Taylor,+Jonathan

First things first, the preceding utilizer of this page on the JudgePhilosophies wiki (who, of course, shares my name word-for-word) has permanently retired from the activity and has __personally given me permission to use this page to post my philosophy.__ If your judge is named "Jonathan Taylor," then I'm your guy. Not the other guy. At least, not anymore.

Short version:

Read a K, read util, read some crafty and strategic framing issues. Don’t read **dense** philosophy, bad theory (I’m basically doing reasonability as opposed to competing interps no matter what, so it’s your loss if you read theory sans actual abuse), or things that are just bad in general. If a shell is unreasonable, then I don’t vote on it, but if you want me to vote for you because of it, then win offense on the shell because I probably am not going to hand out an RVI unless the shell(s) are egregiously evil. Speaking of egregiously evil things that probably warrant losses, tricks, RVIs, skep, permissibility, etc… are in this category. Whatever you do, **go slow**er than you would for most judges. Quality over quantity, ten times out of ten.

Pref shortcuts:

Topic-Specific K/Util: 1-2 T/LARP: 2-4 Generic K/Creative **original** theory: 3-4 Tricks/Philosophy: 4-Strike Performance: 5-Strike Frivolous Theory: Strike



Long version:

I can handle some speed, but I **will not be able to comprehend you** if you spread flat-out. **Keep it at or below 65% of your top speed**. Email or flash me a speech doc if you’re unwilling or unable to adapt, or if you just want a safeguard. Speak at a conversational pace for author names and tags and you should be OK, but this does not preclude you from having to look at me from time to time to pick up on my facial expressions. If I’m glaring and having a difficult time flowing, you’re either spewing egregious bullshit or you’re spewing regular bullshit at too fast a pace. I say “clear” and “slower” as many times as you need, especially because my thresholds are much stricter than those of other judges, but I reserve the right to dock your speaker points for not adapting to me after the first couple of exclamations. Debate is a performance activity, and it thus stands to reason that your performance ought to be accessible to those watching/judging it. Thus, a good debater ought to adapt to me and not make outlandish requests that I accommodate to them. I’m not a stick in the mud on very many issues at all, but that doesn’t change the fact that the debaters who win are the debaters who will read this whole paradigm and tailor their speeches to maximize their chances of playing to my strengths as a judge.

Before you go in front of me, you ought to know that I’m different than most judges on an ideological level. In the debate community, there is an abundance of people with Bernie Sanders laptop stickers and various other bits of liberal propaganda. I am not one of these people. I am a libertarian, which means that I reject Donald Trump, the war on drugs, the military-industrial complex, and various other societal tumors. However, it also means that I don’t believe that Capitalism is bad, and I don’t think that Barack Obama was a particularly good president. Also, I **can** stomach Reagan because I generally approve of his tax and business policies. I won’t factor my beliefs into the decision I make, but do remember that I do have implicit biases. The day I vote against a cap K because of my preexisting beliefs will be the day that I retire from debate permanently, but if you have the choice between critiquing capitalism and critiquing neoliberalism, why not go with the latter? It’ll make me happier, and may have a subconscious effect on the outcome of the round.

On theory, I default to reasonability and require an **extraordinarily good** reason to go with competing interps, which is a paradigm ofadjudication that has pretty much destroyed substantive debate in LD and policy. Don’t try to convince me otherwise unless you have the strongest arguments in the history of the world. Not those dumb “no bright-line” or “requires intervention” arguments. Refer to Jen Melin’s page if you still have questions. I feel like the clash of civilizations between reasonability and competing interps comes down to a “race to the top” versus a “race to the bottom.” I’d rather be a bottom dweller because I like lobster and because at least there is a bottom, as opposed to the sky being the limit. There are infinite possible interpretations–there’s a rock bottom but no ceiling. And really, what are the odds we ever even see the rock bottom? At the very worst, reasonability is a “slow and gentle descent to the bottom that won’t be completed until everyone alive when I debated is dead.” “Race” kinda overdoes it. The fact that I won’t really listen to competing interps doesn’t automatically destroy debate. Any claim that it does is just a glorified strawman argument.

