Miller,+James


 * NOTE**: If you are reading this via iDebate on your smart phone, please remember that the app doesn't always have the most current update of this site. Then again, I wouldn't say my philosophy has been substantially altered, either. Evolved, yes, but not transformed.

Type of debate: Lincoln-Douglas, but I can judge Public Forum if needed.

School affiliation: duPont Manual High School, a public magnet school in Louisville, Kentucky.

Number of rounds judged: Probably 320 to date (September 2011)

Number of years judging: Five.

Paradigm:

There is no such thing as fully objective or “blank slate” judges; there are simply judges who are open about their biases and judges who conceal (or worse, are unaware of) their biases.

Therefore, to understand me and adapt to me as a judge, you need to know that, although I try to be fair and open-minded, I still have my biases:
 * I prefer conversational speed to spreading. Fast conversational speed is OK.
 * I prefer debaters to attempt to persuade me. Failing that, I prefer for debaters to pretend like they are trying to persuade me. This means making eye contact with me and doing your best to not sound like some kind of socially awkward robot. The preceding advice applies to you only if you actually care about speaker points and has nothing to do with whether or not you actually win the round.
 * I prefer the value-value criterion structure of LD debate to policy-style alternatives. As Chris Vincent wrote, "I am old school when it comes to this. I believe the affirmative has the burden to prove the resolution true. The negative has the burden to prove the resolution false. I don't believe the affirmative is responsible for defending a plan of action. If you want to do that you should try policy debate."
 * I prefer to determine the winner of a round based upon whose arguments are more likely to be true.
 * I prefer to judge a round based on the strengths and weaknesses of each case rather than on technicalities.
 * I am suspicious of authority, which means I prefer logic and factual evidence to arguments from authority (e.g. “Hypothetical complex event X will happen under hypothetical complex conditions Y & Z because Dr. So-and-so says it will”). History is filled with countless examples of very learned people being very, very wrong about the world and the future; just because the author of your evidence has a Ph.D or prestigious employer doesn’t mean that they are automatically correct. The Vatican was wrong about geocentrism; Lamarck was wrong about heritability of acquired characteristics; Linus Pauling was wrong about Vitamin C; the neo-conservatives were wrong about Iraq; [|Dr. Scott Reuben] made up the data in [|his painkiller studies], and so on.
 * Because I am suspicious of arguments from authority, I am also suspicious of slippery slope arguments (also known as policy-style OMG HUMAN EXTINCTION!!!! impacts).
 * Although I will not insert myself into the round, a debater has to do very little to get me to disregard arguments from authority and slippery slope fallacies. However, repeatedly yelling that your opponent's well-argued, thoroughly-researched AC is a slippery slope fallacy is not enough. :)
 * I prefer topical arguments to tangential ones, which means I prefer to judge rounds within the innermost sphere of debate (see below). I will listen to arguments in the outer spheres and I may even vote on them, but — all else being equal — when faced with a focused topical argument versus a distant catch-all kritik that is run without regard to the topic, I prefer the former to the latter.

If you are reading this on the iDebate app, here's a link to the above image : http://bit.ly/sLvUsi

It's important for you to remember some of my most relevant limitations and habits:
 * I flow on my computer but not as fast as you would like. If you're going so fast that I can't flow your arguments correctly, then I won't be able to vote on them. I'll say "clear" if you're going too fast, but in my experience, debaters only slow down for less than a minute and then just speed up again.
 * I always flow arguments but I don't always flow card sources. When rebutting or crystallizing, you're much better off referring to the actual arguments on the flow instead of "Bundy 78" or "Chikatilo 88."
 * I am not the world’s smartest person, which means that I will not understand extremely sophisticated philosophical arguments. You will need to explain them to me carefully and clearly (beyond just repeating your taglines) if you want me to vote on them.

Finally, it's important to remember that I always vote affirmative. Here's why: http://bit.ly/mQK9wR

Last updated: November 2011.

BONUS: Take a look at some of my ballotsfrom the Harvard tournament: http://imgur.com/a/FKEaJ