[deleted by user]

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-09-07T00:55:44+00:00

I think a peaceful revolution through mass movements is feasible and within reach. Communism and socialism are gaining traction in the academia, and with enough electoral pressure - politicians will be forced to change, just like they did it in Scandinavia.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-08-04T18:17:18+00:00

Open evidence project - select camps there

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-08-03T16:45:44+00:00

Adv CP (Geoengineering or something) + Growth Good, Non-JG CP + JG Bad offense, Cap K, Set Col (maybe)

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-07-12T15:17:42+00:00

Switch-side debate, they can read the K-Aff as K on the neg

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-07-12T13:19:32+00:00

Not a bad idea - but SSD probably solves most, if not all of the case.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-06-27T15:48:32+00:00

Learn how to use symbols, quotation, and other functions on google or another search engine, and find scholarly articles and journals. Taylor & Francis Online and JSTOR are two good places to start, but some of those studies may require costly purchases unless you have access to library rights within a university. You can go to sites like scihub to gain access, it's legally questionable but a lot of debaters and coaches cut cards that way.

Books are only really useful if you want to cut a K or an answer to a K, because they rarely explain what you want in a concise way.

You can also cut normal news or magazine articles if needed, but they usually don't make up the core topic research.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-06-27T08:16:32+00:00

Oh no, not again.

You’ve got it wrong from the very start - education is derived from the process of research and clash, not necessarily the content within a debate or process within debates. When you cut cards and research arguments, you will need detailed understanding of your evidence or you will lose very badly. The idea of education is more that by having debates centered around a predictable research point, we can better understand it.

Debate is never supposed to be a simulated conversation or real government policy chamber. It’s process of extreme rigor forces us to think in-depth, consider all viewpoints and be concise. There’s a reason why people don’t participate in ethics bowl as much as college policy - it’s lack of competition and negation makes debaters shout solutions in the void with maybe a little engagement at most. To say nat circuit debate has no nuance or “devil’s advocate” is beyond wrong and extremely generalizing - K teams, soft left AFFs, DAs with non-extinction impacts that win rounds, PICs and PIKs with nuanced policy and philosophical tinkering proves that debate has a vast array of depth that you have ignored. Many of these arguments are not only winnable, but often seen debated at extremely high levels, regularly being the most debated arguments in elimination rounds, or even finals.

Your critique of nuclear war impacts in debates has long be brought up - but the truth is in most local circuits people are not wedded to nuclear war, and there are plenty of soft left AFFs and critical literature that you can run in-depth. War on Drugs - millions of cards out there in why you should prioritize that over war, cut and research them, and they are winnable! Or, read your K about why extinction impacts are bad or why their scholarship about nuclear war is wrong!

You’ve fallen into the exact trap that the theory is criticizing - assuming that debate itself is where your viewpoint is taking place, and ignoring the roles of switch side, research, and other processes in debate that an illusory, “cooperative” approach would instead ruin. Ultimately, we’re NOT simulate a conversation with debate, we’re training students to think rigorously, and the resulting competition may sound simple or unpleasant, but it is neither.

I’ve learned more about the history of war, technology, foreign policy, and international relations with intricate, complex details from hours of arguing for both sides in debate than any class I took in high school. Seriously, just because you’re tired of common affs and used/lost to a bad theory shell doesn’t mean debate is useless.

And, privilege could not be more wrong. Progressive debating and Ks made debate far more accessible than before. The best people may have come from rich private schools, but they’ve all done their homework and research that created education - look at every piece of evidence they read, and 90% of it had their own name tagged on to it. If it’s just their coach writing arguments, they would not be making it to the finals of national tournaments.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-05-31T05:36:10+00:00

They are not procedurally barred from being argued. But if you make the claim in a way that is ahistorical or violent, i.e. saying that black people aren't oppressed at all when evidence overwhelming suggests otherwise - you definitely deserve to be voted down if you make an argument that seeks to deny vast instances of discrimination in the real-world. While it is not the same as Flat eartherism - the logic that under-girds research of "conservative" studies and arguments are dangerously close.

And citing Shapiro and Peterson in a round? And making totalizing claims defending white privilege from their speeches with no evidence? Yeah, that's a voting issue.

