Becker,+Melanie

Hello! I did LD in high school and am now a college freshman, so I’m pretty familiar with most current tech and terminology.

To make life easy, if you’re familiar with Mitchell Buehler’s paradigm, I’m extremely ideologically similar to him and you really won’t find many inconsistencies between us (though I am less well-versed in tech).

Here, have a bunch of particulars!


 * Most important things to do:**
 * 1) //WEIGH!//
 * 2) //Make it obvious to me why you are winning.// I will be much more inclined to vote for you if you give me a clear (or even better, multiple clear) route(s) to the ballot.
 * 3) //Extend.// You don’t get access to anything you don’t.
 * 4) //Explain thoroughly when you’re doing something complicated//. For instance:
 * If you’re reading a super esoteric philosophy / K position, please explain it in something I can easily identify as English.
 * If you’re doing something super sketchy that might be hard to see, make sure I can clearly see what you're doing so I can vote on it.

Defaults: I only default to Truth-Testing. I don’t assume that theory comes before K unless the theory is about the K itself, and even in these circumstances, the debater who reads the K can argue that their K should come before the theory indicting it anyway.

Speed: I can handle most speeds, so go ahead and spread; I'll yell “clear” and/or “slow” as many times as I need to. I would strongly appreciate it if you’d flash your case / put me on an email chain. If you do, I don't care how fast you go at all, but you should still be relatively clear. Also, please slow down on important stuff like the plan text, the standard text, the ROTB, theory interps, etc. If I don’t have what you’re reading in front of me, you starting at 70% speed and working your way up would be great.

Ks: I think super unconventional and insane Ks are **awesome** (though I’m not as familiar with many of them as I’d like to be), and I also get a kick out of really outlandish alts. I ultimately view LD as a purely intellectual activity, so all I really care about is whether you justify your arguments well, no matter how ridiculous and/or unimplementable they are. That said, more realistic Ks are completely fine as well, and the argument that K alts have to be implementable is one you can definitely make.

Phil: I //love// really deep philosophical debates. I’m decently familiar with most common philosophies, and would say that I’m most familiar with Kant.

I view skep as a perfectly valid argument, and I don’t see “moral skepticism lets us view atrocities as permissible” or anything of the like as a sufficient response to it. To summarize my reasoning, I’m going to quote Mitchell Buehler quoting Kris Wright: “"I think it worth noting here that I deeply dislike debaters to give mere blips or ad hominems as a "good enough reason" for me to disregard relatively-well developed arguments. The absurd claim that making an argument about moral skepticism should be disregarded because it is morally bad is a perfect example of begging the question and, therefore, is not a response at all. Given that this "strategy" must ask me to completely intervene, as it makes an impact to a (moral) standard that the skeptical argument substantively refutes, I will disregard this discursive objection entirely and give an RFD heavily focused on why the "strategy of moral outrage" against skepticism is super-duper shitty: **any argument with well developed warrants deserves to be taken seriously and responded to in kind. Anything less than that is intellectually (and in many cases ethically) objectionable.**””

Tricks: I think tricks are hilarious, and if you can justify a silly argument, then I will grant you that silly argument and even vote on it if you win that I should. This even stands for ridiculously short a prioris. I think saying intuitively asinine things and successfully defending them is actually really impressive and denotes a huge degree of talent as a debater.

I do ask that you explain what you’re doing well, though, because I’m not //too// experienced in the realm of tricks debate and might not grasp what you’re doing if it’s super technical and/or if you spend like 5 seconds on it.

Warning: I’m atrocious at not laughing, so don’t be surprised if you say something really silly and I start dying (I’ll do it silently).

LARP: If this is how you debate best, that’s fine. I’m not a huge fan of this style (I prefer to see you making your own arguments; not a bunch of other authors’), but that doesn’t mean I can’t judge it or will be inclined to vote against you for reading it. Whatever you do, //**please weigh**//.

Theory / T: If you have faith in yourself to tell me what standards / voters are most important and why you’re winning them, great; go for it. I can understand a theory debate as long as it’s organized and the main issues I should be evaluating are clear. However, If there’s no weighing done by either party and the theory debate gets really messy, as much as I hate to say it, I’m probably going to evaluate the round poorly. All I ask of you if you read theory are the following things:
 * Please slow down on the interpretations.
 * It would probably be helpful if you slowed down just a little when responding to theory entirely. This doesn’t apply if you’re just reading from a shell you’ve flashed / put on the email chain.
 * Be as thorough in your explanations/arguments as you feel you can without sacrificing more speech time than you’re comfortable with.

Being Offensive: I don’t care how offensive you or your arguments are, though I know that that opinion is controversial. If you win the warrants, you’ll win the argument. I believe that debate (particularly that centered around philosophy) should entail arguing about what is good, and presupposing that certain things are bad while doing so kind of kills that purpose in my eyes. The only time I will not tolerate an “I’m-going-to-hell-for-this” argument is if your opponent explicitly says that the topic triggers them and you read it anyway. I really, REALLY don’t want to evaluate a round in which a violated trigger warning becomes an issue, so **if you are in any way in doubt about whether your arguments could be traumatic for someone who hears them, please give a trigger warning beforehand.** Also, if something likely to come up given the topic triggers you (e.g. gun violence on a topic about guns), it would be great if you could make that clear before the round even if your opponent doesn’t ask.

That said, if both debaters agree or seem to assume that something is morally bad without either of them justifying it, I will definitely evaluate the round under that assumption.

I love snark/sarcasm, but I don’t love witnessing overt cruelty. There's a distinction between being a funny, perceptually dominant jerk and being an unnecessary jerk (e.g. If your opponent says something nice to you and you belittle them in response). I’m not going to vote you down if you’re the latter, but I will lower your speaker points if you’re excessive about it.

Organizational Stuff: I flow top-down rather than bothering to put arguments next to the ones they're responding to, so please be extra clear about argument interaction.

I don't really care about author names, so please don't just say "Extend [name]". It will also be better if you refer to your / your opponents' arguments with quick descriptions of their claims rather than names (this is less important if you flash your case because I can just refer back to the case to see who wrote what, but it would still be helpful nonetheless).

Speaks: I’ll average both debaters at a 28 and raise and lower from there.

To get good speaks:
 * **Lots and lots of weighing**
 * **Making it really obvious why you’re winning**
 * Ask for potential triggers / give trigger warnings
 * Finish your speech early without having more things you could've strategically said
 * Make me laugh
 * Make overwhelmingly good arguments
 * Successfully go lefter (side note: these arguments are //the best//)
 * Dominate in CX

To get bad speaks:
 * Give me no clear route to the ballot
 * Violate a trigger warning
 * Sit down early when you could’ve said more
 * Make overwhelmingly bad arguments
 * Waste time extending irrelevant stuff/pursuing a strat that does nothing for you
 * Contradict yourself