Super Prestigious Theory MiniDebate Tournament
2023 — San Jose, CA/US
Policy Debate Paradigm List
All Paradigms: Show HidePolicy debater at Bellarmine
Ryan Mills Note: I understand the basics of LD, just debate as you normally would
Also, my views are firmly aligned with Andrew Wen
For debate, please refer to Derek Qian's paradigm
For speech, please refer to Derek Qian's paradigm
Big Child enslavement guy
Go slow and be clear. Don’t be rude or super uptight, especially in cross.
Make sure you weigh and tell me clearly which VIs/Stock Issues are winning you the debate.
Have fun!
I'm open to bribes.
Rhetoric Policy Debate:
1. Be respectful and kind towards each other
2. Do what you learned from all your time in Rhetoric
Bellarmine '21
Harvard '25
Assistant coach for Bellarmine.
Email for the chain: ahiremath35@gmail.com. It would be great if you could make the subject "Year -- Tournament -- Round # -- Aff Team vs Neg Team."
Some people who have heavily influenced my views on debate: Surya Midha, Tyler Vergho, Debnil Sur, Dhruv Sudesh, Rafael Pierry, and Anirudh Prabhu. Feel free to check out any of their paradigms too.
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Berkeley Tournament '24 Update
- I haven't judged any rounds on the topic. Don't assume I know any topic specific jargon or accept any community consensus.
- Beliefs about AI: AGI is inevitable, actors like OpenAI are most likely to achieve AGI, it is possible to regulate AI, most open source AI is good, and misaligned AGI can pose an existential risk.
- I despise the trend of ad hominem attacks in debates.
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General thoughts
- I don't care what you read. While my partner Surya and I mostly read policy arguments, we occasionally read K affs and even went for the Baudrillard K in our TOC bubble round.
- Rebuttals should acknowledge and address the weakest parts of your own arguments. Reduce the debate to 2-3 core issues and clearly explain why winning those issues mean you have already won the debate.
- Hard numbering arguments is beautiful and makes it very easy to flow the debate. "One, two, three" > "first, second, third."
- Answer arguments in the order presented.
- Don't waste time calling arguments "terrible" or "stupid" or anything like that. Just directly explain the reason why the argument is poor.
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FW
- Clash, fairness, and movements can all be great impacts. If you go for fairness, lean into the "debate is a game" framing. If you go for movements / skills, explain why that solves their offense better.
- Please don't just read blocks straight down. Contextualize as much as possible, wherever possible. The first lines of your 2NC/2NR overview should point out a central problem in the aff construction or strategy.
- Impact comparison is crucial, especially in final rebuttals.
- I generally vote for the team that is more offensive in these debates.
- Counter-interpretations need to have a somewhat clear caselist. Negative teams should make fun of counter-interpretations that don't.
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CP
- Send all perm texts in the 2AC.
- Textual and functional competition are great standards to hold CP's to. 2A's should also be prepared to go for textually non-intrinsic but functionally intrinsic perms.
- Counterplans can solve for an advantage's internal links or an advantage's impacts. The best CP's do both.
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K
- The negative only gets to weigh the impacts of their links. How large the impacts are is up for debate.
- I don't have great background knowledge on the majority of these literature bases, so please be clear when explaining dense concepts. If I can't understand your arguments then I won't vote for you.
- 2A's should be mindful of what they need to win given 2NR pivots. They kick the alt? Winning framework basically means you auto-win the debate. They go for the alt? Winning a substantial DA to the alt can help you in multiple areas of the debate.
- Pick 1-2 pieces of offense on the framework debate and explain them well in the final rebuttals. These debates get muddled when either side tries to do too much.
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T
- Predictable limits are more important than limits for the sake of limits.
- Interpretations need to have a clear intent to exclude, otherwise the affirmative will have a much easier time winning "we meet." Surya's paradigm has a great explanation of this.
- Plan text in a vacuum is a better standard than most people give it credit for. If the alternative to plan text in a vacuum justifies the negative procuring violations from non-underlined portions of cards, then the aff should make fun of that.
- The 2AR/2NR should isolate 1-2 pieces of offense, explain why they outweigh, and explain why they solve/precede the other team's offense.
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Theory
- Please be as slow as possible.
- Things that are good: conditionality, 2NC CP's, kicking planks, CP's without a solvency advocate.
- Things that are bad: international fiat, multi-level / multi-actor fiat.
