It should not be possible to have a shared burden of proof in a debate

I'm very glad to be debating against such an excellent debater. Stephen has made a number of pertinant refutations that I'll be glad to deal with now. Unfortunately most of it has been definitional challenge, to distract both from my argument and from the meaning of the resolution. If I may cite from Andrew's article that con sourced last round: "Definition debates should be avoided wherever possible. They make a mockery of what debating seeks to achieve." I agree entirely, so I'm not going to respond in great detail.DefinitionsCon quibbles about some of these so I'll answer this first. First he says that this debate should include situations where there is a partitioned burden of proof, for instance, one side has 70% of the burden, the other has 30%. To be honest I left that out of the debate because I don't think anybody knows what that actually means. Cases are either substantiated or not substantiated, so how can you tell if a case is sufficiently substantiated to meet the 70% or 30% threshold? It just turns all of debating into a subjective guessing game.Having debated in British Parliamentry for a very long time, and won several tournaments held in that style here in Auckland, I can assure you that there are only two teams representing opposing views on the motion - government and opposition. The difference is that in BP debating each of these is further subdivided into two teams - opening and closing. Both present a different case for the same position, but no engagement happens between the government teams, or the opposition teams. The only engagement in BP is between the government and the opposition. All four teams then have their placings determined by an adjudicator in more or less the same way as a two-on-two debate. So BP is covered by the resolution.Con's caseCon case is that in EYP things are judged according to who was the most influential in shaping the resolution. That's because EYP is judged on balance, not with burdens of proof. Burdens of proof are used to make points, where "burden of proof" is EVP's byword for analysis or justification (another way the term is being abused of late - a "burden of proof" is something you need to justify to win a debate, not to make a point), but the debate itself does not have a clear burden attached. If you refer back to my previous round, I specifically stated that debates without burdens of proof attached are beyond the scope of this debate in round one. The whole point of the event is to reach consensus on as many points as possible - whoever gets the most agreement essentially wins, because "shaping the resolution" is really just a silly way of saying "getting others to agree to your counter-model related to the resolution". In a formal debate with burdens of proof, it is normal for teams to agree on absolutely nothing or very little, and yet still win.I further contest that EYP does not always necessarily have decisive outcomes, because members are allowed to abstain from voting in many circumstances. Finally there is no formal requirement for EYP to be judged objectively, though this is a sort of unwritten rule. The point is that EYP is not really what this debate's about - EYP is more like a forum than a formal, competitive debate.My caseThe reason why a tautology is not accepted in debating is that the affirmative team must actually defend the resolution. There is an assumption in debating that every motion is debatable, or else it wouldn't have been set as a debate topic. Therefore, a team that makes a tautological argument may be convincing that their tautology is correct, but thoroughly unconvincing that the actual motion is correct, because a motion is never a tautology. Running a tautology is one way a team can fail their burden of proof - this does not make the burden of proof un-necessary. Con needs to show the causal link to substantiate this argument.On my opponent's example motion, pro does have all the burden of proof. Imagine if pro stood up and talked about the dangers of cancer, and con stood up talking about the benefits of Seagate hard drives - who would win? Obviously, con, because pro had to bring the claim that nuclear is bad, and wind is good. Therefore pro is in fact the one with the burden of proof. If pro had done this, con could then choose to make pro fail their burden by defending nuclear, attacking wind energy, OR both - even if con ran a counter-model for Japan (which would be un-necessary) pro would still have the burden of proof for the debate. If pro meets their burden to show that nuclear sucks and wind is awesome (for the country of Japan) then they win. If they do not, then con wins. This was not justified any further by con so I'll leave it there.The point of my argument is to show that equal burdens of proof undermines the notion that every debate has a decisive outcome. Con is yet to properly address this point. I'll leave it for round three. Good luck.