Section 2: Common Responses 

Here are a couple common ways you can respond to your opponent’s argument when giving a rebuttal! :)

To explain most arguments, I’ll be using a hegemony disadvantage, which argues that by implementing the affirmative policy, we will decrease hegemony and trigger impacts such as escalation or decreasing peace.

Uniqueness / Inherency

Uniqueness and inherency are stock issues for a reason the resolution is good or bad, and are incredibly similar. Uniqueness means that the harm the contention seeks to resolve is an issue today, and inherency identifies problems with the status quo that resolve policy or resolutional action to resolve.

Examples

“Hegemony is high now” provides uniqueness for a contention which argues decreasing hegemony is harmful by proving that currently, hegemony is strong and changing it would be harmful.

“Current zoning laws prevent affordable housing” provides inherency for a contention which argues for a retraction of zoning laws or an increase in other methods of achieving affordable housing. By identifying that there is a current barrier to affordable housing, it proves that the resolution action is necessary to break this down or overcome it.

Why It Matters

If you can point out that your opponents arguments are nonunique or not inherent to the status quo, you can prove that the impacts will either resolve themselves, or be triggered no matter what, meaning there is little to no comparative difference between the affirmative and negative world.

This can look like saying that global hegemony is decreasing, or that zoning laws are actively being retracted in the status quo, proving that the resolution does not change the outcome of the link story or resulting impacts.

Links

Usually the most contestable part of an argument, links provide justifications for why the resolution results in the impacts, and are often bunched together to form a “link chain.” By disproving any one link, you break the chain, and prove the impact does not occur. However, you should always respond to as many links as possible.

Links within a chain or that link to arguments internal to the contention are called “internal links,” or “i-links,” and all arguments here apply to them as well.

No Link

A no link argues that the warrant of the link does not result in the impact. This can mean either that the resolution does not result in the impact the link claims, or if it is an internal link, their own impacts do not result in the impacts that the link claims they do.

For example, you could claim that the resolution does not result in the decrease of hegemony, disproving the link to resolutional action.

Or, you could argue that decreased hegemony does not result in the impacts your opponent has presented, such as escalation, meaning that there is no internal link story between decreasing hegemony and the impacts of the contention.

Either way, link defense will result in you proving that the link has less likelihood of triggering the impacts it claims.

Link Turn

A link turn argues that the impact of the link happens the other way round, thus you make the contention better rather than worse.

For example, you could claim that the resolution results in the INCREASE of hegemony, and thus the contention which believes the resolution results in its decrease is inverted, and thus your opponent’s world is comparatively worse, with lower hegemony.

Impacts

Impact Defense

Impact defense argues that the impact scenario does not result in as severe of impacts as your opponent claims, such as that the escalation triggered by a decrease in hegemony does not cause an immense amount of harm, or that an increase in climate change would not result in extinction or the harms your opponent presents.

Impact Turns

Impact turns invert the value of an impact such that triggering the impact is good rather than bad. This is done such that linking in to the contention is actually good, because triggering its impacts is positive.

Be careful to not double turn yourself here! If you already made a link turn, then an impact turn would mean that you have turned the turn, and given your opponent offense rather than yourself.

The most common examples include wipeout, which argues that extinction is good because it prevents future mass suffering, or spark, which claims nuclear war would be good because it would prevent the development of an AI which causes extinction or infinite suffering.

For our hegemony example, you would likely say that hegemony is bad, or that the resulting impacts of hegemony rising are bad, such as increased conflict.

Section 3: Comparing Two Worlds 

Round Mechanics

Generally, to maintain an argument through the duration of a round, it needs to be extended in every speech from the AC to the 2AR for the affirmative debater and in the NR and 2NR for the negative debater. To put it simply, your job is to create a clean and impactful narrative that persists through ALL speeches--all important carded evidence should be clearly mentioned.

What happens if you forget to extend an argument? While not a guarantee, most experienced debaters will notice the mistake and capitalize on it. This is called a “dropped argument” and it terminates in the assumption that all arguments your opponent made on that argument are true. For fairly obvious reasons, you do not want the judge to assume everything your opponent said is true, so it’s important that at the least you try to extend all “round-winning” arguments.

Weighing

Let’s tie things back to the 25-26 LD resolution--is the possession of nukes immoral? Well, pretend you’re the judge for a second: it’s the end of the round, and there are two arguments left on the flow. The affirmative has won that nuclear weapons will cause human extinction. The negative has won that without nukes, there will be bioweapons, and bioweapons will cause human extinction. Who wins?

