Tournament: SEPT-OCT Deont AC | Round: 1 | Opponent: NA | Judge: NA
Overview:

1. Key to democratic legitimacy: solves inequality for two reasons. Engelen:
   The more citizens abstain, the less representative the electoral result becomes. This problem is aggravated by the fact that ‘low voter turnout means unequal and socio-economically biased turnout’ (Lijphart, 1997, 2). As Keaney and Rogers (2006, 10) aptly summarize, ‘international evidence shows that turnout and inequality are closely linked, and that as turnout falls so it becomes more unequal’. While universal suffrage equalizes the opportunities for participation in elections (every citizen has exactly one vote), inequalities between privileged and less privileged citizens persist in the way citizens exercise such opportunities (Lijphart, 1998, 1–2; Verba, Nie and Kim, 1978, 1–6). This forms a problem because governments normally respond to the opinions expressed by citizens in elections: ‘if you don’t vote, you don’t count’ Bart Engelen Why Compulsory Voting Can Enhance Democracy 24 Acta Politica 2007 42 Burnham, 1987, 99). This assumption has been empirically confirmed. In their cross-country comparison, Mueller and Stratmann (2003, 2151) found that political participation has a positive impact on income equality. The more citizens abstain, the greater income inequality will become. The logic behind this is clear enough. As turnout declines, less privileged citizens tend to abstain more than others. As a result, they will have less representatives looking after their concerns and will therefore exert less influence on policy decisions. As low turnout means unequal influence, it violates the value of political equality, which lies at the heart of any notion of democracy. I thus want to argue that a purely formal equality of opportunity has to be extended to a more substantial equality of participation and influence. Political participation is also crucial for guaranteeing the legitimacy of a democratic regime. The more citizens abstain, the more the elected bodies lose their accountability. To illustrate the problem one can refer to elections where only a minority of the electorate determines the electoral result. In elections to the European Parliament, for example, average turnout has declined systematically from 63 of all registered voters in 1979 to a record low of 45.6 in 2004 (EP, 2004). 

2. CV is best for representing abstainers. Engelen:
Abstainers are  at best ambiguous’ (Hill, 2002b, 85), actively casting a protest vote in a system with compulsory voting is easier to interpret. Such votes are a clear sign that politics is getting out of touch with the public. While low turnout indicates that there is something wrong with democracy, it cannot pinpoint what the exact problem is, lumping together those who are discontent about, uninterested in and unable to participate in politics. By motivating people to express their voice, compulsory voting involves those most likely to become alienated from politics. This way, politicians have to listen to their voices, which would otherwise never be heard.

I value morality. Meta-ethical frameworks check back what types of arguments count as warrants for the standard since the question “what is right?” can only be answered in a few ways. I advocate practical reason. Ethical theories are true only if they flow from the structure of reason itself. Prefer since:

1. There are no objective truths or physical things we can reference to tell us about the good, so natural facts aren’t normative. Kant ONE
   We have therefore wanted to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance; that the things that we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them to be, nor are their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us; and that if we remove our own subject or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then all constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they objects cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. What may be the case with objects in themselves and abstracted from all this receptivity of our sensibility remains entirely unknown to us. We are acquainted with nothing except our way of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which therefore does not necessarily pertain to every being, though to be sure it pertains to every human being. 

This takes out util and other standards that accept the good as something that must me analyzed as a material entity since we cannot know the world in itself. This best explains why optical illusions escape our grasp. Senses works on convenience, not accuracy.  Here’s another warrant why morals must be a priori. Kant TWO:
9 It is in this manner, undoubtedly, that we are to understand those passages of Scripture also in which we are commanded to love our neighbour, even our enemy. For love, as an affection, cannot be commanded, but beneficence for duty’s sake may; even though we are not impelled to it by any inclination- nay, are even repelled by a natural and unconquerable aversion. This is practical love and not pathological- a love which is seated in the will, and not in the propensions of sense- in principles of action and not of tender sympathy; and it is this love alone which can be commanded. 10 The second proposition is: That an action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined, and therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition by which the action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire. It is clear from what precedes that the purposes which we may have in view in our actions, or their effects regarded as ends and springs of the will, cannot give to actions any unconditional or moral worth. In what, then, can their worth lie, if it is not to consist in the will and in reference to its expected effect? It cannot lie anywhere but in the principle of the will without regard to the ends which can be attained by the action. For because the will stands between its a priori principle, which is formal, and its a posteriori spring, which is material, as between two roads, and could only as it must be determined by something, it must be determined by the formal principle of volition when an action is done from duty, in which case every material principle has been withdrawn from it.
Put away your bad dumps about how a priori reasoning fails. A) The validity of mathematical proofs and pure science shows it’s possible and creates certainty. There is no uncertainty in following reason, so this also solves Bostrom. B) The only way we could interpret a posteriori facts were if we were given the initial premise of “A is A” which is a priori reasoning.

2. Binding. The skeptic can ask why x, why y, why z, why the ac into regress. But she can’t ask why reason because that’s a closed question. If I gave you a reason to act for reasons, I’d answer your question meaning you already do act for reasons. Thus you can’t be skeptic about reasons.

3. Action Theory. The only internal constraint on agency is a principle of non-contradiction—since what is internally contradictory, like a round square, cannot be thought. This non-contradiction is a universal character of anything conscious, so it’s the basic constraint on all actions. And action theory is the highest layer on the framework debate. Even if the neg showed negating was good, you still could never take that action or even be coherent.

