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Debate Info

3
3
Intelligence all the way Happiness please.
Debate Score:6
Arguments:3
Total Votes:6
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 Intelligence all the way (2)
 
 Happiness please. (1)

Debate Creator

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Would you rather....

Would you rather be a great deal above average intelligence and be miserable or would you rather be below average intelligence and blissfully happy?
Just a fun debate to get through all of the political and religious debates.  Also....I'm curious.  To be clear, below average intelligence is still having the ability to function normally.

Intelligence all the way

Side Score: 3
VS.

Happiness please.

Side Score: 3
2 points

I believe it was Mill who wrote, "Better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

Although being unintelligent is obviously not the same as being a farm animal, you would lose a lot of your capacity for high concept thought.

It seems to almost demean your value as a human being to select something as base as your own pleasure and desires, and sacrificing that which makes you human.

Almost all of my hobbies and interests require an average or above-average level of thought or intelligence. I have a lot of creative hobbies, I do a form of drama which involves the ability to improvise, and I really pride myself on being able to come up with spur-of-the-moment ideas. If I were to lose my intelligence, I would lose everything that makes me, me.

(Before people call me boastful, I believe myself to be creatively, linguistically and relatively philosophically intelligent, and I have a good memory, but I'm below average in social intelligence, common sense and capacity for mathematics, problem-solving or understanding and being able to follow instructions. There are many different sorts of intelligence).

There is also the idea that my mental health could one day be improved (how miserable is miserable, by the way?), or I could use my intelligence to come up with solutions to make myself happier. Failing that, I could use it to make other people happier as my happiness is not so important in the grand scheme of the world. If I was always happy and unintelligent, I would never get my intelligence back and I would never have much cause to want to better myself.

So for the sake of my humanity, I would have to pick intelligence. I would almost certainly hate myself for it, but I believe it is the better of the two options.

Side: Intelligence all the way
1 point

You could do a great deal more with intelligence than you can with happiness, which includes improving the lives of other people. Of course you would need funding, but if you were a genius you could develop a product and sell that, then use the money for your other projects.

If you really wanted to, you could work with NASA and help explore the universe, which would also be pretty amazing.

A lot of successful people are miserable, but in the process they've improved the lives of other people and the state of their world. I think I'd want to be a part of that.

(Of course intelligence does not automatically mean success, but it paves the road to it. If you aren't already wealthy you would need intelligence and wit to take you there.)

Side: Intelligence all the way

Below average intelligence. Of course, being an intelligent troll has its fun points.

Side: Happiness please.