Foote,+Caleb

Coach for Santa Rosa. Parli throughout high school. APDA and a smidgen of BP in college, informally acquainted with NPDA, if rather thoroughly.

I am very skeptical of judging paradigms, as they encourage judges to differentiate themselves, causing them to conceptualize their own judging as the sum total of their biases, exacerbating the bad judging that theoretically necessitates their existence. Given that they exist and will be used though, it's in my self-interest and yours for me to attempt to craft my rounds in a way that pleases me.

Everything below is defeasible and I will never vote against you (at least consciously) for making me grumpy, but it certainly won’t help your speaks and you will be fighting an uphill battle.

I'm fine with speed, but not to the exclusion of your competitors.

"Silence is consent" - just don't say it. Use literally any other language. Left unjustified, you are only appealing to my intuitions, and my intuitions do not support it.

I tend to find things that surprise me enjoyable, particularly if highly detailed in a plausible way.

To the degree to which intervention is necessary (because you probably won’t make it to first principles in 7 minutes), I will attempt to do so based on the prevalence and strength on those views among my peers, such that the most fundamental claims have the greatest presumption in their favor. The scale, if very roughly: The higher up the list your arguments end up relying on for your warrants, the better justified they are and the less I need to intervene to give you the ballot.
 * Modus ponens and the existence of logic (Vote against things that are bad for debate. X is bad for debate. Vote against X)
 * The existence of things outside my mind
 * Basic observational phenomena (a=vt+xt^2)
 * Social phenomena (people tend to be self-interested)
 * Moral intuitions (killing bad)
 * General knowledge
 * Specific knowledge

Don’t care if or how you run theory. Any way you choose to make any coherent argument for your side I will default towards accepting.

caleb_foote@brown.edu for any questions.