4. Rational willing creates unconditional value. Herman :
Two things follow from locating unconditioned goodness in the good will: (1) the goodness of the good will is in its willing, not in the effects it brings about, and (2) the goodness in willing derives from the relation of the will (through its principle) to practical reason. I take these claims to single the introduction of a set of distinctive assumptions about the nature of value. The domain of “the good” is rational activity and agency: that is, willing. Objects and events are not possible bearers of do not have value. They can be thought of as good only insofar as they are possible ends of rational willing. They are judged good just in case the determination to act for them (here and in this way and for this purpose) is good. Actions as events (as effects of willing) cannot be the object of moral or practical assessment. Actions are called good because of the manner in which they are willed. Faculties and states of character are said to be good just in case they are conducive to action or choice judged to be good (as willed). Reflection on pretheoretical intuitions about standard examples is to confirm this. The two claims thus mark out a metaphysics of value. The activity of rational willing brings value into a world that, absent rational beings, could have none. Each agent, insofar as she is rational, acts in ways she takes to be (in some sense) good. She acts with and from the belief that her choices and reasons for choosing are good. Choices and reasons for choosing are good if and only if they are justified. The analytic task of the metaphysics of value (and by inclusion the metaphysics of morals) is to provide the principles and standards of justification for willings. This is the program of the second chapter of the Groundwork, worked out in the apparatus of imperatives and principles of practical rationality.
This means rational willing is the sufficient source of morality; every act deems itself good as it aims at the good and rational willing is the same as that act. Thus, rational willing is the ultimate source of value.

The standard is preserving freedom through the omnilateral will. We must have an omnilateral will to prevent one persons’ will from dominating another since that’s a contradiction in will by willing a world where the will is denied. We must be represented through the omnilateral will. Kant THREE :
When I declare (by word or deed), “I will that an external thing shall be mine,” I thereby declare it obligatory for everyone else to refrain from using the object of my will.  This is an obligation that no one would have apart from this juridical act of mine.  Included in this claim, however, is an acknowledgment of being and that I’m reciprocally bound to everyone else to exercise a similar and equal restraint with respect to what is theirs. The obligation involved here comes from a universal rule of the external juridical relationship that is, the civil society.  Consequently, I am not bound to leave what is another’s property untouched if everyone else does not in turn guarantee to me with regard to what is mine that he will act in accordance with exactly the same principle.  This guarantee does not require a special juridical act, but is already contained in the concept of being externally juridically bound to a duty Verpflichtung on account of the universality, and hence also the reciprocity, of an obligation coming from a universal rule. Now, with respect to an external and contingent possession, a unilateral Will cannot serve as a coercive law for everyone, since that would be a violation of freedom in accordance with universal laws.  Therefore, only a Will binding everyone else—that is, collective universal (common), and powerful Will—is the kind of Will that can provide the guarantee required.  The condition of being subject to general external (that is, public) legislation that is backed by power is the civil society. Accordingly, a thing can be externally yours or mind only in a civil society.
The AC hijacks any NC framework and operates as offense under it because only an omnilateral will can protect rights. If we deviate from what an omnilateral will ought to do, we create infinite rights violations even under the NC's conception of what a right is. Thus, the public nature of the omnilateral will is created by the state’s actions. Ripstein:
The freedom-based strategy will seem to shunt many of the most difficult issues off to the third question: the people’s representatives must figure out what the burdens are, and what it would be for people to bear them equally. Having rejected the interest-based strategy, it cannot claim that those representatives are likely to need not weigh the interests more accurately, or balance them in a better way. It can claim only that a public authority is just that: it is public, constituted by the citizens as a collective body, and it is an authority; that is, within its mandate, its decision is binding apart from its merits, solely because it is the decision of a compe- tent public authority. The department of transport can forbid you from driving uptown on Lexington Avenue or make you stop for a red light, neither because it has weighed all of the interests correctly, nor because it has better information than some other agent, but simply because the leg- islature has delegated those questions to it.
This implies the only constraint on the state is being consistent with a public authority. Thus offense related to making the state more public has higher strength of link back to the framework. THIS IS NOT A RIPSTEIN AC; this is a Kantian political philosophy AC that just happens to have one Ripstein card. I have vastly different meta-ethical commitments than Ripstein, one of them is my epistemology, which means we can never use a posteriori facts so none of your generic Ripstein turns link. Thus we don’t look to how people empirically behave but rather what can be deduced a priori.

I contend the state requires universal active participation. The omnilateral will is only legitimate when it doesn’t treat the citizens within it as a means to an end of policy. So the people within the state must vote. Kant FOUR:
While such an argument for this right (which may well be present obscurely in the monarch’s mind) holds with regard to animals, which can be one’s property, it simply cannot be applied to human beings, especially as citizens of a state. For they must always be regarded as co—legislating members of a state (not merely as a means but also as ends in themselves), and must therefore give their free assent, through their representatives, not only to waging war in general but also to each particular declaration of war.

