Dolinger,+Nicholas

Welcome to the world of Nicholas James Dolinger, young debaters. I did four years of high school Lincoln-Douglas, during which time I qualified for both CFL and SDA national tournaments and made it to the tenth round in the latter. I am currently debating in APDA for NYU. I'm from a traditional circuit and thus am most experienced with framework debate, but I attended and succeeded in many national circuit tournaments and am perfectly able to follow progressive strategies. Am I a tab ras judge? I guess, but I have my idiosyncrasies, which I have attempted to explain in detail on this page. I wrote this paradigm mostly with LD in mind, but it's basically applicable to all debate events. I presume truth-testing unless you should decide to argue otherwise.

Etiquette: For me, the gold standard for debate is very aggressive but sort of polite. I would like to see debate become less hostile, but it can be pretty amusing to be ridiculously combative and mean when you hit your good friends, so I really don't care.

Judge handshake: Why would you do that? Why? Please stop. Please. Stop.

Kritiks: I am a fan. I have a very high threshold for weirdness: If you believe you can win via Nietzsche, timecube, Mao k, or Gregorian calendar, you might just make my day. Your more garden variety kritiks are ok too, but be warned that I will not take for granted any interpretation of right and wrong, so insofar as you make morally normative statements, be prepared to provide an a priori argument for why I should believe them, or at the very least explain why I shouldn't value rationalism or ethical abstractions.

Literature: I usually don't know the topic lit. By all means, please go in-depth with the cards you use, but in all likelihood I don't know what the hell they are unless you tell me. If I ask to see your cards immediately after the round, it's because I know next to nothing about the topic lit that people have been running as of late.

Philosophy: I love the shit out of philosophy! Please run it, but don't BS it, as I am rather knowledgeable. Having said that, I love metaethics. I wish more debates, especially on the traditional circuit, had a sounder foundation in metaethics, and I am vastly preferential to a framework with strong a priori justifications. However, I do not want to hear about the difference between justice and morality! Jesus Christ, just say they’re the same damn thing. Furthermore, I tend to find arguments distinguishing governmental obligations from moral obligations very, very unconvincing (if the two are in conflict, it's very difficult for me to weigh government duty over moral duty). I love epistemic modesty vs. confidence. I probably default closer to epistemic confidence, but I can be persuaded otherwise. Skep is a hard sell. You will have to blow my mind to persuade me to vote for you on skep, since I would //assume// that skep makes the vote arbitrary...

Speaker points: I like rhetoric. This doesn't mean I want to see lay LD rounds in which every debater talks with condescending monotony like goddamn William Jennings Bryan. You can be fast and smart without sacrificing the beautiful rhetorical flourishes that make debate fun. Humor and entertainment goes a long way toward achieving this end. I'm not a dick, so I probably won't give you low speaks just to make myself feel or whatever. I will be very, very generous in speaks if you run arguments I like (weird kritiks and metaethics), even if you lose the round.

Speed: Wonderful! Please flash and enunciate, but good spreading is a marvelous thing. I prefer a faster and more technical debate to the condescending monotony of a slow and pandering oration. Having said that, I think it's a little distasteful to spread 666 wpm against a ninth-grader who just learned what the social contract is, but if that makes you feel cool, whatever man.

Topicality: Not my favorite, but I presume that it is a voter as a procedural rule unless this assumption is challenged on the flow. I really like non-topical affs or T traps, which I view as a necessary reaction to the ubiquity of frivolous T in debate, but of course you must go hard on the ATs if someone challenges you on this.

Theory: My feelings about theory are complicated. I find it fascinating as an entity but oppressive and dull as a way to win the round. I am especially hostile to predictability theory, because I like really esoteric and specialized debate. On the other hand, I think Aff can be very generous with RVIs, because this serves as a check on frivolous theory and can also be a lot of fun.