Potential Abuse / Voter Issue

xD ok...Starting on FWK/Definitions, I have a few things to add/say: 1. We should also include policy debate, 3 reasons:A. Fairness - I debate policy, you debate LD: including both means we're evenB. Accuracy - LD doesn't include all theory; things like ASPEC aren't exactly at the forefrontC. It doesn’t take any ground away – it’s not like it’s harder for you to win if we consider CX too 2. Potential abuse should not be considered "corrupt" nor a “custom”, rather some aspect of a performance a debater uses (be it argumentation, presumption, assumption, or use of “irony”, ect.) which makes a debate worse, AS DEFINED by the debaters in the round. This is not only more accurate but also more fair. There are no definite standards for a debate, that’s why we have a “standard(s)” section in theory shells. 3. Defensive voters – sometimes a voter just means “don’t evaluate this argument”. Onto my “case” (lol) 1. Potential abuse is key to have absolute value – only debating about in-round is subjective and not accurate for determining standards or voters Jake (no last name given), 4/32011 (“Does "Potential Abuse" Matter? (Even a little bit?)”, Fantasy Debate, http://fantasydebate.com...)//sbhags I don’t like this example because it is such an awful argument. Deontology does not assume truth-testing, and even if it did assume truth-testing, it would not necessarily be a version of truth-testing that justified running a prioris. (If you disagree with any of these claims, say so in a comment and I’ll elaborate.) So, here are a few other examples: Topicality. A is debating B. A runs a case on a topic from last year. A never debated that topic, but B won every tournament on that topic and is even better prepared to debate A’s case than she would be to debate a topical one. (Suppose there is no official rule requiring topical advocacies.) Consult. A is debating B. A runs a counter-plan that defends the exact same thing as B’s advocacy, but only after prior binding consultation with every solvency advocate in B’s case. B happens to have done extensive research on her solvency advocates and has good evidence that the consultation would be very bad. Theft. A is debating B. A steals a plan from B’s expando before the debate. Unbeknownst to A, B wrote the plan for target practice, and she has solid, extensive answers to the plan. B did not have answers to any other case on the topic. Timer. A is debating B. A is the only one timing, and he speaks for a minute past the time expires in one of his speeches. But he accidentally spends that minute making arguments for why B should win. (Suppose it is the last round at the tournament and nobody else at the tournament is harmed by the extra length of the round.)We could construct many other, similar examples by imagining cases where someone does something that seems unfair but the other debater is not disadvantaged by the unfair act. Wade’s view would imply that A does nothing wrong because he does not run any position that disadvantages B in this debate. Perhaps his act justifies other people doing things that would disadvantage other people in future debates. But “debaters should never be held accountable for positions that they do not run.” I don’t plan on going through each of the above examples to explain why A’s strategy is nevertheless wrong. (We can talk about the individual cases in the comments section of this post.) But the general story is that, if theory is not about determining and enforcing the rules, then it becomes suspiciously ad hoc. It is just a matter of luck that A’s strategy does not cause in-round abuse. And we should minimize the role of luck in influencing our evaluations of fairness (and other moral concepts). For more discussion on the problem of moral luck, see Thomas Nagel’s “Moral Luck” in Mortal Questions (Cambridge, 1979). To summarize, if we don’t consider the potential for an action to be bad, then debaters can get away with being super abusive so long as their facing a good team 2. This has another implication – not considering potential abuse makes debate regressive; it encourages teams to get as close to voters as they can and then use the other team against themselves to justify abuse. We once (legit) has a school say to us “oh don’t consider topicality, their school blocks all this out, it’s not like they aren’t ready”. Just because a team has answers to an affirmative doesn’t mean that they can’t run theory; potential abuse is key to engage teams at multiple levels 3. Potential abuse PROVES an action is bad – if a team can do that, then the judge should punish them; that achieves solvency out of round, which comes before all else 4. Defensive voters – even if a team doesn’t get rejected, showing the potential for them to be prevents them from running bad arguments – it’s “wards them off”