This controls the internal link to any NC; if we accept the NC framework’s conception of the good, then the AC would create a system in which representatives are held accountable by the people within them to have those objective goods actualized. You need a state of active citizens to check that the correct policy is implemented. Weinrib:
Passive citizens are neither in the state of nature nor in the rightful condition. They occupy a limbo in which they receive the protection of the rightful condition without being members of it. As we saw with the state’s duty to support the poor, persons could not enter the rightful condition if provisions for their independence were not made. But passive citizens do not enter the rightful condition knowing that they may be excluded from contributing to the law because passive citizens do not enter the rightful condition at all. Recall the postulate of public: ‘when you cannot avoid living side by side with all others, you ought to leave the state of nature and proceed with them into a rightful condition’. As passive citizens do not live in a state of nature but rather within the rightful condition in which their rights are secure they are under no juridical duty to become members of the rightful condition. Although passive citizens  are under no duty to contribute to the laws that bind them, the rightful condition is under a duty to create the conditions of their inclusion. The presence of passive citizens conflicts with the idea of the original contract. The state creates the dependency of passive citizens by removing them from the state of nature, where private wills are not subject to an omnilateral will, and forces them to live within the rightful condition without, in which their private dependencies render them unfit to contributinge to the general will. As with the parent-child relation and the duty to support the poor, forcing another to be dependent can only be rendered rightful if the agent that creates the dependency of the other acquires a duty to establish the conditions of the other’s independence. As the rightful condition transforms the provisional rights of the state of nature into conclusive rights, it both creates and solidifies.

And, aff impacts outweigh neg impacts since the aff creates systemic changes for the future, whereas the neg impacts only what happens as a person votes. Meaning, the neg is instantaneous while the aff is for an infinite duration. 

Underview:

1. Engelen  clarifies two points of compulsory voting implementation
   First, there is the secrecy of the ballot. As a matter of fact, ‘compulsory voting’ is a misnomer. What is made compulsory is not voting, but attendance at the polling station. since All a citizen has to do to comply is register his or her presence. The state has no control whatsoever over his or her choice inside the voting booth. As long as the ballot is secret, voting simply cannot be made compulsory. In this sense, it would be more accurate to speak of ‘compulsory attendance’ or ‘compulsory turnout’. As Arendt Lijphart (1998, p. 10) – perhaps the best-known proponent of compulsory attendance – rightly argues, that ‘the secret ballot and so guarantees that the right not to vote remains intact’. If a state not only obliges its citizens to show up at elections but also to publicly express their vote, totalitarianism is lurking. However, in each of the countries that implement such laws,1 the ballot’s secrecy is guaranteed. Second, a blank option can and should be provided on the ballot. This way, voters can refrain from choosing from any of the available parties and candidates. As Lacroix (2007, p. 193) argues, people’s freedom of thought cannot be violated if they have the option of casting such a blank vote. In my view, an additional ‘none of the above’ option should be added, since this allows one to distinguish between purely apathetic and apolitical voters on the one hand (blank) and anti-political protest voters on the other hand (none of the above) Third, one should refrain from sanctioning abstainers too heavily. In fact, most countries only impose small sanctions. In Australia and Belgium, for example, which are known for their ‘strict’ enforcement, there is no systematic prosecution of abstainers. What happens is that some of the abstainers receive a so-called ‘please explain’ letter in which they are asked to fill in the reason for their abstention. Those who fail to give a legitimate reason – like a stay abroad, illness or a more principled objection – risk a fine of €25–50. While Lever (2008, p. 64) wants to associate compulsory attendance with a totalitarian regime in which ‘otherwise law-abiding citizens may be sent to prison for the failure to pay fines for not voting’, it is safe to say that this is a vast exaggeration.2 It is interesting to see that people who object on principle to participating in elections are exempted from fines. These so-called ‘conscientious objectors’ fundamentally disagree with the system or regime as a whole. They refuse to vote not because it is inconvenient or boring but because of politically principled reasons. I certainly support the practice of exempting from fines citizens who provide plausible reasons why voting is against their conscience. In fact, I agree with Lever (2008, p. 64) that both religious and secular reasons can be valid. In my view, counting them as legitimate excuses in the ‘please explain’ letter is an effective way of respecting people’s freedom of thought and speech.

Prefer this interp since the secret ballot is one of the core features of democracy, preventing intimidation and bribery.  

2. Accept an aff interp if the neg can link in stock positions. This is a good bright line since stock cases are stock BECAUSE they have strong topic lit and good ground. Prefer since A) Changing aff interps by the 1ar kills full AC strat and 6 minutes. This hurts the aff way more than the interp hurts the neg. B) there are always multiple legit interps, so deter theory since I’ll always violate. There’s no abuse. C) The neg can adapt to aff interps and framework, giving them a strategic advantage. X-apply strat-skew. Reasonability coheres with RVI’s since reasonability just protects subpar aff interps, not bad neg ones. And if you think my theoy or T interps are abusive, that’s an RVI not a voter since I haven’t violated your shell yet by acting on the interp.

3. Neg must check theoretical and topical interps in cx. I’ll either concede the violation or change my advocacy based on the neg’s preference. Prefer because it prevents frivolous theory and T debates, which allows for more substantive education. It’s also more reciprocal since the Aff’s largest speech can’t read those arguments before the NC.

Tournament: SEPT-OCT Skep AC | Round: 1 | Opponent: NA | Judge: NA
CVP AC Shell
Part 1. Best Justifications Overview:
A. Interpretation: Debaters must adhere to a “best justification” paradigm. Palmer  :
“My last objective is to sketch a possible alternative to both traditional truth-testing and comparing worldviews. For lack of a better name, call this the best justification paradigm. The animating idea behind this paradigm is the thought that the job of the affirmative is to must justify accepting the resolution as true, while the job of the negative is to must justify rejecting the resolution being as false. The judge ought to affirms if the resolution is better justified than its negation, and vice versa. Returning to our now well-worn example, this yields the following analysis of the affirmative position.”