Theory is a thought experiment that requires that debaters consider the pedagogical potential of debate and how it should be attained, and thus I do believe that potential abuse arguments hold a bit of water, though I’m more easily persuaded to vote on abuse that I have witnessed in the round myself. Topicality is theory, ten times out of ten. The only thing that differentiates it from other theory arguments is that I a) need evidence to evaluate it and that I b) can be persuaded to go with competing interps on TOPICALITY ONLY. Paragraph theory is fine, even preferable, but go slow. I view theory as a reason to drop the debater but won’t adhere to this if you persuade me to drop the argument instead. I believe that all neg interps are, at some level, counter-interps because they contest a practice (and, thus, an implied interpretation that that practice is OK) from the AC. This, however, does not mean that I evaluate 1N theory any differently than I do violated spikes from the AC or shells in the 1AR. I rarely see reasons to give RVIs: If you obliterate your opponent’s standards and turn the shell twelve ways from Sunday, then I can just vote for you without needing an RVI. Likewise, if your opponent beat you on the theory flow, I won’t vote for you whether or not you read an RVI. Just win on the flow and you can win the round (unless you’re the one that read an unreasonable shell). Don’t waste valuable 1AR time going for an irrelevant argument. Because I-Meets take so little time, I’d very much prefer to not give RVIs for these, either. I won’t vote off of interpretations that have an unsatisfactorily contested I-Meet attached to them–that’s terminal defense and will, for all intents and purposes, make me ignore the theory flow if won. I’m also more than willing to gut-check: Nothing makes me happier than watching a debater hear the stupidest, most frivolous theory read in the 1N and then deal with it in the 1AR, and then before going onto the next off, say “…and even if you buy none of what I just said, gut-check. This is fucking stupid.” That’s a good strategy especially if you see me rubbing my forehead in disgust when the theory is initiated. I rarely have a problem intervening on things that directly involve me (I’m the person who’s supposed to be voting for the shell that maximizes the educational potential of the round, so I certainly don’t see why I have to exist in a vacuum relative to the debaters themselves), so I’ll gut-check if asked and subsequently not convinced that gut-checking is bad.

Speaking of irrelevant arguments, reading “fairness and education” voters is stupid. I think that debate is a war, and that any competitive advantage that you can gain, regardless of whether or not it’s “reciprocal” or “predictable,” is fair game. I also happen to think that debate is going to be educational whether or not James from Akron, Ohio reads a NIB. Thus, be creative! I’ll buy that “clash” and “structural access to the round” are independent voting issues. Don’t just read me your generic voters section: Creative theory voters is an easy path to high speaks and to stumping your opponent**. I don’t like hearing theory more than I like hearing substance, but if you debate it well and interestingly, then I won’t exactly steam from the ears and *might* walk out of the round happy.**

I’ll vote on kritiks and probably would most like to see a good kiritikal debate that doesn’t devolve into garbage theory. I know most major kritikal arguments pretty well, but you still have to explain the bejeezus out of them, lest I give your opponent a **huge** amount of leeway. If you can’t give a clear explanation of your links in CX, you get the lowest speaker points that I can possibly give out. If you’re trying to weigh a plan against a K or vice versa, then you’re doing something wrong. I think that kicking the alternative in the 2N and going for the linear disad is an educationally vapid course of action, but I guess I’ll vote on it if I can’t justify voting anywhere else. Same goes for turning the alt in to a floating PIC and all of those other stupid K debater tactics. If you want to read twelve different offs with twelve different alts, that’s cool, but if you read more than one framing mechanism (value criterion, role of the ballot/judge, etc…), I’ll do to you what plastic surgery and horrible ageing did to the lower half of Joan Van Ark’s face.

I don’t understand the word “trick.” There are arguments, and then there are sequences of words that are not arguments. I vote off of arguments. A disad with uniqueness or a counterplan with (or without…maybe, I don’t know…) competition is an argument. Good weighing evolves into argumentation. “Drop them for not responding to my third contingent framing standard” is not an argument, it’s a request. And I don’t like requests. A “trick” is only a “trick” insofar as it’s not actually a coherent argument. And for some reason, people are surprised when I refuse to vote on them.

