Watson,+David

Background: 11th year in the activity. I debated at Appleton West High School 2000-2004. I have coached at Minneapolis North, Blake, and at Appleton West. In the last seven years I have judged approximately 350 rounds, or about 50 a year.

I have some overarching tendencies which are separate from my opinions about specific issues. 1. I am much more persuaded by the thesis level explanation of an argument than I am by a debater’s mastery of the line by line. I like when people explain things to me in the broad sense. This isn’t to say that you can ignore the line by line, but overviews are your friends when I am your judge. 2. Dropped arguments aren’t true if they are stupid. I generally assume the other team thought, as I did, that these arguments were a waste of everyone’s time. Topicality/Theory: I am what they used to call a hypo tester. I believe that the plan is an apparatus to test the validity of a hypothesis, the resolution. As such I evaluate topicality in a jurisdictional paradigm, as opposed to an abuse one. That means grammar, extra, effects, and bright line standards are your friends and predictability/ground based standards are not. Take notice, if I don’t find abuse a reason that a plan is not topical I will certainly not be persuaded by potential abuse. This carries over to most theory debates as well. I am much less concerned with if you are abused, than if there is a reciprocity/side burden question in dispute. CP theory: Agent and Procedural CPs, and any other CP that tests the desirability of the plan as presented in its text, are fine with me. Given what I have said about theory above I am hoping that it will prompt you to address conditionality within that framework. I could be persuaded to reject multiple conditional cps on the ground that they create a failure in argumentative reciprocity more easily than I would be persuaded that “it is a strat skew”. The difference may seem semantic, but is actually a significant one (are abuse arguments ever falsifiable?). K: I want a real alternative. That means a CP that doesn’t link to the K, or a new epistemological system with a coherent alternative text. Rejection of the aff doesn’t generate uniqueness for any epistemological system that I know of. If you say that it does, I will say you are a liar.

Sidenote, I hate the politics disad. It is intrinsic, in most cases, but it is still usually stupid.