B. Violation: The violation is pre-emptive. There are many potential violations, but the aff violates if they make risk of offense arguments. According to my paradigm, enough defense functions as terminal defense because we believe whatever conclusion has relatively stronger justification.  Palmer2:
If the argument was particularly well-developed, this may warrant a negation, but if the argument was a mangled blip, then it may be better to hold that the arguments developed by the affirmative are sufficient to justify the resolution’s truth in spite of the drop. To get a better grip on how this is supposed to work, consider a mundane case. My friend drives me to work one day in a Volvo. Suppose I have every reason to believe that she owns this car: I’ve seen her drive it many times, her family members all says this is my friend’s car it belongs to her, and I have seen her registration papers. On the basis of this evidence, I infer the proposition “my friend owns a Volvo”. Now suppose that someone else tells me that in fact she does not own that car; she was just borrowing it from her brother. For the sake of the example, assume that I don’t have no way of discounting this evidence but. Now, if true, my evidence that my friend was just borrowing the Volvo entails the falsity of my belief that “my friend owns a Volvo”, but given my stronger justification preponderance of evidence to the contrary, it seems plausible to assume that I am better off retaining my belief and discounting the conflicting evidence. We can treat underdeveloped skeptical or other “pre-standards” issues in much the same fashion (note, however, that I do not want to exclude skeptical arguments altogether; if you want that result then find another paradigm).e

C. The standard is philosophy education and ground. While my paradigm solves a prioris since bad warrants get very little justification, you still have to engage it while weighing and explaining how your side is more justified. Other paradigms fail since they just exclude philosophical positions debaters arbitrarily deem out-of-bounds. This is especially true for offense-defense and real worlds which functionally moot deontological impacts. Conceptually this strikes at the heart of what philosophy is: willingness to engage any problem and argument no matter how foreign, so best justification is best for philosophical education by training people not to be short-sighted. Literally no other educational benefit matters since you can get them somewhere else. There’s a reason we don’t learn more valuable education like studying calculus or how to write checks in round. Plus, education otherwise is subjective since I might prefer math club over art history club, one’s not more important than another it’s just that there should be forums for both. But even still, I think phil is the best form of education since ultimately only it can give semantic value to anything else we learn; learning how to kill people is only bad because philosophy explains why it’s unethical.

D. Philosophical education is a voter. This activity was created by a professor to teach kids about deep moral questions they’d never criticize otherwise, so that’s the axiomatic feature of this activity. Vote them down if they violate because the ballot is a question of who the better LD Debater is. If they abuse what it even means to do ld, then they can’t possible fit the description of the ballot. And fairness doesn’t matter since only education keeps the activity funded by schools. But even if it did matter, fairness is just a reason to drop arguments. Debaters feel rejected as a whole, but rather just based on one arg they ran that way they’re more likely to change in the future. And philosophical education controls the internal link to fairness; the only way to for us to have strong methodological certainty about what is fair since what is fair is a philosophical question over the proper distribution of benefits.

Part 2 Permissibility

Both debaters must grant the aff permission ground. This encompasses mere permissibility and moral permissibility. Prefer since:
A) For morality to coherently guide actions, obligations must also be permissible. Thus, showing the resolution is permissible affirms.
B) I define permissibility and obligation to be the same. Schroeder ‘10:
‘Permissible’ and ‘obligatory’ are said to be duals. This means that ‘permissible’ can be defined as ‘not obligatory not’, and ‘obligatory’ can likewise be defined as ‘not permissible not’. So either one of these notions – permissibility or obligatoriness – can be used to define the other.
And this justifies permissibility and obligation being the same twice. First, this is true because the simple logical moderator of “not” does not have any ethical significance. When it’s applied twice it just cancels itself so the statement reads “obligatory can be defined as permissible.” Second, even if they’re not exactly the same, the point is that they’re mutually inclusive. You cannot have permissibility without obligation or obligation without permissibility. Thus, permissibility affirms.
C) Symbolic Logic. If you deny an assumption in the resolution, you make it automatically true. Imagine I say "given that it rains, I'll bring an umbrella." So, if that first condition is not satisfied, then no matter what comes afterwards, the conditional is true because I haven't lied about what happens if it rains. This is textbook stuff from courses on symbolic logic. The universal consensus adds weight to it and makes it preferable to neg arguments. If obligations don’t exist, the resolution is thus automatically true. This comes first since it looks to symbolic logic which is more reliable than our intuitions and certainly more verifiable than natural language. Thus if I deny such a thing as oughts exist, then the resolution becomes merely permissible, so we affirm.
Part 3. The pre-empts.

Any framework that relies on reason to justify its conclusions terminates in permissibility.

1. Even basic reasoning creates contradictions so reject it. Camus:
   The mind's first step is to distinguish what is truthe from what is false. However, as soon as thought reflects on itself, what it first discovers is a contradiction. Over the centuries no one has furnished a clearer and more elegant demonstration of the business than Aristotle: "The often ridiculed consequence of these opinions is that they destroy themselves. For by asserting that all is true we assert the truth that of the contrary assertion and consequently the falsity of our own thesis is false (for the contrary assertion does not admit that it can be true). And if one says that all is false, that assertion is itself false. If we declare that solely the assertion opposed to ours is false or else that solely ours is not false, we are nevertheless forced to admit an infinite number of true or false judgments. For the one who expresses a true assertion proclaims simultaneously that it is true, and so on ad infinitum," This vicious circle is but the first of a series in which the mind that studies itself gets lost in a giddy whirling. The very even in simplicity of these paradoxes makes them irreducible. Whatever may be the plays on words and the acrobatics of logic, to understand is, above all, to unify. The mind's deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man's unconscious feeling in the face of his universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity. 

This means everything’s permissible since following reason itself is a contradiction, so there’d never be one reason to prefer one side to another.

