Hi.

I'm a pog judge. Consider me a flay judge, but I will flow the round. I am willing to buy arguments such as nuclear war is good, so you can run anything. I have done 4 years of PF, I've qualified to TOC (1 gold, 1 silver).

+1 speaks for any Minecraft / TikTok / Current Event references

Please be nice to your opponents.

See you soon.

Speed:

I can handle most speeds, but I would like words to be well enunciated.

Crossfire:

I will listen to crossfire, but you need to bring up your points in speech.

Weighing:

Please provide weighing in at least your final focus.

Extensions:

There is no need to waste precious speaking seconds repeating a block if it has not been responded to yet. For entire arguments, please extend them if you want to keep them.

Evidence / Ideology:

Truth > tech. However, evidence comes first, so make sure cards are well cut and say what you would like them to say. I will call for pieces of evidence I know to be false or I suspect. However, I will not do anything about slightly wrong cards, as it is your job to catch your opponents. For example, there was a card that said "9 out of 10 start ups fail," but there were many debaters who said that 9 out of 10 small businesses fail. I will be mildly annoyed, but there is a limit to how much I will intervene.

Further Clarification:

Please ask me questions before round. Do not ask me to vote for you because you want another bid and are trying to qualify to TOC (my opponents mentioned this to the judge once).

TL;DR - Be nice and have fun!!! I prefer technical case debate, but I'll do my best to evaluate any arguments you present. I consider myself tech over truth. I'm usually most persuaded by strategic arguments, good weighing, and doing a good job explaining how arguments that your opponents dropped put you ahead at the end of the round. Theory is cool, and I will vote for frivolous theory if you win it, but I'll probably be sad. Ks are cool too, but I feel less confident about my ability to properly evaluate them. It's probably best to assume that I'm not familiar with your K lit, and I probably won't vote for an argument I don't understand :(

Introduction/Background

Hey! Shaurya's partner speaking (or typing, I guess)! Welcome to the whimsical world of my probably bland debate opinions (by norcal parli standards at least). Prepare yourself for a few possibly lukewarm takes?!?!?!

But first, a little background: My name is Evan and my pronouns are he/him. I was a Mountain View Los Altos parli debater for about 5 years. I dabbled a tiny bit in LD, PF, Policy, and World Schools back in the day for maybe a few months each. I also did duo interpretation for 3 years before high school (I highly recommend doing duo btw it was probably the most fun I had in speech and debate ever, sorry parli).

I mostly did lay and technical case debate, but I occasionally ran some theory (mostly in response to other theory or Ks), and I ran one K aff with my partner in a few rounds (which I helped write, but it was mostly my partner's work). I've watched and been in a few dozen K rounds so I'm familiar with their general structure and some of their many flavors, but it was never really my thing.

I'm currently a freshman in college studying environmental economics and policy (but don't worry I only understand basic microeconomics, I still have no idea how the stock market works or what it means when the fed raises interest rates).

Also, this paradigm might be long, so feel free to just read the tl;dr and the underlined parts for the important information. The not-underlined stuff isn't really necessary, it's just there in case one of the underlined things wasn't clear or in case you want to know more about my judging philosophy (and because I'm just very bad at being concise whoops).

And, if you have any questions about my paradigm, feel free to ask before the round! I tried to explain most of the debate jargon I use in this paradigm, but I'm sure I didn't really explain everything, so please ask if there's a word/phrase you're not familiar with or if anything is unclear (my goal here is to make my debate opinions understandable, so really you'll be doing me a favor).

How I Reach My Decisions

I usually make my decisions by following these steps:

1. Order the layers in the debate round

Common layers in a round are case, K, and theory. This is, of course, not an exhaustive list. Anything can be a separate layer if you give me a reason it should be weighed before other parts of the debate and give me a reason that the resolution of the arguments in that layer should be able to decide the round regardless of the outcomes in all the layers below it. Everything starts on the same layer by default. If you want me to put anything (including Ks and theory) above anything else, you need to give me a reason I should! The reason can be simple, but I won't fill it in for you.

