On his Overview: That's not actually how K's work. K's...
Assisted Suicide Laws should be Universal
On his Overview: That's not actually how K's work. K's operate as a gateway to affirming the resolution and act on a higher level (in this case ontologically) than a normative case (in this case the AC). In order for you to be able to even access offense coming off of your case, the K has to be refuted. If you don't win on the K debate, I win straight out. But even if you're refuting the K, I can still win by refuting the AC. His first response against the K is simply that there's no warrant to the K, but the warrants are all in the cards I read off. Pro's unwillingness to read the quoted text doesn't mean that the K lacks warrants. His second response is that he doesn't link because his case doesn't long for a better world. There's a number of problems with this response. a) He does. Insofar as he's trying to allow equality in assisted suicide to respect people's humanity and other positive impacts that are absent in the status quo, he's longing for a better world, a world that isn't the world in which we live in. b) Turn this response against him. If the entire point of his case isn't to look for positive impacts of allowing equality in assisted suicide, then we have no reason to affirm the resolution. Look to his round one statement where he split the burden of proof - he has to be making arguments in favor of the resolution and be making positive impacts toward affirming the resolution. If he isn't doing that by this admission, then he can't actually win the debate. c) Pro's constantly being a moving target with his case. By his own admission he's not arguing for the benefits of assisted suicide, but he's not also against getting rid of assisted suicide, he just wants "equality" which means that he can either argue in favor of assisted suicide or against assisted suicide at his own whim. This is entirely unfair to me because I'm forced to defend one side of the resolution whereas his case allows him to defend whichever one strikes his fancy, and he can change at will. Hold him to defending the benefits of assisted suicide. d) Pro's flat out wrong in what his own case argues. He can't argue for getting rid of assisted suicide for everyone to "maximize equality" because by his own case it means that everyone is expendable and everyone's human value is being thrown into the trash which means that we ought to prefer the status quo where at least we're preserving some people's human value. Giving everyone the option to have assisted suicide is the only way he can actually access any of his impacts, which means he's biting into the K. His next response is his attempt to be a moving target again by saying that he can just ban it for everyone to be equal. I've already responded to this in multiple places. Don't let him take this stance. But even if you do let him take this stance, he still links to this argument. His entire argument revolves around the concept of making everyone feel equal and making sure that no one is more valuable than another person which, according to his case, preserves human value and worth. This is a direct link into Nietzsche 1 and Turanli. He's biting into the K no matter which goalpost he wants to take. His next argument is a turn on Nietzsche 1 by saying that allowing assisted suicide increases our own power which...somehow affirms...? The argument he makes doesn't make any kind of sense and is a misrepresentation of what the card is actually saying. Nietzsche's argument is that we give small little things to the people below us to make them more content with just being controlled by us and wanting to stay in our control, much like a parent would offer a child candy if they stop crying in a grocery store, the affirmative's attempt to give citizens equality is just their way of exercising control and dominance. There's no real logic behind his argument. His response to Nietzsche 2 is his attempt to be a moving target again. And even in his attempt to be a moving target, it still applies insofar as he's trying to give equality to everyone. And his second point is literally the entire point of the K, suffering is something that can't and shouldn't be reduced. And it doesn't matter if he's not arguing for ethics because I am. If anything this functions as another reason why the K operates apriori to the AC because ethics operates apriori to law - to say otherwise is the definition of the is/ought fallacy. I'm arguing for the ought while he's arguing for the is. And his argument against the alt is just him trying to be a moving target (again). This answers all of the direct responses to the K. The K stands as a rejection of universally allowing assisted suicide as a reduction of suffering, which leads to the harms of the K and a negation of human value and worth and makes life meaningless. Notice how his responses are only about how the K doesn't apply to his case or it doesn't apply to the "law" of assisted suicide. He doesn't address the impacts or doesn't actually address any of the warrants coming out of my K, rather rejects that it applies to his case. Insofar as I'm a) showing you how he's linking regardless of which side of his moving target he decides to hop to, and b) making him actually defend one stance instead of being constantly fluid in which he links regardless, the K applies. This means that I'm still winning the K debate. On Death of the K I've already responded to his first point in multiple places. His second point is a misrepresentation and it's literally the definition of ontology. He keeps interpreting things in a normative sense whereas my case addresses human worth from an ontological perspective. The K functions apriori because of this. His third point is irrelevant and a repetition of how he's being a moving target. Insofar as he's trying to advocate for assisted suicide/equality (since they're apparently able to be used interchangably now in the AC) as a way to preserve human worth, he violates human worth by trying to reduce suffering. His fourth point doesn't make any f*cking sense. The entire point of my argument there is that the things he's trying to extend off as his impacts (equality/human worth/the right to such things/etc.) are only worth protecting in the AC insofar as having them is a good thing and violating those things causes the victims of the violation to suffer. It means that either a) he links into the K because by not affirming we cause suffering or at least prevent suffering from being reduced or b) there's no real impacts behind the affirmative case and no real reason to value the impacts he's advocating for, meaning he can't win. His point here isn't responsive to my actual argument. And the argument isn't actually dependent on the K, it's not even addressing the K. This argument is specifically about his argument and how his impacts actually function as impacts. On the "Counter-K" First, this is all literally an appeal to emotion. His argument is that rape and violence and all these things are wrong because "cmon man! you're being offensive!" without any kind of warrant as to why these things are bad. Second, this doesn't actually address the warrants coming out of the K as to why suffering is preferrable and why it actually allows for the furthering and transcendence of humanity as a race. The only part of the Counter-K that I actually contest as not applicable to the K is the whole tangent about murder and genocide - we can only suffer insofar as we're still alive, meaning anything involving death isn't what the K advocates for because it means that there's one less person that can suffer. This is another way how the K negates the resolution just straight out - universally allowing people to acceptably kill themselves reduces the amount of suffering being experienced in the world which is a link into the K. Summary: Pro's case is a moving target - he can either defend both allowing everyone to have access to assisted suicide and allowing no one to have access to assisted suicide at the same time. This literally means he can access affirmative and negative offense at the same time while denying me any kind of offense. Force him to just pick one side to defend. Moreover, his case doesn't make any kind of sense unless he's advocating for allowing everyone access to assisted suicide because the flipside a) neglects the needs and worth of the terminally ill and b) makes the claim that everyone is usable and everyone's worth is open to violation, which is in direct conflict with his case. This means he *has* to defend giving everyone access to assisted suicide for his case to even make sense. Regardless of which side he ends up defending, both link into the harms of the K. Given that 70% of his last round was spent trying to separate the K from his case, and virtually all of the warrants coming out of the K and impacts from the K get dropped, this is catastrophic to his chances of winning the debate. This means two things - A) I'm still winning of the K by default because it's sufficient to negate the resolution just straight up. And B) it turns his case because the very things he's trying to protecting by advocating for equality are violated and human life becomes worthless and devoid of any kind of value.