2. Reasons just fall to subjective perspectives, so looking to reasons means permissibility. Nietzsche2:
The categories are "truths'" only in the sense that they are conditions of life for us: as Euclidean space is a conditionals "truth." (Between ourselves: since no one would maintain that there is any necessity for men to exist, reason, as well as Euclidean space, is a mere idiosyncracy of a certain species of animal, and one among many-) The subjective compulsion not to contradict here is a biolo- gical compulsion: the instinct for the utility of inferring as we do infer is part of us, we almost are this instinct- But what naivete to extract from this a proof that we are therewith in possession 'MS: bedingt (conditioned); printed versions: bedingende (condition- ing). The editors took their cue from Kant, not from Nietzsche's next sen- tence. BOOK THRE.E: Principles 0/ A New Evaluation279 of a "truth in itseIf"!- Not being able to contradict is proof of an incapacity, not of "truth." 516 (Spring-Fall 1887; rev. Spring-Fall 1888) We are unable to affirm and to deny one and the same thing: this is a subjective empirical law, not the expression of any "necessity" but only of an inability. If, according to Aristotle, the law of contradiction is the most certain of all principles, if it is the ultimate and most basic, upon which every demonstrative proof rests, if the principle of every axiom lies in it; then one should consider all the more rigorously what presuppositions already lie at the bottom of it. Either it asserts something about actuality, about being, as if one already knew this from another source; that is, as if opposite attributes could not be ascribed to it. Or it the proposition means: opposite attributes should not be ascribed to it. In that case, logic would be an imperative, not to know the true, but to posit and arrange a world that shall be called true by us. In short, Either way my point the question remains open: are the axioms of logic adequate to reality or are they a means and measure for us to create reality, the concept "reality," for ourselves?- To affirm the former one would, as already said, have to have a previous knowledge of being-which is certainly not the case. The proposition therefore contains no criterion of truth, but an imperative concerning that which should count as true. 

Thus ethical statements are merely commands that say “Wash the table!” But such imperatives as “Wash the table!” contain no criterion of truth meaning the resolution is merely permissible.
Part 4. The AC
Since there are multiple legit arguments on both sides of the topic, the resolution asks how to construe the strengths of these competing sets of reasons.  Thus, the topic is about decisive reasons. Glannon:
An action is prohibited (impermissible) if there is an ethically decisive reason for not doing it. And an action is permissible if there is no ethically decisive reason for or against it.  There will be reasons for performing the action, but not decisive or overriding ones.

For a set of reasons to be decisive, they must be greater, not equal. Parfit:
When we have several reasons to act in some way, these reasons may together be stronger than, or outweigh, some single stronger conflicting reason. Rather than saving one person from ten hours of pain, for example, we might have a stronger set of reasons to do what would both save someone than save myself from pain else from nine hours of pain, and give smaller benefits to many other people. We would then have more reason to act in this second way. If our reasons to act in some way are stronger than our reasons to act in any of the other possible ways, these reasons are decisive, and acting in this way is what we have most reason to do.

To prove a prohibition, the neg must prove that not willing compulsory voting is impermissible, so s/he must show our reasons for willing compulsory voting outweigh our reasons to refrain. If there are no decisive reasons for the neg, you affirm since Glannon means that would imply permissibility. Thus the neg burden is showing the set of reasons to negate tip the scale.

I contend that there is no way to tip the balance against compulsory voting because reasons can’t be weighed. The notion of weighing reasons presupposes an implausible mechanical analogy.  Broome:  
An explanation strictly analogous to mechanical weighing would be this. There are reasons for you to and reasons for you not to Each reason is associated with a number that represents its weight. The numbers associated with the reasons to _ add up to more than the numbers associated with the reasons not to _. That is why you ought to _. Such an strictly analogous explanation rarely seems appropriate. For one thing, it often seems inappropriate to associate a reason with anything so precise as a number to represent its weight. Secondly, although we can aggregate together the weights of several reasons, to aggregate them simply by adding up also often seems inappropriate. So-called ‘organic’ interactions between reasons often mean that their aggregate effect differs from the total of their weights.

And, weighing within an ethical theory fails. A) I deny weighing under every framework since it’s not specific to any context; having an overriding reason just fails generally. B) Even if this is true, Broome indicates that such weighing is incoherent, so Broome is terminal defense on the NC’s ability to negate.

Last, accept aff T interps to solve aff skew. Over two years, Fantasy Debate compiled evidence that shows a 5 skew towards the neg. Offset through granting the aff more leeway on this issue. If the neg doesn’t offer another way to solve the side-bias, the aff always has a stronger link of solving the side-bias meaning you grant me my T interps.

Tournament: SEPT-OCT Util AC | Round: 1 | Opponent: NA | Judge: NA
Advantage 1: Oil Subsidies
A. Uniqueness:
Republicans and lobbyists fight and win for big oil despite the public’s will. Froomkin ‘11:
Clout in Washington isn't about winning legislative battles -- it's about making sure that they never happen at all. The oil and gas industry has that kind of clout. Despite astronomical profits during what have been lean years for most everyone else, the oil and gas industry continues to and benefit from massive, multi-billion dollar taxpayer subsidies. Opinion polling shows the American public overwhelmingly wants them those subsidies eliminated. Meanwhile, both parties are hunting feverishly for ways to reduce the deficit. But when President Obama called on Congress to eliminate about $4 billion a year in tax breaks for Big Oil earlier this year, the response on the Hill was little more than a knowing chuckle. Even Obama's closest congressional allies don't think the president’s proposal has a shot. "I would be surprised if it got a great deal of traction," Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Senate energy committee, told reporters at the National Press Club a few days after Obama first announced his plan. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), co-author of a House bill that closely resembles Obama's proposal, nevertheless acknowledges that it has slim chances of passing. "It will be a challenge to get anything through the House that includes any tax increase for anyone under any circumstance," he told The Huffington Post. The list goes on: "It's not on my radar," said Frank Maisano, a spokesman for Bracewell Giuliani, a lobbying firm with several oil and gas industry clients. "It's old news and it's never going to happen in this Congress. It couldn't even happen in the last Congress." Indeed, the oil and gas industry's stranglehold on Congres is so firm that even when the Democrats controlled both houses, repeal of the subsidies didn't stand a chance. Obama proposed cutting them in his previous two budgets as well, but the Senate -- where Republicans and consistently pro-oil Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu had more than enough votes to block any legislation -- never even took a stab at it. Now that the GOP controls the House is controlled by the GOP, so Obama's proposal is deader than an oil-soaked pelican. Over the last decade in particular, the Republican Party's anti-tax policies and pro-drilling campaign is rhetoric have become nearly indistinguishable from those of Big Oil.

