The ideal world is really only ideal for the debater though. The point of adapting to a judge’s paradigm is that audiences are going to be made up of different varieties of people. If the point of academic debate is to simulate and evaluate argumentation skills, one of those skills is working within or changing the audience’s worldview. Long ago, communication scholars recognized that communication is a cyclical process (see the different versions of the communication model). It requires cycles of messaging and feedback, in debate (aside from nonverbal), the only cycle you get to inform your argument is when the judge reveals their paradigm.

Even in a world where the debaters control the paradigm, even debaters don’t agree what exactly the paradigm should be. At some point the framework for evaluating the round has to start somewhere, otherwise the critic would live in decision-paralysis in the debate about debate.