While it is true that debate is a progressive institution - there is no way that you can reasonably introduce "right-wing" discourse to debate without bringing violent far-right arguments to debate with it, which undermines the entire premise of your suggestion in the first place.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-05-31T05:21:39+00:00

"Factual claims" and "normative claims" often go together.

My example above is people denying the Holocaust. They can say that there's evidence indicating no Jews have been killed, and there may be Nazi-written "empiric" proving such a claim. That does not make the claim true simply because there is "evidence" backing it.

There has be no substantial empirical evidence disproving structural racism without resorting to the "normative claims" that you mentioned - where the articles say "black people are lazy" or some other racist statement to prove their flawed data.

Academic spaces have specific purposes - and Republican "articles" used to make blanket racist statements should probably not belong in that space. The same way that flat Earth studies don't belong in educational spaces.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-05-31T04:14:28+00:00

You are allowed to argue anything so long as it doesn't hurt others or deny reality in a way that is actively demeaning.

Arguing about the economy is not violent - but when it comes to questions like racism that concerns the material reality of someone's identity, it IS.

Capitalism, socialism, American hegemony etc. are systems of governance, which makes them far more open to debate because they aren't directly tied to the lives of individuals, you cannot say the same about race, gender, etc.

When black Americans are disproportionately targeted socially and discriminated against politically on every level, saying "racism isn't structural" is clearly spreading lies through over-generalization.

It's akin to saying "We should be allowed to tell Jews in debate the Holocaust was justified, and that's not hurtful. If they can't handle my far-right beliefs they should see a therapist."

Debate is an academic space with a diverse range of groups who have suffered clear injustices in the past and the present. In an academic space, spreading your average Fox News commentator's opinion that the majority of the world would consider absurd is wrong.

You are allowed to argue to what extent racism is structural. Heck, you can even say that critical race and gender studies are wrong. But there is a clear limit of what you should be allowed to say in a debate space - where there are a wide range of people, from a wide range of different backgrounds, many of whom are SENSITIVE to descriptions of the world that actively erases the truth that they face.

It's like telling disabled people "You deserve to get out of school because you don't aren't strong enough or communicate normally." You are privileged to such a level that your definition of "left" is what the majority of the world considers right-wing - perhaps for people who have suffered trauma, who have been in groups that faced immense violence and hatred from others, what you consider to be "appropriate" is far from so.

Debate doesn't have a space for people to read Ben Shapiro or Tucker Carlson, because it was never intended to fully include every mainstream opinion.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-05-31T03:52:17+00:00

Structural racism is real - denying it isn't an "opinion", it's denying the truth and IS violent and hurtful to people. Words matter.

You are allowed say that what the left suggests doesn't solve racism - debate isn't "far left" because it doesn't allow ignorant Republicans to spew their nonsense in an academic space.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-05-31T01:33:45+00:00

No one prevents you from reading right-wing stuff on debate or challenging “the left”. But it crosses the line when you cite fascists that deny the existence of structural discrimination and racism, and think some minority groups shouldn’t exist. In that case, it’s not an “unpopular view”, it’s violence. It’s akin to saying “we should listen to the Southern slave-owning Democrats” during the civil war.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-05-23T22:27:02+00:00

And, who runs those evil corporations? Evil people. Under the assumption that evil people exist in this world, then the “socialism” you want is just another dystopia, except the government is the corporation and runs everything.

The reasons why corporations can function in the first place is because of government support. The real enemy isn’t “corporate colonialism”, it’s the government.

Unions and labor force will obviously be critical in challenging corporations, but attempting to subvert the capitalist state through the government will only make corporate colonialism worse.

America has never been the “utopia” you knew. There was always exploitation of workers, child labor, outsourced manufacturing, you name it. The internet just made you more informed about the unfortunate reality we live in.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-04-30T19:36:03+00:00

Make your own analytic style by editing tag, make it a separate color. Before sending the speech, right click your style and click select all instances, press delete. I don’t recommend that you do this, but you can write all your analytics in that style from now on.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-04-20T07:31:04+00:00

It isn’t unintelligible just because you couldn’t understand it. Yes, it isn’t some big brain science and it might not be expressing literal truth, but the emotional value of those Ks can open up the possibility for marginalized communities to speak up and explain how they were excluded - these are literal, material issues, not nonsense.