B. Links:
() CV solves lobbying. Harvard Law ‘07:
In addition to the direct effect of compulsory voting on turnout, there are also several indirect benefits. First, compulsory voting would reduce the role of money in politics.35 Political parties would not spend as much money on their get-out-the-vote efforts since high turn- out would already be ensured and would b e  fairly inelastic.36 Some of the get-out-the-vote money could be shifted to other forms of cam- paign spending, but not all of it. A significant amount of spending on getting out the vote comes from groups known as 527s (a reference to the tax code) and nonpartisan groups that are not subject to campaign finance laws.37 These groups are limited in their abilities to campaign expressly in favor of candidates.38 Presumably, these organizations would shift some funds from getting out the vote to issue ads (which are permissible), but their diminishing returns marginal effectiveness of those ads would limit this. With less this implicit limit on spending, politicians and parties might focus somewhat less on fundraising and be less beholden to donors.

() Republicans have less power in cv. Bloomberg ‘12:
One concern -- voiced primarily by Republicans -- is that compulsory voting would raises participation rates among Democrats, because minority and low-income voters are among those least likely to go to the polls. 

() Froomkin established public support to end subsidies. CV means their voices are actualized. Hill ’01:
The third practical concern Saunders raises is that compulsory voting is unable to address one of the root causes of low turnout: alienation (Saunders, 2010, p. 71) (curiously, this appears to involve an admission on Saunders’ part that it is alienation rather than being ‘unaffected’ that is a major cause of abstention, thereby negating one of his key arguments against compulsory voting). While it could never be claimed that compulsory voting is a universal panacea for all the problems that beset democracy, it has been found to have ‘a strong and significant impact on satisfaction with democracy’ (Birch, 2009a, p. 113). It also seems to stimulate other forms of political participation. Compulsory voting is even correlated with lower levels of political corruption (Birch, 2009b, p. 140), an effect that undoubtedly helps to keep political alienation at bay. From a normative perspective, if we accept, as I do, the legitimacy of the ‘all affected interests’ principle, and agree that – as far as possible – undemocratic distortions should be eliminated from the electoral system, then empirical trends in both voting behaviour and government responsiveness point us towards rather than away from compulsory voting. Empirical data also undercut Saunders’ practical objections to compulsory voting since requiring people to vote has been shown to provide the only decisive and effective solution to low turnout; further, it appears to ameliorate political alienation.

C. Impact: Oil subsidies invigorate global warming and hurt switch to renewable energy. IMF ’13:
Energy subsidies have wide-ranging economic consequences. While aimed at protecting consumers, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd-out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. Subsidies over also distort resource allocation by encourageing excessive energy consumption, artificially promoteing capital-intensive industries, reduceing incentives for investment in renewable energy, and accelerating the depleteion of natural resources. Most subsidy benefits are captured by higher-income households, reinforcing inequality. Even future generations are affected through the damaging effects of increased energy consumption on increasing global warming. This paper provides:  the most comprehensive estimates of energy subsidies currently available for 176 countries; and (ii) an analysis of ?how to do? energy subsidy reform, drawing on insights from 22 country case studies undertaken by IMF staff and analyses carried out by other institutions.

Climate change outweighs on time frame and causes war. Global Solutions:
Global climate change is an immediate and important issue that must be addressed by all nations multi-laterally. The effects are of climate change - rising temperatures and sea-levels, shrinking glaciers, changes in range and distribution of plants and animals, changing precipitation patterns, and more intense heat waves are likely to worsen if countries do not reduce their greenhouse gases. Climate change has contributed to a rising demand in critical resources and mass migration-both of which have caused social unrest and armed conflict. Some of these effects of climate change are being felt around the world, for example droughts have exacerbated conflicts and humanitarian disasters in Darfur and Somalia. Thus, the global challenge of climate change constitutes both a security and economic threat for the United S musttates. Averting the projected impacts of climate change requires a global effort, and a shift from an economy dependent on fossil fuel combustion to one powered by clean renewable energy. As one of the leading world economy and biggest producer of greenhouse gases, the U.S. must play a leadership role in tackling this global challenge and mitigate its effects on vulnerable populations. The current administration Obama has initiated some policies and initiatives but they are still falling fall short of what is needed to address the disastrous consequences of climate change.

