Tarsney,+Christian

//I've written up a very long paradigm, which for ease of editing I'm keeping in a google doc, viewable at the link below. The full paradigm, as I say, is long, likely to get longer, so it's probably not worth anyone's time to read the whole thing. The purpose of writing/posting it is to (a) commit myself on certain recurring paradigmatic issues so that I'm not figuring them out// ad hoc //after every round, and (b) to provide at least a limited reference if you're about to debate in front of me and want to know whether a particular argument or strategy is a good idea. But if you've just got thirty seconds, the following should cover the basics.//

I’ll listen to most things. In terms of what I’d prefer to see (and what will get you good speaks), my order of preference (from most preferred to least preferred) looks something like: (1) philosophical debate focused on normative framework, (2) empirical debate with lots of weighing and evidence comparison, (3) just plain stock debate, (t4) "critical" debate, (t4) "tricks" debate, and (6) theory debate.
 * The Short Version:**

There’s a seventh class of arguments, which could broadly be described as “wacky” (e.g. skepticism, divine command theory, Omega Point...) towards which I’m more ambiguously disposed: if you really, truly understand the argument (meaning, at minimum, you’ve read a few papers or a book), and especially if it’s your own original position as opposed to someone else’s recycled crap from five years ago, then I’ll probably enjoy judging it. If it’s someone else’s position and you don’t really get it, I’ll be much less happy.

Wrt speed: I have higher-than-average standards for clarity/comprehensibility of arguments, and I'm also worse than average at parsing/flowing high speed, so I'll likely yell "clear" sooner than a lot of judges. You get a couple of these before I give up -- the first "clear" should provoke a permanent rather than a momentary improvement, and it's on you to decide whether you need to go slower to achieve that. It's very easy, as a judge, to slip into voting on arguments that you didn't really understand the first time around in order to avoid admitting that you didn't understand them, but I'm very committed to resisting that temptation, so be warned: If your arguments are incomprehensible (either because you're unclear, or because your arguments are just incomprehensible), I won't vote on them, period. I'll rarely call arguments after the round except in the case of evidence disputes and the like (or if I'm just idly curious about something) because, in my view, what I heard you say is what should determine the outcome of the round. If you're the sort of debater who gets “clear” yelled at you a lot, you should probably slow down to 85 percent of your max in front of me from the outset (and even if you're not that sort of debater, I probably wouldn't mind it).

Wrt the issue of argument cogency: Many judges, in my view, allow debaters to get away with word salad. Even if you're perfectly clear, if what's on my flow is something like "personal identity key to rights because ???", it means you've failed to communicate an argument to me. If I can't reconstruct an argument from what you said in your speech -- let alone if I call the case and //still// can't figure out what the argument was supposed to be, which often happens to me when I'm reading debaters' cases -- I treat that as a non-argument and won't vote on it. Some debaters and judges seem to regard even minimal intelligibility requirements as intervention, but I don't.

Wrt "critical" debate: It's not that I'm opposed to criticizing things (quite the contrary), I just think that //most// arguments that get labelled as "critical" in debate tend to be substantively pretty weak. For instance, if the basic claim is empirical, you need empirical evidence. So if you say something like "Late capitalism converts all the things to homo sacer" or "X is the root cause of Y" then you should have, like, a study or something. To get some sense of the view I subscribe to in this domain, see here or here.

Incidentally, though I'll evaluate them, I think that "cap bad" and its close variants are morally repugnant, on a par e.g. with "fascism good." This position displays either a level of empirical ignorance competitive with any climate change denier, or else a pro-attitude toward human suffering. For a //very// rough sense of why you shouldn't run these arguments, see here.

Wrt "tricks": I don't think, for instance, that any argument that functions as a necessary but insufficient burden is inherently abusive, and in fact many of my favorite debate arguments don't fit a value criterion structure and so tend to get labelled "a prioris." //But// I don't enjoy seeing these arguments, or any other arguments, run as "tricks." One reason for this is that if your whole strategy depends on your opponent, who has access the text of your case in front of them, missing a certain half-sentence somewhere in the framework, it's effectively guaranteed that I'm going to miss that half-sentence too, so I'll have to make you sad by refusing to vote on it (see previous). And even if I do catch it, there's a pretty good chance that I won't be able to extract an intelligible argument from that half-sentence, and again I'll have to make you sad by refusing to vote on it (see previous).

Wrt theory: For a variety of reasons that I'm happy to explain on request, I will intervene on theory in certain situations. Essentially, I won't treat theory as a reason to drop the debater (or do anything tantamount to dropping the debater) if I don't think that there's a //plausible// abuse claim. The best guidance I can give is that you should only initiate theory in front of me when you //actually// think there’s been serious unfairness or loss of education in the round that's forced you into it. But if there’s one part of the full paradigm you might want to check for details, it’s probably the section on theory.

Wrt in-round demeanor: Despite my occasional grumpiness about debate, amply demonstrated by this paradigm, I think that debate is and should be fun. Be competitive, but don't be a jerk. Don't do anything to make the round un-fun for your opponent, apart from making lots of really good arguments. I'll punish extreme cases of jerkishness with speaker points or the ballot if the situation calls for it.

If you’re interested in other particulars but don’t want to read the whole paradigm, try ctrl+f, or ask me.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4NzsnfKgnXsRE1YdjZxYjlxRzQ
 * Full Paradigm:**