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Defining Winning Through Philosophizing A Rap Battle

Updated: Jul 14

defining winning -- a microphone.

In YouTube there is a parody-esque historic rap battle between two sides: The Western side and the Eastern side. The Western side is composed of Socrates, Nietzsche and Voltaire; The Eastern side -- of Confucius, Sun Tzu and Laozi.


Their "Rap Battle" is defined by "dissing" the opposite side, AKA, insulting them until there is no retaliation from said team. Rap battles are won by the side who disses the other side the most, arguably, it's a subjective thing, decided by the audience's favour. Do you see the pun in Rap? It is about REPutation.



In the video, a state of anarchy was created, where the members of each teams, turned against themselves, thus creating their own independent sub-factions within the major-factions. The video is concluded by the question: "What is winning?"


In this short article, I will attempt to solve this rap battle by defining winning:


Winning is defined by either one's earn, other's defeat, or both. One can win a solitaire game without the need of the opponent being defeated. However, when it comes to conflict of at least 2 sides, then defeat of either, might decide the triumph of the other.

In this case, both sides defeated by themselves. Imagine a soccer game with the teams kicking the ball to their own net, several times. Utter stupidity, but existent nonetheless.

Therefore, in relation to the rules of soccer, basketball and so on, the team which defeated itself the least, is the ONE who won.


Simply count how many disses the self-defeating sides inflicted upon themselves, and the side which landed upon itself, the least amount of disses, is the one, who won.


Winning against an opponent is a matter of numbers going either up or down. In fighting video games, the one who won is often the one whose health or stamina prevails against the same counterpart of the opposite side. If one side reaches 0 HP/Stamina, then the other side wins. If one has more health than the other, and the match is determined by the reduction of time, then one side may win even without the other side's HP reaching 0. If both sides reach 0 HP at the same time, both lose and win at the same time; it's called a tie.


In this case, if the self-defeating factions defeat one another with an equal amount of "disses", then none of them win, as they reach an equal ground. I lack the power to count each diss myself.


And that, my readers, is how winning is arguably, properly defined.


Here is the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N_RO-jL-90

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Tomasio A. Rubinshtein, Philosocom's Founder & Writer

I am a philosopher, author of several books in 2 languages, and Quora's Top Writer of the year 2018. I'm also a semi-hermit who has decided to dedicate my life to writing and sharing my articles across the globe to help others and combat shallowness. More information about me can be found here.

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