If the term "case layer" isn't familiar to you, I just mean the part of the debate that has to do with the implications of the plan after we imagine it passes. Often, the whole debate is in the case layer.

I'll first go through the following steps with the top layer (and then with go through them with the layers below if necessary).

The top layer is just the layer I decide is at the top of my order based on the arguments in the round.

2. Determine the weighing mechanism I'm using for the given layer

Win an argument telling me why I should use your weighing mechanism, and I'll use it! I default to net benefits on the case layer and K layer if neither team gives me a weighing mechanism (but usually the debaters give me a different weighing mechanism for the K layer). I default to competing interpretations on the theory layer if neither team gives me a weighing mechanism.

3. Order the impacts in the layer

This order depends on the debate. Tell me what this order should be by weighing your impacts in the round! See the "weighing" section for more info.

4. See who's winning the debate on the top impact (and then the impacts below it if necessary)

If there's a clear winner of the top/most important impact, they'll usually win the round, especially if a team wins arguments that the top impact outweighs everything else in the round. For example, if both teams have environmental impacts, and both teams agree that the environment is the most important issue in the round, I'll most likely vote for whichever side I feel is better for the environment (based on the arguments in the round).

If aff wins the top impact, but neg wins all the other impacts, and all the other impacts combined outweigh the top impact, neg could (and theoretically should) still win. The only problem is that it's often hard to quantitatively compare impacts (so it's hard for me to tell if all the other impacts combined outweigh the top impact). If each impact is terminalized, and all the other impacts clearly add up to a bigger number than the top impact, then I'll almost certainly vote for neg (in this scenario). But, if I can only qualitatively/vaguely tell the order of the impacts, and few or none of them have actual numbers attached to them (and no argument is made in the round that the other impacts combined outweigh the top impact), the round will probably be a toss-up. I'll probably try to quantify each impact based on the implications of arguments in the round, but if these numbers aren't stated this is basically judge intervention. The more I have to intervene, the less confident I usually feel about my ballot, so the most likely outcome of this will probably be me voting for the winner of the top impact (to avoid intervening and quantifying every impact so that I can compare them). To avoid this, quantify your impacts if you can and, most importantly, weigh your impacts!

5. If a winner isn't decided based on this layer, I move to the layer below it and repeat steps 2 through 4. I keep doing this until I find a winner!

My Thoughts on Decisions and RFDs

Disclaimer: To be honest I can't think of a case where my opinions in this section would actually affect my decision. I just think if I were still debating I would've liked to hear these things. So if you want you can skip it, but also I'd really appreciate if you give at least the underlined parts a quick read I think this can be important stuff to hear for many debaters.

Ok here's my first possibly lukewarm take: I think debate is an educational game, but it's a subjective (educational) game of persuasion. In other words, debate is more like apples to apples than it is like chess. You can't look at all the moves/arguments made in a round and know without a shadow of a doubt who won at the end.

I think in almost every round there's a valid RFD (reason for decision) for either side. If that's true, I think it follows that any decision about who "won" is really just an opinion. So I think, ultimately, no matter how tech over truth or tabula rasa a judge is, rounds are won by persuading a judge to believe that your arguments won. It just happens to be the case that I'm usually most persuaded by strategic arguments, good weighing, and doing a good job explaining how arguments that your opponents dropped strengthen your case or put you ahead at the end of the round.

That also means all RFDs, mine included, are really just opinions. As with any opinion, I'd ask you to hear it out, but you have no obligation to agree. My advice is to take from it only what's valuable to you. Regardless of whether I voted for or against your arguments, check if there's anything in my RFD that you can use to become an even better debater.

Also notice that I'm not voting for or against you, I'm just voting for or against the arguments you made in that round. There is, of course, so much more to everyone than the arguments they make in a 60-minute debate round on a silly parli topic!

Also, remember that I'm human and I make mistakes. Some of my opinions are more well-founded than others. If you felt you won that round, then walk out of that round feeling like a winner! I can't stop you! And if you felt you lost that round, walk out of that round ready to become an even better debater and kill it in your next round! Regardless, and most importantly, I hope you also walk out of that round feeling like you learned something and had some fun along the way!!

