Wickelgren,+Abe

I debated (policy) for four years in high school, for South Eugene High School in Eugene, OR and for a year at Harvard (NDT). But, all of this was close to 30 years ago. My daughter has now started debating, so I am just getting back into it. This has three relevant implications: (1) I’m not at typical parent/lay judge—I once knew what I was doing, and remember much of it, at least to some degree; (2) I’m rusty—I don’t (at least, for now) flow quite as fast as I use to, nor is my ear for spreading as good as it once was; (3) my debate knowledge is mostly from the 1980s—I know what a kritik is, but I’m not experienced with them, and there may be other terminology that has changed and I’m not aware of. I try to be (what we use to call) tabula rasa as much as I can be. We all have biases in the way we interpret arguments, but I will do my best to listen to any argument you make and evaluate it solely on the merits of your arguments and the responses even if I think it is crazy (or obviously correct). So, you should feel free to make any argument and should not think you can simply call an argument stupid and win on that (to take what I understand to be an extreme example today, I am open to RVI arguments on T, but also to the claim that making an RVI argument should be a VI against as well). While my objective is to be tabula rasa, I will say that I would prefer a policy focused debate to a kritik focused one. I will try not to let that influence my evaluation of the arguments as best I can, however. In some of the few recent debates I’ve seen, some kritiks (like cap) ended up looking (to me) very similar to some of the cps we ran in my day (like socialism or anarchy). That would constitute a policy debate in my book. Spreading—I have no bias against it (I was quite fast long ago). But since I am rusty, you want to make sure the argument gets on my flow. Remember not only am I a bit rusty, but I haven’t heard many of these cards or arguments before (or not for a long time), and that also makes it a little harder to flow. Some ways to make sure my flow has on it what you want on it:
 * Background**
 * General Judging Philosophy**
 * Tactical Considerations**
 * Be extra clear on the tag line and cite.
 * If there is particularly important language in a card, emphasize it for me.
 * Number all your arguments. That makes it really clear when a new argument that needs to flowed separately starts.
 * When you refer to your opponent’s argument, don’t just give me the name and date of their card, I might not have gotten it down. Refer to it by substance
 * Go a little slower on the analytics than on the cards. I can call for the card after the round, but not the analytic.

Evidence comparison—I’m very receptive to critiques of the sources, evidence in the card, or the interpretation of the card. This can often be a much faster way to defeat an argument than to read 5 more of your own cards. It is far from inconceivable that you could convince me that your one card (potentially even no cards, just analytics) are more compelling than their 5 or 10 cards.

Kritiks—If it is a more novel kritik (e.g., not cap) that might not be similar to anything that anyone ran 30 years ago, you will have to spend a little more time explaining it to me than someone who has been judging debates recently. I won’t know the jargon and won’t have heard the argument before. Make sure I understand it.

Explain to me why, despite all the cards and arguments your opponent read, your arguments should prevail. The more you can create a (convincing) story that takes into account what the opponent says and still suggests you should win, the better off you'll be. This is true for individual arguments and for the debate as a whole. For an individual argument, ways you might do this include (but are not limited to):
 * What makes a good debate for me**


 * Evidence quality comparison--some possible examples: (i) our evidence is from peer-reviewed journals or more respected scholars, theirs is from unreviewed blogs or unknown people; (ii) our evidence is based on well-done empirical studies or is historically validated, theirs is just unsupported opinion; (iii) our evidence is more recent and (this is the critical step) the conditions have changed in some important way since theirs was written; (iv) our evidence explains why its conclusions are true, theirs just asserts it.
 * Evidence relevance comparison: (i) Their cards don't really say what the tag says; (ii) The unhighlighed part of the card suggests the a somewhat different claim; (iii) Their cards are referring to a somewhat different situation or set of conditions; (iv) their cards don't consider some aspect of our plan or counterplan that undermines the argument.
 * Evidence aggregation: I just made this term up (I think). What it means to me is that you can tell a story that says even if their cards are right, you have an explanation for why you win this argument anyway because of some other factor that their cards don't properly take into account but that you show is very important. This could be a time frame argument, a different mechanism or actor deals with this issue argument, a probability argument.

For the whole debate, ways you might do this are:
 * We are winning argument X, this trumps every other argument because of Y.
 * The impacts on the arguments we are winning are bigger
 * Our extinction scenario happens first
 * We have many different extinction scenarios that are independent, even if each one is less likely than their one, the probability that none of them will occur is way smaller
 * Our impacts are supported by stronger arguments/better evidence than theirs, so you should view them as more plausible

The main point of all this is to say, feed me the explanation that you want me to give after the debate when I say why I voted the way I did. I'm going to have to give a good reason for why I voted for you despite the fact that your opponents made a number of good arguments. Don't make me come up with that myself because I might not aggregate the issues and evidence the way you want me to unless you explain to me how to do it in a sensible way in your favor.