Framework is the most important thing in the round. A strategic role of the ballot can prelude theory/T, can neutralize six minutes of the AC, and can give a-priori reasons to affirm or to negate. I don’t like dense philosophy **at all**, and because I only vote off of things I understand, I’ll tend to not vote on a framework that is composed of three minutes of blippy and incoherent analytics. On the other hand, I **love** creative roles of the ballot. “The role of the ballot is to induce doubt” is a fun one that I’ve seen. “The role of the judge is to reject capitalism” is not.

You can run theory or kritiks against things that make you uncomfortable. Fundamentally, that’s a huge reason as to why these argumentative strategies even exist. However, I won’t immediately drop someone for engaging in offensive behavior if it offends you, or even if it offends me. That said, I really never get offended. By anything. If I get offended, then I consider it a failure on my part to consider the ideas of others. If their ideas are just wrong (e.g., if they say “sexism doesn’t exist” or “racism isn’t worth addressing”), objecting to them without making an argument and substantively proving them wrong is a bad course of action. I’m better than that, and you should be, as well. Let’s face it: If you cannot offer a compelling reason as to why racism might be bad, you deserve to lose. Refer to Cayman Giordano’s paradigm for the exact one-liner that he uses to sum up his thoughts. It’s something like “I’m offended by bad responses to immoral positions, too.” I don’t know it word-for-word.

Every card needs to have an author name or source title in addition to the year of publication. If you’re one of those debaters who reads a tagline and then just reads the name but no year, strike me. I’m absolutely serious. I will never vote on an argument that contains a card that doesn’t have a name and a year. Having MLA or APA citations on the speech doc automatically equates to higher speaker points. I’m going to call for cases after the round (most of the time, at least) and I **will** pay very close attention to evidence lest something egregiously sketchy be voted off of. The purposeful misrepresentation of evidence will get you zero speaker points, and I’ll be **very** receptive to theory/K arguments as to why you should lose in addition to getting the aforementioned zero.

I think that arguments about the authors being “unqualified” are stupid. They’re necessarily ad hominem arguments. If someone is an absolute hack or crackpot, then you should be able to substantively refute their arguments. If you say “prefer my evidence because the guy has a Nobel Prize,” then I guess I can live with that, but saying “disregard this card because it was written by a fellow at the Cato Institute” is fucking dumb unless it’s buttressed by an actual argument as to why everyone at the Cato institute is wrong on everything. An actual argument that says that, of course, doesn’t exist.

I don’t personally believe that disclosure on the wiki or pre-round sharing is all that great for debate. I was the captain of a two-man LD squad for my high school career, and disclosing never did anything other than disproportionately hurt us and allow the larger schools to out-prep us. If there’s any way around it at all, I won’t vote off of disclosure theory.

I also happen to be among a minority of judges that happen to believe that inherency is a dumb stock issue. I think that if the affirmative argues for the continuance or the furthering of something that already exists in the status quo, then that’s fine. An aff plan-text that says “the USFG ought to continue doing exactly what it’s doing right now” is obviously inherent, but I don’t see, nor have I ever seen, any reason as to why the impacts and benefits of the plan ought to be disregarded. If you must go for an inherency because you feel that it’s your only way to win, do me a favor and at least try to articulate it as a theory/T/framework issue so that way I don’t feel like shit for voting off of it.

If you argue skep on a regular basis or even have a skepticism NC on your computer, strike me now. I don’t think that I have ever been confronted with, have heard of, or have dreamt up a way in which a cognizant human being could negate on a skep argument. First off, it’s defense. I don’t vote on defense. The only way defense factors into my decision is if it mitigates an argument enough for me to not consider it or if it forces me to take an argument with a big enough grain of salt for to be deemed it outweighed by another argument. Insofar as there’s a risk of skep being false (there’s a huge risk, and, for the good of humanity, we ought to consider this risk huge enough to disregard skep altogether), then there’s a risk of the opposing argument being true. Also, if there’s no such thing as an obligation, then why do I have an obligation to vote for you? Can’t I drop you, just for shits and giggles? I certainly intend to.

In summary, read and do whatever you want, but just make it good. Make it relevant to both the topic and to the general humanity of all in the room with you. Be fun and creative, and if you quote/card either Bill Maher or George Carlin, then I’ll boost your speaks. I’ll vote on pretty much anything (except competing interps), but I’m more likely to do so if I’m happy about it.