Hamilton,+Brent

I will not award speaker points for what I perceive to be lazy (proliferation of cheap shots) or sloppy (3 conditional cps) debate.

Decision Calculus I think that this is one of the most underdeveloped arguments in debates. What should we consider to be the most important impact and why? This question is relevant for theory, disads, kritiks, and clash of civs debates. Absent any discussion of what counts as an impact, I will default to: universal destruction < human extinction < economic growth/prosperity < bare life. Similarly, saying nuclear war will occur is often not enough since I don’t think that Mead and Kagan carry the same probability, magnitude or timeframe. I think that link probability and timeframe are often ignored to the detriment of both sides.

Disads I am willing to assign zero risk of a disad. If an internal link doesn’t make sense, if a link or impact takeout is dropped and explained by the affirmative, I will not give the neg the benefit assigning a marginal risk.

Kritiks I am most persuaded by ethics-based kritiks or epistemology kritiks that are coupled with framework arguments (in the 2nc is fine unless the affirmative has framework args in the 1ac) about the role of the ballot. I generally think that these have a better chance at winning link probability and minimizing affirmative impact magnitude than other kinds of Ks. Next, I think that material Ks like the old-school cap k or state k have some rhetorical power from the wealth of literature about them. I do not think they are strategic debate arguments, however, since the solvency deficits/takeouts to the alternative and permutations are slayers. In order to win these Ks I think you need specific links, probable impacts that can be causally explained and an alternative which does something to change the status quo for the better. If your alternative is refuse to act, I think that is the same as the status quo. Ontology Ks (Heidegger and the like) – this is one of my favorite areas of academic philosophy. In school, I really enjoyed phenomenology. Unfortunately, I think these aren’t strategic debate arguments. I do not think that the alternative to ‘just be’ does anything tangible to make the world better. I think that mental tranquility is a low magnitude impact since it only affects me and changes as soon as I leave the debate. Performance / deferral / random other stuff: if you’re not making arguments I will award low speaker points and a loss. If you play videos or music instead of talking, you will receive less speaker points for not filling your speech time.

Counterplans Theory disclaimer – I will vote on dropped theory arguments like PICs bad or Agent CPs bad. However, I think it takes minimal answers (2-ish as long as they are warranted) for negatives to answer these arguments so don’t waste too much time reading blocks. Conditional CPs are fine. In some instances, multiple conditional cps are fine though I would say that this is sloppy debate. If the strategy is something like a word pic and an agent cp, I think that’s probably fine. I think the affirmative has a good shot at winning a theory argument about why multiple conditional cps are bad when the negative can go for combinations of CPs in the 2nr. This includes conditional CP planks. If your CP has planks, it is fair to go for all or none of them, not to pick and choose.

K Affirmatives: I think that all affirmatives must have some kind of unconditional advocacy statement – call it a plan or a statement or whatever. This must be defended throughout the debate. Also, I think that the affirmative gets some deal of flexibility about how the plan can be viewed or implemented in terms of framework so long as they can theoretically justify it. That being said, I do think that if affirmatives write that the USFG should do something in a plan, they should be prepared to defend their interaction with the federal government or potentially even consequences for that policy (potentially – depending on framework arguments). If affirmatives don’t write that, “the USFG should do something” in their plan text, I think the negative should have an easy time winning on topicality USFG.

Framework I don’t think that framework is a strong offensive negative argument. I think that the purpose of framework is to determine the perspective from which the debate should be evaluated: a policymaker, a citizen, an academic, something else. This is a strategic tool for affirmatives to get out of certain links or impacts. It is the negative burden to engage the aff from within that framework or win an alternate framework AND disads or kritiks. Often, I think that theory arguments are labeled framework arguments which should not be. If there is a topicality argument to be had – the affirmative doesn’t have a ‘resolved’ advocacy, make a ‘should’ statement, use the federal government – framework is not the place to make these arguments. Moreover, I think that conflating framework and topicality often advantage the affirmative to impact turn.