Tournament: Harvard | Round: 7 | Opponent: Lake Highland Prep AV | Judge: Sam Anderson
Counterinterp: affs should be able to specify
Counterstandard: in depth education – specification allows nuanced discussions of the topic in certain instances – the tva doesn’t solve – it would mean that pics and massive disads always beat the aff because the 1nc can read link walls we’ll never be able to line by line and there are infinite ways to pic out of a tiny portion of the aff
Counterstandard: scenario planning – policymakers consider instances of policy options, not blanket solutions – specification is key to real world education and preparation to be a policymaker – this internal link turns education
Pragmatics should come before semantics --
A portable skills – policymakers consider pragmatic policy options not semantic distinctions – debates that center around semantic distinctions don’t prepare us to have real policy discussions – this internal link turns education and is a reason to affirm – your model of debate kills our ability to gain portable skills from debate which means schools stop funding it – that’s bad for debate as a whole
B common use – everyone uses pragmatic definitions in daily life – this means you should prefer them in debate – it’s key to fairness and accessibility – not everyone has the resources to understand complex grammar rules and your reliance on them excludes low resource and ESL debaters
A2 precision – precision is arbitrary – everyone interprets words a little differently which means any attempts at being precise fail because there’s always room for another interpretation. AND nebel has no warrants for why his norm should be prescribed as the best norm
A2 limits – your interp doesn’t solve for limits – even with wholeres affs, there’s infinite theories of power that affirm, different solvency advocates, methods, mechanisms, and definitions of LAWs. Exploding limits is inevitable – we should at least set topicality norms in a way that allows substantive discussion.
A2 ground – specification is better for ground – you know from the start what we defend. Shifty wholeres affs that change their method or mechanism halfway through the 1ar are infinitely worse because they moot all 1nc offense. Our model of debate is net better – even if they win some marginal abuse story, we’re still better than the alternative
Yes rvi –
a reciprocity – it’s key to reciprocal ballot access – T being a zero risk issue for the neg means they can read 15 untrue shells and spread out the 1ar and then go for whatever tiny disad or case turn we undercover
b timeskew – 1ar is too short to cover all 1nc positions and win offense on each flow – 1ar rvis are key to helping the aff uplayer
c deterrence – yes rvis sets a norm of deterring bad shells. If the shell is true and the abuse is real, they should just win the shell