This example does a good job demonstrating the importance of weighing, because mechanically, both positions terminate in the same impact scenario. Truly, if the debaters in such a round gave no weighing arguments, it would be a functional stalemate, and judge intervention would likely be necessary to determine the round’s winner if these truly were the only remaining impact scenarios.

So how do you weigh? Generally, weighing is a claim that explains why one argument is more important or less important than another. Let’s go back to Nukes. It is likely reasonable that nuclear war would be able to happen faster than disease-driven extinction because we already have nuclear tech. It is also reasonable to assume nuclear war is more probable, because in the squo we already could deploy weapons and war with each other should the great powers deem that course of action to be reasonable. So, tell your judge that! In round it could be explained as simply as, “Nuclear war outweighs on probability because nuclear tech already exists in the squo and the neg’s impact scenario is speculative, and nuclear war outweighs on timeframe because it would take less time to deploy already existing nuclear weapons than to develop arsenols of bioweapons for deployment. Because you buy, then, that nuclear weapons produce a more devastating world, you vote aff.”

So, what types of weighing are there?

The Types

Magnitude

Magnitude, out of all weighing mechanisms, is likely the simplest to understand. It asks the judge, how bad or how good are the given impact scenarios. Look again to nukes (yes… the examples are following quite the trend) if you could prove that, for instance, biological warfare could end the human race, but nukes could not, then that is a higher magnitude impact scenario, and if you win that, you likely win the round. 

Scope

In many ways, scope is very similar to magnitude. It seeks to look at how big the impact scenario is, but unlike magnitude which looks at the impact in every respect, scope narrows it down to a single question. How many are affected? Very important note here, a lot of times more people being affected by someone, directly correlates to higher magnitude (e.g. ten people dying is higher in magnitude than three people dying). Take advantage of this for word economy, you can say “our impact scenario outweighs on scope and magnitude because it produces greater suffering for a greater number of people”

Reversability

In analyzing the round, the reversibility of an action is incredibly important to take into account. If some great harm can easily and quickly be undone, then that makes it less of a threat than a lower magnitude impact scenario that can never be undone. Let’s talk about nukes and bioweapons, you can never undrop a bomb, but you can create vaccines to unspread a disease, in this case, you can present bioweapons as the less reversible event, and by extension, the less preferable impact scenario. 

Time-Frame

Time frame is another relatively simple means of weighing, it simply asks: how long until this will happen and how long will it last? The argument is strong because if an event will occur a long time down the future and happen over a long period of time, it’s generally easier to prevent, but if something occurs soon and is over quickly, it's hard to prevent. There are also situations where long duration impact scenarios are bad rather than good, take a famine for example. 

Probability

Probability evaluates an impact based on the likelihood that it occurs, for favorable impact scenarios it tells the judge we’re more likely to get one good thing than another. For example, imagine a resolution that gives the affirmative world a 75% chance of getting a billion dollars donated to impoverished communities, while the negative has a 50% chance of getting them two billion. Weighing on probability errs aff because 75%>50%. The opposite is true of harmful impact scenarios. If there’s a 50% chance I stub my toe and a 10% chance of nuclear war, weighing on probability asks the judge to vote against me stubbing my toe, because that’s the most likely harm in the round.

Synthesis

Looking at the mechanics of extension and weighing, as well as the different ways you can weigh, there are a couple of things that come together to create an overall strategy. 

Affirmative

Honestly, affirming can be brutal. Seriously, that four minute 1AR shows no mercy to debaters who haven’t mastered word economy. So managing the clock while extending and weighing is critical. Some strategy then emerges. First, do not try to weigh every argument in every possible way, we give the five most common ways you can weigh, if you spend ten seconds on each, that’s a minute wasted, and that’s a generous assumption. Rather, spend your 1AR extending and defending your case, go onto the negative constructive, and then, with your remaining time, weigh the highest aff impact against the highest neg impact. The more time you have left, the more you should weigh, treat each argument as though it's on a list of importance, work your way from the top down, prioritizing weighing major impacts.

In the 2AR take what you’ve set up in the 1AR and run with it, here you simplify flow to the major arguments, and continue emphasizing why your most important arguments beat theirs. 

Negative

Assuming the negative follows the three:four minute standard (3 minute constructive 4 minute rebuttal, or the inverse) you should have plenty of time to get into some major weighing, weave it into your normal turn and mitigation based responses and you should be more than prepared to go into the 2NR strong.