in the contemporary context preceding and following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The
space for a critical appraisal of the motivations and conduct of this war has been considerably diminished
ethical questions
by the expertise-framed national debate wherein certain kinds of
irreducible to formulaic for or against and costs and benefits
analysis can simply not be raised. In effect, what Said argues for, and IR scholars need to
pay particular heed to, is an understanding of intellectual relevance that is larger and more
worthwhile, that is about the posing of critical, historical, ethical and perhaps
unanswerable questions rather than the offering of recipes and solutions, that is
about politics (rather than techno-expertise) in the most fundamental and
important senses of the vocation.21

Aff harm and solvency claims are false. Advantages are

random factoids politically constructed to make the plan
appear to be a good idea. Solvency is a rigged game.
Dillon and Reid 2K (Michael, Professor of Politics University of
Lancaster, and Julian, Lecturer in International Relations Kings College,
Global Governance, Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency, Alternatives:
Global, Local, Political, January / March, 25(1))
More specifically, where there is a policy problematic there is expertise, and
where there is expertise there, too, a policy problematic will emerge. Such
problematics are detailed and elaborated in terms of discrete forms of
knowledge as well as interlocking policy domains. Policy domains reify the
problematization of life in certain ways by turning these epistemically and
politically contestable orderings of life into "problems" that require the
continuous attention of policy science and the continuous resolutions of
policymakers. Policy "actors" develop and compete on the basis of the
expertise that grows up around such problems or clusters of problems and
their client populations. Here, too, we may also discover what might be called
"epistemic entrepreneurs." Albeit the market for discourse is prescribed and
policed in ways that Foucault indicated, bidding to formulate novel
problematizations they seek to "sell" these, or otherwise have them officially
adopted. In principle, there is no limit to the ways in which the management
of population may be problematized. All aspects of human conduct, any
encounter with life, is problematizable. Any problematization is capable of
becoming a policy problem. Governmentality thereby creates a market for
policy, for science and for policy science, in which problematizations go
looking for policy sponsors while policy sponsors fiercely compete on behalf
of their favored problematizations. Reproblematization of problems is
constrained by the institutional and ideological investments surrounding
accepted "problems," and by the sheer difficulty of challenging the
inescapable ontological and epistemological assumptions that go into
their very formation. There is nothing so fiercely contested as an
epistemological or ontological assumption. And there is nothing so fiercely
ridiculed as the suggestion that the real problem with problematizations
exists precisely at the level of such assumptions. Such "paralysis of analysis"
is precisely what policymakers seek to avoid since they are compelled
constantly to respond to circumstances over which they ordinarily have in
fact both more and less control than they proclaim. What they do not have is
precisely the control that they want. Yet serial policy failure --the fate and
the fuel of all policy--compels them into a continuous search for the new
analysis that will extract them from the aporias in which they constantly find
themselves enmeshed.[ 35] Serial policy failure is no simple shortcoming that
science and policy--and policy science--will ultimately overcome. Serial policy
failure is rooted in the ontological and epistemological assumptions that
fashion the ways in which global governance encounters and problematizes
life as a process of emergence through fitness landscapes that constantly
adaptive and changing ensembles have continuously to negotiate. As a
particular kind of intervention into life, global governance promotes the very
changes and unintended outcomes that it then serially reproblematizes in
terms of policy failure. Thus, global liberal governance is not a linear problem-
solving process committed to the resolution of objective policy problems
simply by bringing better information and knowledge to bear upon them. A
nonlinear economy of power/knowledge, it deliberately installs socially
specific and radically inequitable distributions of wealth, opportunity, and
mortal danger both locally and globally through the very detailed ways in
which life is variously (policy) problematized by it.