- Theoretical objections other than conditionality can be made into better substantive arguments. A CP doesn't have a solvency advocate? Probably means your deficit is more credible. A CP uses an archaic process to establish a precedent? Probably means the perm shields.
rhetoric:
don't call me judge, call me andrew
debate how you were taught in rhetoric
hearing clear signposting will make me a happy judge
explain your arguments - my favorite debates will have concrete and multifaceted explanations of arguments, not surface-level statements about how your affirmative plan is great for poverty or why it's horrible for the economy
tell me how to make my decision - your rebuttal should guide me through every stock issue and explain why you have won those stock issues and why that means you win the debate. i want you to explicitly tell me a reason to vote for you. i'm a lazy person so if i have to figure that reason out myself, i'll be upset.
don't do sketchy things. i don't want to see any lying about what your opponent has said or making up things that are not based in evidence. spin is fine but lying is not.
please be nice to your opponents and everyone else in the room. if you are being mean, then i will be mean when grading.
brownie points if you reference kpop
have fun!
Bellarmine '24. Stanford '28.
Add me to the email chain: rohanlingam2015@gmail.com
I have a deep level of respect for the preparation that goes into debate tournaments. I will do my best to reciprocate that dedication with a firm commitment to judging rounds strictly on technical execution, not my personal opinions. I'm not a blank slate, so always err on the side of explanation, story-telling, and persuasion. Be scrappy. Go for the path of least resistance. Don't shy away from clash. Given that, I’ll list several of my ideological dispositions below to be as transparent as possible — each of which can be reversed by out-debating the other team. My one unshakeable belief is that I will not vote on ad homs, strategies that rely on events that occured outside the round, and evidence ethics challenges.*
I don’t want a card doc. I’ve found it increasingly problematic that teams treat these docs as a third rebuttal. I will never reorganize a debate by reading evidence myself. Evidence is for you to explain and impact out.
K Affs: I’m very good for T-USFG against affirmatives that do not defend a hypothetical enactment of the resolution. Fairness is the best impact. I’m also very persuaded by defensive negative arguments that subsume a majority of affirmative offense, including switch-side debate and topical versions of the aff.
T: Interpretations couched in the language of predictable limits are best. Spend more time on internal link comparison than on high-level impact comparison at the top of your final rebuttals. I would prefer to not evaluate contrived interpretations that have questionable caselists. Especially for the negative, T debating is about painting a story of what worlds of debate would look like under each model using concrete examples. I’m not persuaded by a 2NC that rants about possible fringe affirmatives; explain why being able to read these affirmatives would make it impossible to debate.
CP: Infinite conditionality is good. Default is judge kicking the CP. Neg-leaning on most theoretical objections, but aff-leaning on international, private actor, and multi-actor fiat. Most affirmative objections are better communicated in the language of competition. I think affirmative competition interpretations are best grounded in defenses of specification as 'functions' of the plan. Generally not a fan of generic process CPs. Perms should be paired with a solvency deficit to flip offense-defense framing affirmative (obviously barring PDCP). Problems with CP planks not having advocates are better expressed through deficits rather than theory.
DA: I wish every 2NR in debate was disad/case. I find most overly simplistic, hyperbolic impact calc unhelpful in evaluating debates. The link is usually more important than uniqueness to me. Spin matters far more to me than evidence. I’m a sucker for rebuttals that go through each portion of the DA and explain numbered framing issues for how I should evaluate that specific portion.
Case: I am happy to vote negative on presumption provided burdens are explained and won.
K: I’m very good for 'extinction outweighs' against Ks that fail to moot the affirmative. I'm best for FW models that entirely exclude the case or the K. Neg teams should probably go for FW in front of me. I will always start evaluating these debates with FW. I will decide in favor of one side’s interpretation, not arbitrarily manufacture a middle ground.
Lay: I will never penalize (and will, in fact, be enthused by) a team who adapts to the slowest judge on their panel. Accordingly, I will excitedly adjudicate a debate that deals with stock issues and deep logistical case presses.
*There are only two scenarios where I will consider these arguments. First, if Team A has read a miscut card in an earlier debate, Team B has made substantial good-faith efforts to reach out to them about it (which includes multiple emails), and Team A continues to read the same miscut card, I’m very willing to vote for Team B. Second, if a team has disclosed an affirmative as “new” despite reading cards from earlier rounds, that is the textbook definition of cheating. You deserve to lose.
Rhetoric Policy:
A few general tips from things I've noticed
- Maintain the big picture story of the aff or neg - instead of getting too caught up in winning one specific stock issue or spamming as many random arguments as you can, think about how each argument fits together (especially for neg strats) and helps prove your overarching argument about the aff being good/bad. For example, if the aff is a UBI, I would probably still vote aff if the only persuasive part of the 2NR was that poverty is declining because it doesn't necessarily disprove that a UBI is good. Even if you are ahead on Harms, a UBI can still help people living under poverty even if that's declining.
- Clash with other arguments - explain why your evidence is better than their evidence or why your argument is better rather than just saying they're wrong we're right
- Warrant out your explanations - on top of just saying your evidence says this, explain why that is true
- Maintain eye contact with judge as much as possible and have good delivery
- Use smart analytics instead of always needing evidence - they can often be just as good or better arguments
Slack me or ask me in-person if you have any questions
Other than that, my views align with Austin Bauman