Ethos

The first distinction we have to make when addressing the question “when does the Affirmative win” is between a normative answer and a positive answer. A normative answer establishes a rule-like standard that establishes when an Affirmative should win, but the rule isn’t necessarily fulfilled. On the other hand, the positive response would establish rule that describes the situation as it is. It’s much more scientific than it is ethical, and if the rule is absolute, then it cannot be broken (even if someone wants to).

My answer to your question is a positive answer. I wish to describe how a judge actually operates, not how they should operate (though incidentally, a positive response can generally subsume a normative one since if the judge can only act a certain way, coming up with an alternative is pointless).

Here’s my answer: a judge votes for the Affirmative team when the act of voting Affirmative manifests more good than harm according to their relative calculus. The judge makes a decision based on the impact calculus of his act of voting, weighing both post-fiat and pre-fiat implications. The debaters themselves have the ability to influence this calculus via their argumentation, which may include framework and theory analysis that may urge the judge to place more or less weight on certain impacts in the round.

This is the best way of thinking about what a judge is doing when he assumes the role of judge.

First, it can explain every other possible framework that a judge might use to come to a decision (stock issues, policymaker, tabula rasa, or even just straight up team bias). Each of these different paradigms consist of a relative weighting mix of pre- or post-fiat impacts. For example, it might not be intuitive that a stock issues judge is weighing impacts, but they actually are. The stock issues judge has an arbitrary stock issue threshold in his own mind that must be met by an Affirmative before the Affirmative can warrant the ballot. But another way of saying this is that the judge believes that the educational impacts of allowing an affirmative that does NOT meet these thresholds to win outweighs any possible alternative benefit. The judge is doing a pre-fiat impact calculus. Now, this isn’t to saw that a debater can’t change that outlook via their argumentation (for example, the Aff might have a very well-warranted reason why the judge should evaluate the round solely on the net-benefit post=fiat impact their policy creates. This is true for each of the above paradigms: the judge votes aff when the Affirmative shows that both the pre- and post-fiat impacts of voting affirmative outweigh any costs. Some judges have relative weights that they establish on different arguments that come from outside the round, but the process of decision making is always the same.

Second, this outlook has an extraordinary amount of academic depth and writing behind it, drawing from works in economics, philosophy, and sociology. The framework isn’t just something that I came up with: it’s called praxeology. Ludwig von Mises, 20th century Austrian philosopher/economist, came up with this field of study, which he defined as the science of human action. His goal was to develop a positivist description of how a human being makes decisions and chooses between alternatives, without saying anything about his relative goals or ends which guide his action. If you know anything about Kant, the categories of experience (space, time, etc) greatly influenced Mises’ thinking about human action. He concluded that human action is an additional category of experience (much akin to Kant), in which the human being necessarily **must** make decisions based on the relative costs and benefits of employing the resources at his disposal. Many people get praxaeology wrong by characterizing it as dehumanizing, relegating the human being to the existence of a “utility calculator.” But Mises’ outlook is exactly the opposite: the human being frequently makes mistakes based on his lack of knowledge regarding the world. The world around us is constantly changing and shifting, and the human process of learning is one of trial and error. That’s why the market is so essential for dispersing information because it allows humans to fail and learn.

Mises’ work aside, hundreds of other thinkers also influence this view. Most Austrian economists (Schumpeter, Hayek, Rothbard, etc) have built this idea into a cogent and theoretically sound framework for looking at reality. I think that the way we look at judging decisions shouldn’t just be something we come up with willy-nilly. It should be able to relate to academic discussion and traditions that have been refined over hundreds of years.

Lastly, I think it’s the most educational. Though I can talk about this on the podcast more in-depth, this explanation is long enough, haha.

Many people like to say that to win the debate, the affirmative must uphold the resolution/prove it true. However, in my opinion this is only true in theory, not necessarily in practice.

To illustrate this, imagine a round where the affirmative upholds the resolution, but does so by speaking at a rate that the judge can't understand them. Or, imagine a round where the negative disproves the resolution, but constantly insults their opponent and makes crude remarks to the judge. In these circumstances, while the affirmative ought to win or lose the round (in theory) because they did/didn't uphold the resolution, in actuality it is highly unlikely that this standard would still apply. As another example, imagine for a moment a judge that disagrees with your standard for wins and losses... what if they don't think the round is decided based on whether or not the affirmative upholds the resolution? With that in mind, I would say that ultimately, upholding the resolution is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the affirmative to win the round.

Where does this lead us? If not all judges use the same standard, and if upholding any standard doesn't automatically mean you will win, how on earth are we supposed to know how to debate? Well, here is my answer to the question (finally): The affirmative team wins the debate round when they persuade the judge that the judges' standard has been met. Before any round starts, it is the debaters' job to learn the standard that the judge uses to evaluate the round. And then, they must persuade the judge that this standard has been met. The key word here is persuasion: with no objective standard, the winner of the round is ultimately the team that is most convincing to the judge.

Note: Alternatively, the debaters can attempt to persuade the judge that there is a better way to evaluate the round, and may convince them to adopt that standard.

“The affirmative should win if they convince the judge that the audience and the debaters are better off if the judge votes affirmative.

Conversely, the negative should win if they convince the judge that the audience and the debaters are better off if the judge votes negative.”

...

“There is no one true debate theory, waiting to be found. Rather, we should choose rules that benefit the audience and the debaters, just like we choose rules that benefit the figure skating audience while trying to minimize the danger to the skaters.”

...

“When we use phrases like "the aff plan is topical", "the affirmative must do X" we obscure the truth of the matter: there is no "is" or "must," only what should or ought be.

I am a plancentrist, rather than a rezcentrist. I think we should prioritize the quality of the debate round over appeals to logical consistency.”