What do I think is a strategic argument

I know I said one of the things I'm most persuaded by is a strategic argument, and I know that's a little vague, so I figured I'd try to briefly explain what I meant here. I don't have an exact definition of a strategic argument, but in general, I think a strategic argument is composed of a clear claim, good evidence to support that claim, and an implication that is explained well in the context of the round.

In my opinion, a clear claim just means I can easily understand the gist/thesis of the argument. Usually, that means the team presenting the argument gave me a clear and consistent summary of the argument across their speeches. In the first speech, this means presenting the pieces of the argument in a logical order. In the second speech, overviews or other quick summaries of your arguments and why you're winning the round are helpful. The last speech is probably the most important place to make the claim of your argument crystal clear since I think the best final speeches are ones that give a simple summary of the round and why their arguments are winning.

Good evidence to support your claim just means having a variety of well-explained reasons that your claim is true. If you present things like statistics or historical facts, be sure to explain their relevance to your claim/argument.

To explain your implication well in the context of the round, don't just tell me why your argument is true, be sure to tell me why your argument means I should vote for you. Better yet, tell me how your arguments are more important than your opponents' arguments or prove their arguments wrong. Set yourself up to do this by anticipating what arguments your opponents will make and designing your case in a way that makes it easy to respond. To me, that's really at the core of building a strategic argument.

How to win arguments (at least in my book)

In my opinion, the best ways to prove your argument beats your opponent's argument are:

• Leveraging dropped arguments! I will consider fully dropped arguments to be 100% true. Given that, tell me how the dropped argument proves that your opponent's argument is wrong in this debate. But remember, (at least in my opinion) an argument consists of a claim, at least one warrant, and an implication. Be warned: even if an argument is conceded, I probably won't vote on it if it doesn't have each of those 3 parts!

• Weighing! Tell me why your warrants (logical or "cited") are better than your opponent's warrants and/or tell me why your argument matters more. For more explanation, see the "Weighing" section of this paradigm.

• Using "even if" scenarios! This means tell me why you're winning "even if" I believe that their argument (or at least some part of their argument) is true. Often your argument can't win if I believe everything they say is true, but do your best to pick as many parts of their argument as possible and explain why your winning even if I believe all those parts you picked!

Weighing

Weigh your impacts! If you give me valid arguments about how your impacts outweigh your opponents' impacts and they don't respond, you'll probably win!

Do metaweighing, if you're into that! In other words, tell me which weighing mechanism I should look at first! That means making arguments like magnitude should be considered over/before probability, probability should be considered over/before magnitude, or timeframe should be considered over/before magnitude and probability (bonus points for doing the last one I'd be impressed)! It can make my job a lot easier (and I think whoever does the metaweighing will usually like the outcome).If you do metaweighing, make sure to tell me why you're winning under your metaweighing!

Weigh evidence/arguments! Tell me which evidence I should believe and why, especially if there are two competing pieces of evidence that are critical to the round. Since parli doesn't really have source verification, I probably won't put too much weight in comparing sources. That being said, if one piece of evidence is from a peer-reviewed study and the other is from a random blog post, point that out and tell me that your evidence is more trustworthy. If the difference in source quality is on that level, I'll tend to agree with you. You can also make arguments about things like whether historical evidence should be preferred over predictions of the future. You can make arguments about their evidence not being as applicable to the situation as your evidence. You can point out that their evidence doesn't provide a clear and logical line of reasoning while yours does. Pretty much any argument about how your evidence is better proof of your claim than theirs is will do me a big favor!

Ok back to more boring stuff. Here's how I weigh by default:

Unless arguments in the round tell me otherwise, the way I'll weigh impacts is I'll (sort of) multiply the magnitude of an impact by its probability. For example, if you're impact is 10 million dollars lost, but your impact has a 50% chance of happening, I'll consider it the about same thing as 5 million dollars lost with 100% probability. I'll determine the probability of an impact based on the strength of the link chain leading to that impact at the end of the round.

