Weighing

When deciding the ballot, the most important factor judges may consider is weighing. First off, what is it? Weighing is a comparative analysis between two items. Specifically, it offers an explanation of why your impact is more important than your opponent’s impact. Although it may seem hard to make an argument on why your impact is greater, there are fortunately, many metrics to weigh off of.

Timeframe

When we weigh the time frame, we tell the judge that you should consider our argument over theirs because our’s happens earlier. Because it happens earlier, it is therefore a greater risk for the general public. Let’s practice this: If I were comparing War and Climate Change, Timeframe could be one metric which I can use to differentiate between the both. One way I could way these two is “prefer war over Climate Change because War happens right now whereas we don’t have a clear timeframe as to when the effects of Climate Change happen.”

Magnitude

When we weigh on magnitude, we weigh on “how big” our impact is (eg. how many people does it affect?). If I were weighing an economic recession to Global War, weighing on magnitude would be pretty easy. A high level statement would be “prefer War over Economic Recession because when War happens millions of people die whereas an economic recession features a loss of money which is way better than millions of deaths.”

Probability

When I weigh on probability, I weigh on how likely the argument is to happen. On our War vs. Economy example, if I chose to weigh on probability, I would say something along these lines: “prefer an Economic Recession over War because the probability of a war happening is very low whereas we already see signs of an economic recession happening right now in the status quo.”

Of course, the examples I gave in this lesson were very high level. Try to add depth to your weighing; Specifically, feature the numbers you give in Constructive, or certain statistics that help to bolster your case. When the judge is given a number, it makes their job much easier.