Climate change causes extinction and outweighs on irreversibility and empirical verfiability. Dyer ‘12:
Here's how bad it could get. The scientific consensus is that we are still on track for 3 degrees C of warming by 2100, but that's just warming caused by human greenhouse- gas emissions. The problem is that +3 degrees is well past the point where the major feedbacks kick in: natural phenomena triggered by our warming, like melting permafrost and the loss of Arctic sea-ice cover, that will add to the heating and that we cannot turn off. The trigger is actually around 2C (3.5 degrees F) higher average global temperature. After that we lose control of the process: ending our own carbon- dioxide emissions would no longer be enough to stop the warming. We may end up trapped on an escalator heading up to +6C (+10.5F), with no way of getting off. And +6C which gives you the mass extinction. There have been five mass extinctions in the past 500 million years, when 50 per cent or more of the species then existing on the Earth vanished, but until recently the only people taking any interest in this were paleontologists, not climate scientists. They did wonder what had caused the extinctions, but the best answer they could come up was "climate change". It wasn't a very good answer. Why would a warmer or colder planet kill off all those species? The warming was caused by massive volcanic eruptions dumping huge quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years. But it was very gradual and the animals and plants had plenty of time to migrate to climatic zones that still suited them. (That's exactly what happened more recently in the Ice Age, as the glaciers repeatedly covered whole continents and then retreated again.) There had to be a more convincing kill mechanism than that. The paleontologists found one when they discovered that a giant asteroid struck the planet 65 million years ago, just at the time when the dinosaurs died out in the most recent of the great extinctions. So they went looking for evidence of huge asteroid strikes at the time of the other extinction events. They found none. What they discovered was that there was indeed major warming at the time of all the other extinctions - and that the warming had radically changed the oceans. The currents that carry oxygen- rich cold water down to the depths shifted so that they were bringing down oxygen- poor warm water instead, and gradually the depths of the oceans became anoxic: the deep waters no longer had any oxygen. When that happens, the sulfur bacteria that normally live in the silt (because oxygen is poison to them) come out of hiding and begin to multiply. Eventually they rise all the way to the surface over the tops of the whole ocean, killing all the oxygen-breathing life. The ocean also starts emitsting enormous amounts of lethal hydrogen sulfide gas that destroy the ozone layer and directly poison land-dwelling species. This has happened before many times in the Earth's history.

Adv 2: Gun Control

A. Uniqueness: Private background checks failed, but still has support. Miller ten days ago:
After the vote on the Manchin-Toomey amendment to expand background checks to private transactions failed, the president was enraged.  Mr. Obama disregarded the possibility that pro-gun senators may simply believe in the Bill of Rights. Defiant, he said it was a “pretty shameful day for Washington” and promised “this effort is not over.”

NRA prevents the passage. Politico ’13:
Wayne LaPierre may have more blood on his hands than Dracula, but — fair is fair — he also has the guts of a burglar. He will say anything to advance the agenda of the National Rifle Association, which he runs, and he doesn’t worry about his critics. Under his leadership, the NRA has grown and today is one of the most feared lobbies on Capitol Hill. I should point out that, unlike Dracula, LaPierre neither kills people nor drinks their blood. It is just my personal belief that the NRA’s gun mania has led to the slaughter of thousands of innocent men, women and children in this country. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is now spending $12 million of his own money on TV ads to combat the NRA and LaPierre. The ads are calm and reasonable. In one, a hunter in a plaid shirt, cradling a shotgun, says, “I support comprehensive background checks so criminals and the dangerously mentally ill can’t buy guns.” But to LaPierre “calm and reasonable” is the same as “weak.” Bloomberg “can’t spend enough of his $27 billion to try to impose his will on the American public,” LaPierre sneered on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “They don’t want him telling them what food to eat; they sure don’t want him telling them what self-defense firearms to own. And he can’t buy America!” All anyone really has to buy, however, is Congress. LaPierre knows how to intimidates senators with. He tells them that the “NRA’s nearly 5 million members and America’s 100 million gun owners” will not vote for legislators in 2014 who are trying to grab their assault rifles, limit the size of their ammo clips or create universal background checks that will, as LaPierre tells them, lead the government “to tax” and “to take” their weapons. To LaPierre, the war over guns is a class war. “Political elites” he said in a recent speech, “insult, denigrate and call us crazy. In their distorted view of the world, they are smarter than we are. They are special and more worthy than we are.” LaPierre doesn’t always win.

B. Link:  Compulsory voting means passing rational gun laws. Prefer on specificity. AP one month ago:
In an interview earlier this year, former Prime Minister Julia Gillard cited the United States’ voluntary voting system as one reason explains why stricter gun control measures failed to pass Congress. “Compulsory voting is a precious, precious thing and it makes our politics the politics of the mainstream,” Gillard told Sydney’s Inner West Courier. “If you ask yourself the question how come? Well, in the U.S. they can’t have rational gun laws. A big explanation of that is voluntary voting, where small, highly motivated minorities can distort a whole political debate.”

The NRA prevents us from passing stricter gun control, but making voting compulsory means more moderate voters would counter-act the highly organized NRA’s 5 million members making gun control easier politically.

C. Impact:
Failure to pass this amendment helps terrorists and drug cartels. NY Times ’12:
But the law does not cover private sales of guns, including transactions by “occasional sellers” at gun shows and flea markets, in what has become a This gaping loophole that has allowsed teenagers, ordinary criminals, terrorists, and Mexican drug cartels and arms traffickers to have easy access to weapons. For instance, firearms are bought at gun showswere used in the Columbine school shooting; they have been found in a shippedment of arms supplies to the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah; and they have made their way across the border to Mexico.