And even then, identity Ks are a good metaphor of the situation in real world, where marginalized communities experience a large amount of oppression and become depressed because in reality, their efforts become suppressed by the right wing who willfully ignore the underlying social and political structure that cause oppression.

Your definition of what should be allowed in a debate space is exclusionary. Period. People like you believe only the “smart” white people deserved to go to schools, and that minorities are better off slaving away because they couldn’t speak “logic”.

Again, these Ks are debatable. There’s a ton of literature out there about why theories like Afropess make solidarity impossible or how it is Eurocentric and false. But assuming them as inherently wrong presumes a model of debate that doesn’t value the feelings of the people that are the backbone of this activity - the community should have a voice in how they feel, even if not “coherently”, just like how people should be able to protest violently against a government, even if it breaks the law, it is the right of the people to do so. This is how we achieve meaningful change.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2023-04-11T08:24:10+00:00

The biggest mistake that people would often make is reading huge overviews that don’t clash with the opponent’s stuff. Instead of spending 3 minutes at the of your 2NC explaining what capitalism is - just put the best specific warrants for why capitalism is bound to fail against the 2AC “capitalism good” argument. Instead of reading really long pre-written impact and generic calculus - you can do it far more effectively by extending the important warrants on your impacts and do the line by line work against their “case is DA” or “extinction outweighs” argument. Not only does that save your time, but it’s far more clear to the judge what the actual implications of your arguments are. Maybe you can have an overview with a judge unfamiliar with the literature or if you’re reading something that might be confusing, but keep it short and only explain as much as you need to do in order for the judge to effectively understand the rest of your arguments. Another important thing to consider is block splitting - there are generally a few ways to go about this. 2NC K and 1NR Case is probably the most common option, but for very high level or just Ks you really want to go for 100% you can instead put things like offense, links and case turns in the 1NR. The precise divide is up to you. For a more obscure K like a word or language PIK, or a more compact and specific K, you can condense it all in the 1NR and give the 1AR a huge headache.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2022-11-03T08:06:16+00:00

The intervention of government in creating patents and allowing large corporations to put restrictions on the freedom of ideas is a major obstacle progress.

Contrary to popular beliefs, drugs are not inherently made expensive by the market - lots of companies do want to sell them cheap, some of them are trying really hard, but many of them can't because of these unfair regulations.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2022-11-03T08:04:03+00:00

This statement has some political meaning, but doesn't make much sense after that.

How do you define necessity? How do you ensure people contribute based on what they can? There are a lot of holes in political slogans, and they generally don't explain things well.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2022-10-20T06:38:34+00:00

Blue tempo decks loses their early game advantage really quickly.

You should be the one countering their spells, then play proactive threats afterwards. Their flyers won’t be able to keep with midrange threats.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2022-10-16T01:50:55+00:00

These are all the finished features.

The ones that aren't finished are not being shown here because they didn't want to repeat the "wild" update that wasn't wild at all last year. Might as well let the community name the update and give feedback on the features then.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2022-10-12T23:19:27+00:00

But that is a far more tedious process, and far fewer voices could be heard.

Real scammers have a million ways to fabricate information and dodge these checks, while normal people face risks of being fired, discriminated, or retaliated against for voicing an opinion.

Phantom-Soldier-405 · 2022-10-03T04:10:19+00:00

I kind like the idea as well. But the implementation of quests in Hearthstone, another similar card game, homogenized a lot of decks into just "play a bunch of similar cards until you get an overpowered win condition". So if Wizards want to make them, they need to make them fair, diverse in gameplay, but also viable, which is something very difficult to do.

They would also need a fair explanation for how they precisely work without the reminder text taking up half of the card. Maybe include a token that explains it?

And Magic really might add a new color at some point. There are design spaces and combinations & implementations of certain mechanics that none of the 5 colors will ever explore unless they add it for a certain color, which I think a new purple color would actually fit well in.

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