The only problem with this is that usually levels of probability can't be discerned very precisely. Typically, at the end of a round, I can only assign an impact somewhere around 100%, 50%, or 0% probability. In other words, I've never been in a round where I left thinking, "Wow, I could really tell that impact had a 37% probability!" That means I'll usually look more to magnitude to decide rounds because differences in magnitude are usually more easily discernable than differences in probability.

By default, I'll only use timeframe as a tiebreaker because, to me, its significance is even more unclear than probability. If two impacts are essentially exactly identical to me, I'll consider the one that happens later to be the smaller impact.

In terms of evidence, I'll usually consider "cited" evidence (like statistics and historical facts) stronger than logical evidence (evidence that's just your logical reasoning about why something is true), but this isn't a steadfast opinion/order. I'm definitely open to changing this belief if you win an argument about it in the round. Also, since this is parli, you don't actually have to "cite" your source (since all citations are non-verifiable in parli land). If you don't cite a source, but present something like a statistic or a historical fact, I'll still treat it as "cited" evidence.

New Arguments in the Last Speeches (LOR and PMR)

I'll do my best to protect the flow (meaning I won't consider new arguments made in these speeches), but calling the POO (Point of Order) is still appreciated!

I count new metaweighing arguments as new arguments in the last two speeches, even if they're technically "just weighing". Otherwise, I think the PMR in particular could give a billion reasons why they're winning on whatever weighing mechanism they choose and then argue that I should consider that one weighing mechanism above all else, and hypothetically they would win every round.

Other than metaweighing, I think new impact weighing/comparison is generally fair game in the last two speeches since they're supposed to be summarizing and crystalizing the round. That being said, if a new weighing claim made in the PMR ends up being a pivotal argument in my decision, I'll usually lean toward siding with the negative and stretch more to cross-apply negative arguments that could respond to this weighing claim (since the negative doesn't have a chance to respond to the PMR weighing, but the aff has a chance to respond to the LOR weighing).

Theory

I'll default to evaluating theory using competing interpretations. If you can prove that their interpretation is bad I don't really see why you need to read a counter-interpretation though. If you don't read a counter-interpretation, I'll just assume you're defending the debate status quo (which is usually just their interpretation but replace "must" or "must not" with "may or may not"), kind of like I assume the neg is defending the status quo if they don't read a counterplan. Still, the team reading theory can give disadvantages to your implied counter-interpretation, so not defending it might be an uphill battle. So, in summary, I basically just think of competing interpretations as net benefits of the interpretation.

If you read reasonability and intend to make it a key voting issue in the theory debate, try to give me a bright line. Explain what defines a "reasonable" interpretation so that I'm not deciding the theory debate based on my gut feeling about whether or not it's reasonable. An example of a bright line that Riley taught me is that an interpretation is reasonable if the team presenting it can prove the education lost by the violation outweighs the education lost by reading theory in this round (if this bright line doesn't make sense blame me not Riley I'm I could easily be remembering it wrong, but hopefully you get the gist of what I'm looking for in a bright line - just give me another clear metric I can use to decide the theory debate).

Remember when I said I'll be sad if I vote for friv theory. That's probably true in most cases where you don't know your opponents. But, if you do know your opponents and you know everyone in the round will have fun with it, then go for it! I'm not the fun police (I hope), and I'd be more than happy to try to evaluate some wacky theory arguments as long as everyone else in the round is having a good time too. It's just that, in general, my experience with friv theory at tournaments has been that the team on the receiving end usually doesn't have as much experience with tech debate and ends up not really feeling like they had a fighting chance. I'll still vote on friv theory since not doing so entirely feels like too much judge intervention which would be unfair to you. But, if both teams aren't really comfortable with it, I'll be sad.

Kritiks

Ks weren't really my thing in high school, so I don't have too many thoughts on them. I'll probably be more receptive to common sense responses than the average tech judge, even if they don't have the technical jargon commonly used in effective K responses.

Please explain your arguments clearly! Both so your opponents can effectively engage in the round, and so I can do a better job evaluating your arguments. Assume I don't know your K lit because I probably don't!

