Last changed on
Wed October 2, 2024 at 3:10 AM PST
about me
ethan (any pronouns). debating with mvla in west coast parli and toc circuit ld. partnered with: yuika sun, caleb lin,sandy xu, preston bhat, caroline martin, catherine wong, sophia zhang, keira chatwin, abhinav kasturi, taylor luna, nevin pai, calista woo, grace chang, sumanth mahaligam, sally tei, and abby zhou. my views on debate have been shaped by all of those partners, though i probably don’t agree with them on everything.
tl;dr
tech > truth. i like explicit extensions and good weighing. i don't reject arguments as long as they're warranted. if i think you're being problematic, i'll vote on the flow but report you to tab + your coach. also will vote on reps bad or you link you lose if justified. this is a parli paradigm, but can apply to any event.
general
- all arguments need a claim, warrant, and implication
- nothing is sticky and i dislike shadow extensions
- i can hang with any speed, but don't spread out your opponents
- tag teaming is fine but i only flow speaker unless given reasons otherwise
- grace time is fake i stop flowing after time
policy debates
- trichot is fake. "should = a policy round" is not a fw argument
- terminalize impacts. just saying "econ goes down" is not enough
- fine with intrinsic perms but open to arguments against
- default to no judge kick (i'm lazy) but can if told to
- pass me relevant texts at some point
t/theory
- default to competing interpretations
- default to procedurals are an apriori voter (pls don't read apriori as a paradigm issue unless layering matters)
- no default for dta v dtd. without an implication, it's an incomplete arg
- weigh standards & voters
- will vote on the rvi but win the standards debate lol
- will vote on nebel but don't misrepresent semantics (i know linguistics)
- will vote on condo bad but i think condo's good
- will vote on misc cp theory but dta probably solves
- i went for friv a lot. i'll vote on basically anything
- i'm sympathetic to loose counter-interps on topicality
- topicality in parli should center debatability/pragmatics imo
kritiks
- familiar with queer theory, cap, psycho, and setcol (roughly in that order)
- do weighing and layering. extinction ows is probably true
- will vote on disclosure v k-affs. jurisdiction is a bad argument
- i think the aff should get the plan/perm and the neg should get the k
- open to other fw interpretations though (no plans, no ks, etc.)
- will vote on t-fw, no real biases one way or another
misc tech
- i know how some phil fws work (util, kant, and a few others)
- but i don't really understand justifications for why i should use one over the others
- will vote on phil but need thorough explanations
- will vote on tricks but need warrants
- will eval performances but need judge instruction
misc
- poi/cx answers are binding
- i protect but call the poo. incorrect poo answers will not be punished
- default to allowing new weighing
- 2ar gets golden turns on new args + shadow extensions
- i check back against golden turns by ensuring sufficient warranting
- the 2ar is broken if you can weigh. the block is broken if you collapse
- i give speaks based on strategy
everything in this paradigm is a soft default and can be changed if the right arguments are made in round.
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rants (skip if u want)
lay vs. tech
everything in debate is just an argument. i think t-fw and substance crowd-out bad are both true in formats where high-quality research is intrinsic to the activity, but i don't think parli is one of those events. ev ethics in parli is garbage, topics are recycled every tournament, and 20 minutes is not enough to conclusively understand what is blatant misinformation and what is legitimate.
i think parli should be a space to learn how to think and construct arguments critically. i think new arguments like friv theory, cool ks, fun spec affs, and creative counterplans all do that. i think if people stopped being so scared of certain arguments and just tried their best to engage, they'd stop hating different style of debate so much. that also means debaters should be accessible.
warrants in parli
anything that can be used to justify a claim is a warrant. "this person says it's true" is not a very good warrant, but is sufficient for me to evaluate the claim. better warrants would be empirical analysis, the reports of a study, or actual explanations of why a claim is true. if you do not have a warrant, i cannot evaluate the claim. some parli tournaments are messing with evidence rules. even if that continues, i still need warrants in one form or another.
style in debate
i think it's really funny how different debate formats and different regions have such vastly different styles. i don't think the west coast parli style is very rhetorically appealing to people outside of the area and format, but it works in front of lay audiences within the space. my personal debate style (rhetorically) more closely resembles toc ld than anything else. i'm probably subconsciously biased in favor of styles that are in that realm. i think it's very inefficient and kind of confusing how people in parli say "first is the uniqueness. point 1 is __. subpoint a is ___." i don't factor these things into my decision, but i think it's important to analyze why we've adopted certain styles and instead of conforming to what everyone else is doing, try crafting your own, more unique and efficient style.
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final note
if you're a novice and none of this paradigm makes sense to you, that's ok! i make it this detailed because i don't want to underestimate any debaters. ask questions if you have them or just try your best in round. i'll give in-depth feedback and disclose if allowed. good luck!