My opponent is a better or at the very least equal debater with all factors combined.

In my opponents observation he states that he will be debating my resolution with mere possibility. Unfortunately my opponent has assumed that mere possibility in some way or another negates my resolution. This is a rather fallacious statement; possibility is not on the same chart with certainty and they are not in any way mutually exclusive. For instance, if I look out my window in the morning and happen to notice two squirrels I might say, "Wow that squirrel might be bigger than the other. " Obviously this statement urges a mere possibility but it doesn't change the fact that if I caught the two squirrels then one would indeed be one of three things: Larger, the same size, or smaller than the other squirrel. The fact that my opponent in this case urges mere possibility does not change the fact that one of us is a greater debater than the other. My opponent urging mere possibility only gives credit to the fact that he is not certain at this time. My opponent after his opening statement goes on to show why it is more likely that I am actually the better debate. I will now show how each and every one of his statements is false beginning with his arguments concerning policy debate: 1. Spreading. He states that spreading is one reason why CX (Policy debate) is better than LD (Lincoln Douglas debate). His main reason for this being that it forces debaters to think critically in a short period of time; this is not true. Spreading is a strategy in policy debate, the goal being to spread your opponents so thin that they cannot answer to all of your arguments. This is where the term "spreading" comes from. The strategy works like this: a. The affirmative gets up and reads their case in 8 minutes. b. The negative gets up and reads as many disadvantages, counterplans, Topicalities, and kritiks as they can possibly read in 8 minutes. c. The affirmative gets up and refutes these arguments with 8 minutes. d. The negative gets up and reads all new things as fast as possible on the case in 8 minutes; this is the begin of the spread. e. The other negative speaker gets up in his first rebuttal and refutes the arguments made in step c. This is a 5 minutes speech. d. Now the affirmative speaker must stand up and respond to 13 minutes of argumentation in his 5 minutes speech. This is nearly impossible if the 2nd negative has put many points on the flow. e. Finally the negative speaker stands up in his final rebuttal and points out all the points that the affirmative inevitably dropped. Thus the debate round is won simply by forcing your opponent to drop arguments. This is bad in two ways. A). It doesn't force debaters to think critically it just forces them to read quickly. In this form of debating it is the debater who talks the quickest that wins. B. It moots the entire point of debate, to just talk very quickly and then point out what your opponent didn't cover is not truly debate at all. Thus LD is actually a more beneficial form of debate due to CX's reliance on spreading. 2. My opponents second point is simply that CX debate has a more demanding research burden. This is actually rather untrue. CX debate research is made easy by things like "google news alerts" where you can simply type your year long topic in and they will send you alerts when the most current articles show up. LD topics on the other hand change every month and must be re-researched. Secondly the research burden in CX counts for nothing. All a debater has to do is cut the card and read it as quickly as possible. A debater in CX doesn't even have to understand the card he/she is reading. In Ld on the other hand debaters have to, like my opponent says, "winning mostly boils down to how well one's reasoning sounds when in the eyes of most judges. " Use reasoning. LD debaters actually have to reason, where as CX debaters speed read. Finally my own piece of offense. LDers actually become more educated because the topic changes once a month where as the CX topic stays all year. LDers cover a wide variety of moral issues that have an every day application to the lives of an average American. LD is by far more rounded. Onto my opponents, "Definitions of debate" argument. He attempts to argue that he did not always argue reasonably in official debate tournaments and this makes him a worse debater. Sadly this statement is irrelevant to our current debate and actually the reason I will be proven the worse debater. Irrelevant: My opponent states that he broke as many rules as he possibly could in debate without getting caught. However this has no bearing in the status quo as my opponent so gracefully states, "Granted, I don't ever intend to do this on debate. org" Thus we can consider my opponent to be reformed. Reason it proves me worse: If we look to my profile it states quite clearly, "The fact that I consider debate to be a game permits me a moral leeway that allows me to advocate any position. " When my opponent described his experiences in LD I could not help but have nostalgic memories of my own experience. I too would determine if the Judge was a layman and then impose as many ludicrous rules and illogical fallacies as I possibly could on my opponent. However there remains a difference between Logical and I, where as he as stopped such strategies online I have continued to use them. I will commonly accuse opponents of not upholding burdens of proof where non-exist, advocate sound but faulty ideas to lay voters, and even force my opponent to play by my own rules where none should exist. My moral leeway makes me an occasionally slimy and thereby worse debater. Finally, my own point of offense. Where as I have only done 29 debates on debate. org my opponent has done 35. Where as I have only done 5 official high school tournaments my opponent has done a whole years worth. Where as I have done no mock trial my opponent has done some. Where as I have done CX my opponent has done LD. All these factors combine to make my opponent the far more experienced debater, this experience is often reflected in his debating style. This brings me to my opponents final contention in which he attempts to prove that the "all factors combined" part of the resolution makes it impossible for me to win. He says quite clearly that I can never know all the factors and thereby can never win. However it is not necessary for me to know all the factors in order to be able to prove my opponent a better debater. For example if I was to prove that my squirrel from earlier was a larger squirrel with all factors combined I would not need to know its DNA sequences to be able to determine such. The same is true here, the phrase "all factors combined" was simply inserted so that any factors brought into the debate could be considered. It could have just as easily been replaced with the word, "overall. " Another instance, if I was to prove that the squirrel was mostly brown with all factors combined I would not need to see the entire squirrel to determine this, but simply I would need to see at least 50% of the squirrel being brown. Thus if its entire legs, back and head were brown I would need no knowledge of its stomach to prove it brown. While there are many factors that could have made my opponent a better debater in the past I simply have to use the major factors in order to prove that he is a better debater now. The major factors in this case would be our past experience in debate coupled with our current debate. org usage. I offer my opponent to bring in other major factors that have influenced him as a debater but until he can do this the fact stands that he is indeed a better debater than I.