If you can tell your opponents you'll be reading a K before the round, it would be great if you do. It would be even better if you disclose your advocacy or the thesis of the K you're reading. I think the discussion and insight you get out of the round are a lot more valuable if both teams are able to effectively prepare for the debate they're about to have, and I do think it's often unfair if one team gets 0 minutes to prep responses to a K the other team spent days writing.

That being said, I think disclosure theory debates can get messy since the violation debate is hard to resolve without just taking one team's word for it. If faced with disclosure theory I'll do my best to evaluate it based on the arguments made in the round, but in all honesty, I'll probably feel forced to intervene to reach a decision on the theory shell, so I'll do my best to find something else to decide the round.

I do think I'll probably be a little more receptive to TUSfg/Framework T than the average tech judge, (but if you run framework T you'll certainly still have to work for the win).

I consider the ROB (Roll Of the Ballot) the thesis of your framework section. In my view, the arguments you make in the framework section are the evidence supporting your ROB. If your opponents effectively respond to your framework, but they don't explicitly answer your ROB, I won't consider your ROB conceded (because I'd consider the evidence behind the ROB refuted).

Other random thoughts

Please don't respond to an argument by saying, "This claim doesn't have any evidence, so you shouldn't consider it" and then moving on! They may have no evidence that their claim is right, but if you move on I'm also left with no evidence that their claim is wrong! Your evidence doesn't need to be from an online source. In my opinion, especially in parli, logic is considered evidence. So, if you point out their claim doesn't have evidence and then ALSO give me some logical reason that their claim probably isn't true, you're golden!

Counterplans can be offense because opportunity costs are still costs.

In terms of speed, I can probably handle up to 150 words per minute relatively well. If you go too far above that I might miss some things, but I'll hopefully catch the main ideas for most of what you're saying. I'll slow or clear your if I really can't keep up, but even if I haven't said anything it's best to slow down if there's anything really important that you want to make sure is on my flow and you've been going fast.

My definition of tech over truth is basically just that, if you win an argument in the round or if your opponent concedes an argument, I will believe that argument is true in the context of that round regardless of whether or not I personally think the argument is actually true. In other words, if you tell me the Moon is made of cheese, you give me any plausible logical or cited warrant (which can be as simple as "the moon has holes that look like cheese"), and your opponent concedes it, I will believe the Moon is made of cheese for the purposes of deciding a winner in that round. In my opinion, arguments consist of a claim, at least one warrant, and an implication. Even if an argument is conceded, I probably won't vote on it if it doesn't have all of those 3 parts!

Tag teaming is fine! I'll only flow what the designated/current speaker is saying though (so the current speaker will have to repeat whatever their partner said if they want me to consider it). My definition of tag teaming is when a person talks during their partner's speech, usually to give them an idea or tell them to respond to some argument.

I won't flow questions asked (or statements made) during POIs or during flex. I think POIs should not be used to make statements or arguments during your opponents' speech. They should be used for clarifying or strategic questions. In my opinion, strategic questions are questions that could strengthen an argument you want to make later based on their response. Strategic questions don't involve effectively stating the thesis of an argument you want to make. Telling them your argument during their speech only gives them more time to think of a good response, so (at least in my opinion) it's probably not the most strategic choice!

Also, I'm sorry if the formatting is messed up, I promise it looks better in the paradigm editor, but for some reason it looks like it doesn't convert well when other people view it :((

Hello!

I'm a junior at Mountain View High School and I've been doing PF for three years.

I'm a mostly flow judge, especially for PF. I've never judged LD or Parli before, but I am familiar with the events in general.

I don't know how relevant this is for non-PF events, but I default to weighing carded and analytical responses relatively equally - however, if you are making an analytical response, warranting is extra important. I know you can find an article that says basically anything on ~the interwebs~ so actually explaining why the effect detailed in the response happens is key.

1. Use your last speech to convince my WHY you should win. Weigh the round! I shouldn't have to think -- a top performance will leave me convinced you won even without going through the flow

2. Kritiks are cool. Theory is less cool. DO NOT run frivolous theory, I will drop it.