A world without deception is better than a world with deception

Crime Perhaps ‘repeat offenders’ is the wrong term. I am attempting to refer to the people who are not caught, and go on later to commit other crimes. For instance, the murderer who is not caught and later kills another, or a thief who evades capture several times before being caught. My opponent raises a valid objection: If every single deviation from what was considered the social norm was advertised, it would be highly impractical. However, it is not merely deviating from the social norm. By going about our business as upstanding citizens who do not steal, defraud others, and kill, we create the belief that we are not the sort of person who does that. I admit that this is a tenuous argument, and therefore I shall provide another path. The police could simply state, in various mediums, that anyone who is not coming forward to admit to a given crime is agreeing that they did not do it, and do not know who did it. The ability to make this sort of statement is restricted solely to the police, and may not be used without a court warrant. Any other entity making such statements has their statements considered non-binding. Refusing to pay attention to such non-binding statements is no more deception than not paying attention to someone saying that all people who do not raise their hands are reptoid aliens. The reason the police can use such powers is that every citizen must sign a statement saying that they agree that such statements that the police make are binding. If they do not sign, they do not get to vote. It is true that an arrest (even of a high ranking member) will not necessarily cause a crime family to collapse. However, organized crime also depends on low(er)-level criminals. These lower-level criminals could more easily be apprehended and neutralized in a society without deception. It’s one thing for the head of a crime family to be arrested and sit in jail while business goes on as normal. It’s another to arrest the head of a crime family, take them in, and then run down possible suspects until you’ve uprooted the entire crime family. Fraud If bottled water was more convenient than tap water, most people would buy a water bottle, one water bottle, and make sure it was filled at all times. If it starts to get too old, use it to water houseplants. Or drink it before it gets too old instead of using water from the tap. And if you can remember to carry around bottled water you can carry around a full water bottle. For most functions, that is sufficient. In the relatively few where it is not, it would be more effective to take a larger container of water, such as one of those large orange cooler things. Water bottles are reusable, often actually hold more than bottled water, and are overall cheaper than using bottled water whenever you could simply fill up a water bottle with tap water in advance. The name ‘Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water’ suggests that the water is: From a spring From Arrowhead Mountain[1] The latter is, obviously, not true; the company admits as much on their website[2]. Apparently the former is not always true either; Wikipedia says that the cap on the 5-gallon EcoSense bottles says that it is from a municipal water supply[3]. A more concrete example is that "Alaska Premium Glacier Drinking Water: Pure Glacier Water from the Last Unpolluted Frontier" actually came from a public water system in Juneau. In 2003, Poland Spring water, which is the top-selling bottled water in America as of 2006[4], was charged with false advertising, since it did not come from Poland Spring (which had been closed) but instead came from places like[5]: along a busy highway used by hundreds of vehicles a former trash and refuse dump an illegal deposal site where human sewage was used as a fertilizer While Poland Spring denies these allegations, the bottled-water industry is largely self-regulated[6], so we don't know. Even if they are telling the truth, it would be infinitely easier if they couldn't deceive in the first place. Clean coal is used as an advertising gimmick to get support for the concept. And my opponent does not take issue with my claim that it is not clean. If I take a rug that is filthy and brush some of the dust off while leaving mud, it is not clean, even though it is cleaner. Corruption That is relatively little problem, as North Korea would not exist under its present form. Dictators usually require some sort of excuse to enact a totalitarian regime. That excuse is usually deception: For instance, Hitler’s blaming anything and everything on the Jews, the North Korean government talking about a People’s Revolution and such things, etc. If deception didn’t exist, dictators wouldn’t be able to do their whole ‘raise a cult of personality, other a section of the populace and persecute them, worship the revolution and such’ shtick. Without deception, the Western world is no significant threat, the people are starving, and the only things those soldiers are really fighting for is the right to have a dictator in charge whose policies are idiotic and harmful to the country. And, most importantly, they know that. End of government. Moreover, asking if something funky was up wouldn’t necessarily be a giveaway. What would stop an official from saying, “Yes—and if I tell you, we’re all in big trouble. So don’t bother asking what it is for the next week or so; you’ll find out then, and you will get the scoop and exclusive interview. Next question?” What part of that statement is deception? The official is being perfectly honest about everything. Critical Thinking Just because deception doesn’t exist doesn’t mean critical thinking is useless. For instance, even if no one in the discussion surrounding global warming, evolution, predator control, et cetera, could lie or deceive, critical thinking would still be useful because it isn’t deception if you actually believe it (and aren’t lying to yourself—but self-deception doesn’t necessarily fall under a more generalized category of deception). I don’t think that every public figure who doesn’t believe in global warming or evolution, or has views on predator control that I disagree with, is engaging in self-deception, or is simply lying. Some of them actually believe what they say, with their entire heart and soul. Critical thinking would be absolutely necessary to sort through the evidence surrounding such controversies and to arrive at the correct conclusion. Better and Stronger Relationships I suppose I am now in the interest position of simultaneously having argued that omission can be a form of deception (round two) and now arguing that it is not in this case. In any event, while it’s true that omission can be a form of deception, that doesn’t mean it always is. Omission, I argue, is only a form of deception when it is an attempt to lead someone to believe something that is not true. For instance, when criminals who haven’t been caught go around their business as if nothing were the matter, it is sometimes (if not usually) to make people think that everything is normal and nothing is the matter. It isn’t deception when you just aren’t saying something to be polite, or because no one asked. If I go outside and don’t say “The sky is blue,” is that deception (we’ll overlook days when it’s overcast)? If omission is always deception, it is. So Olga would have to ask. In which case the proper response in a world without deception would be to say, “Yes, the pimples are unattractive, but they will go away in time, and [insert something complimentary here].” And maybe in a world without deception people wouldn’t ask questions like that, or prize honest talk. http://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.arrowheadwater.com... http://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.economist.com... http://www.wwdmag.com... http://www.organicconsumers.org...