ultravires
10-04-09, 04:09 AM
my name is alex smith but most of you probably know me as “smitty.” i debated from 2005 to 2009 at cal and currently help them out at tournaments and judge.
i generally make my decisions by asking myself:
a) what issues are relevant in terms of my ballot?
b) who is ahead on those issues?
this seems sort of obvious, but it bears repeating because a lot of teams spend a lot of time discussing irrelevant issues and not enough time explaining how their arguments interact with the ballot. generally the team who does the better job of framing and explaining their arguments will win, even if they make some technical mistakes or bad arguments. if you lose to a bad argument, it is because you did not do a good enough job answering that argument or explaining why it was irrelevant.
other stuff:
“straight-up” debates: generally these debates come down to who has the best explanation of their uniqueness and link argument. nuance and specificity is almost always the gateway into winning these arguments—the best thing you can do at any level of this debate is to leverage the specificity of your warrants and explain your argument better. impact calculus is important for comparing different sheets of paper but usually is not that helpful in assessing who wins each individual argument. impact calculus that makes different arguments interact and identifies the “nexus question” that controls the entire debate goes very far with me.
t and theory debates: i default to seeing these as issues of competing interpretations unless someone wins an argument otherwise. i don’t require proven in-round abuse unless someone wins an argument otherwise. the most common mistakes i see affirmatives make in these debates are a) not reading a counterinterpretation and b) not reading a we-meet to the counterinterpretation. if the other team is smart enough to point this out you will probably lose. i think more MGs need to go hard for reasonability arguments (and “i think we’re totally reasonable and give you lots of fair ground” is not an argument, so you need to try harder than that).
k debates: i like these arguments and vote on them a decent amount. affirmatives generally need to be much more offensive in these debates and engage with the substance of the K. too many people fail to leverage their case arguments and too many people let the negative get away with total murder on the framework and alternative debates. don’t do silly things like concede that “colonialism” or “gender binaries” or whatever silly catchphrase the neg rants about controls the internal link to all of your case impacts/makes your impacts inevitable, or concede that the alt solves 100% of case, or something dumb like that. moreso than any other argument, i think that these debates come down to who has the best articulation of their argument, and good explanation can overcome lots of technical mistakes in these sorts of debates. i find the argument that the negative needs to specify a vision of the world post the alternative fundamentally unpersuasive but somehow keep voting on it.
other stuff: i flow on a laptop and would be happy to email you my flow if you care enough to read it. i don’t have the same knee-jerk reaction to a lot of unpopular arguments (speed k’s, fact good, etc.) that a lot of people do so do what you’re good at as long as you can defend it. my speaks generally cluster in the 27-28.5 range. you can get higher speaks by making well-warranted, specific, and interesting arguments, having good strategic vision and technical execution, and being funny, likeable, and/or charismatic. you can get lower speaks by making stupid arguments, poor strategic decisions, being unclear, being a jerk, stealing prep, or making any argument that involves the phrase “rivets on a plane.”
i generally make my decisions by asking myself:
a) what issues are relevant in terms of my ballot?
b) who is ahead on those issues?
this seems sort of obvious, but it bears repeating because a lot of teams spend a lot of time discussing irrelevant issues and not enough time explaining how their arguments interact with the ballot. generally the team who does the better job of framing and explaining their arguments will win, even if they make some technical mistakes or bad arguments. if you lose to a bad argument, it is because you did not do a good enough job answering that argument or explaining why it was irrelevant.
other stuff:
“straight-up” debates: generally these debates come down to who has the best explanation of their uniqueness and link argument. nuance and specificity is almost always the gateway into winning these arguments—the best thing you can do at any level of this debate is to leverage the specificity of your warrants and explain your argument better. impact calculus is important for comparing different sheets of paper but usually is not that helpful in assessing who wins each individual argument. impact calculus that makes different arguments interact and identifies the “nexus question” that controls the entire debate goes very far with me.
t and theory debates: i default to seeing these as issues of competing interpretations unless someone wins an argument otherwise. i don’t require proven in-round abuse unless someone wins an argument otherwise. the most common mistakes i see affirmatives make in these debates are a) not reading a counterinterpretation and b) not reading a we-meet to the counterinterpretation. if the other team is smart enough to point this out you will probably lose. i think more MGs need to go hard for reasonability arguments (and “i think we’re totally reasonable and give you lots of fair ground” is not an argument, so you need to try harder than that).
k debates: i like these arguments and vote on them a decent amount. affirmatives generally need to be much more offensive in these debates and engage with the substance of the K. too many people fail to leverage their case arguments and too many people let the negative get away with total murder on the framework and alternative debates. don’t do silly things like concede that “colonialism” or “gender binaries” or whatever silly catchphrase the neg rants about controls the internal link to all of your case impacts/makes your impacts inevitable, or concede that the alt solves 100% of case, or something dumb like that. moreso than any other argument, i think that these debates come down to who has the best articulation of their argument, and good explanation can overcome lots of technical mistakes in these sorts of debates. i find the argument that the negative needs to specify a vision of the world post the alternative fundamentally unpersuasive but somehow keep voting on it.
other stuff: i flow on a laptop and would be happy to email you my flow if you care enough to read it. i don’t have the same knee-jerk reaction to a lot of unpopular arguments (speed k’s, fact good, etc.) that a lot of people do so do what you’re good at as long as you can defend it. my speaks generally cluster in the 27-28.5 range. you can get higher speaks by making well-warranted, specific, and interesting arguments, having good strategic vision and technical execution, and being funny, likeable, and/or charismatic. you can get lower speaks by making stupid arguments, poor strategic decisions, being unclear, being a jerk, stealing prep, or making any argument that involves the phrase “rivets on a plane.”