Drug cartels cause wmd terror; it’s a vicious cycle since they keep helping each other. Shingal 11:
The fourth and final contention as to why the US should further aid Mexico is the risk of a link developing between the Latin American drug cartels and the Islamic terrorists in the Middle East. While such linkages may not exist yet, there is currently concern in and around Washington that groups such as Hezbollah and especially Al Qaeda are beginning to take interest in what is occurring in Mexico. In fact, the Mexican drug cartels already have a relatively established link with Hezbollah, which has long been involved with the South American drug trade. As the drug trade has steadily moved north to Mexico, Hezbollah’s influence has come disturbingly closer to the American border. That influence, when combined with the fact that the American border is very porous and the possibility of a Hezbollah sponsored terrorist attack on US soil, makes many US officials uneasy. According to Michael Braun, a former assistant administrator and chief of operations at the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Hezbollah uses ?the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels… Hezbollah will leverage those relationships to their benefit, to smuggle contraband and humans into the US; in fact, they already are smuggling.? 181 Similarly, some Al Qaeda has leaders have also indicated an interest in using drug tunnels to help launch a terrorist attack on United States soil. Following the attack on September 11th, the United States has taken a number of steps to protect itself from terrorist attacks. These have included increasing security in airports and train stations as well as paying closer attention to people entering and leaving the country. However, despite all of these improvements, the drug cartels are still able to smuggle drugs into the country at an alarmingly high rate. Unfortunately, terrorists around the world have noticed: Abdullah al-Nafisi, a high ranking Al Qaeda recruiter, stated, ?Four pounds of anthrax…carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the US are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans…there is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings and so on.? 182 As the cartels are only interested in their financial bottom line, there is no reason why they should not allow other groups to use their routes to enter the United States if the other groups were willing to pay – and Al Qaeda would certainly have no qualms about paying any amount of money if they were promised untraceable access into the US. As one US law enforcement officer noted, ?That’s why the border is such a serious national security issue.? 183 There are two problems with which the United States will have to contend if the link between the terrorists and cartels becomes too strong. The first is a problem of money; terrorist groups could start using the profits of drug smuggling could to fund terrorist their anti-American operations. Despite America's diplomatic and military efforts both Hezbollah and Al Qaeda remain able to maintain themselves financially. American efforts to cut off their funding would only become more difficult if those groups became closely affiliated with the highly profitable drug cartels. If the terrorists are able to establish a drug trade through Mexico, American drug users would in effect be supporting the United States' military‘s enemy. By not sufficiently addressing the Mexican drug smuggling issue, the US is thus leaving the door open for terrorist groups to profit, which in turn could lead to further attacks. The second and most distressingly issue is that the terrorists could use Mexican drug trafficking routes to launch attacks in the continental United States. Based on the condition of the Mexican state and the inability of the United States to sufficiently protect its border, it is not difficult to imagine Al Qaeda operatives successfully infiltrating the country. Moreover, it is equally possible that such an operative could smuggle parts of a bomb or a suitcase full of anthrax through the same tunnels which funnel thousands of pounds of marijuana and cocaine into the US yearly. The United States cannot afford to take chances with American lives at stake. Although there is no proof that a terrorist plot will occur via Mexico, the possibility alone should drive the US government to take steps to finally rein in the drug cartels by bolstering its aid to the Mexican government. By not doing so, the US is leaving itself open to a very uncertain future – a future where it may find itself having to fight wars in the Middle East and protect itself from terrorist attacks launched via imperceptible tunnels across its own border.

Terror attack means human extinction. Nathan ’13:
The novelty of our present situation is that modern technology can provide small groups of people with much greater lethality than ever before. We now have to worry that private parties might gain access to weapons that?are as destructive as—or possibly even more destructive than—those held by any nation-state. A handful of people, perhaps even a single individual, now have the ability to kill millions or even billions. Indeed, it is perfectly feasible, from a technological standpoint, to kill every man, woman, and child on earth. The gravity of the situation is so extreme that getting the concept across without seeming silly or alarmist is challenging. Just thinking about the subject with any degree of seriousness numbs the mind.¶ Worries about the future of the human race are hardly novel. Indeed, the notion that terrorists or others might use weapons of mass destruction terror is so commonplace as to be almost passé. spy novels, movies, and television dramas explore this plot frequently. We have become desensitized to this entire genre, in part because James Bond always manages to save the world in the end.

Part 5) Theory First, decide the round with an offense/defense paradigm. The ballot must weigh aff offense against neg offense stemming from their in one unconditional post-fiat policy advocacy since A) Ground. This forces the neg to only make arguments where the aff can weigh or win offense to, preventing nbibs, which creates a 2:1 ground skew. Ground skew’s bad for fairness since we need arguments to win. B) Clash. Force the neg to engage, else they just perpetuate the mindset of side-stepping good AC’s. Clash is key to education since it reinforces knowledge and find flaws even in good cases. C) Empirics. Policy debate uses a similar paradigm and they agree it’s worked well; it’s their norm. Any neg argument is untested and gets less credence. D) Strat. If they can preclude the AC and 1ar positions through tricks, they kill my strat. Strat skew bad for fairness since debate’s a game and requires strategy to win. Second, accept an aff interp if the neg can link in stock positions. This is a good bright line since stock cases are stock BECAUSE they have strong topic lit and good ground. Prefer since A) Changing aff interps by the 1ar kills full AC strat and 6 minutes. This hurts the aff way more than the interp hurts the neg. B) there are always multiple legit interps, so deter theory since I’ll always violate. There’s no abuse. C) The neg can adapt to aff interps and framework, giving them a strategic advantage. X-apply strat-skew. Reasonability coheres with RVI’s since reasonability just protects subpar aff interps, not bad neg ones. And if you think my theoy or T interps are abusive, that’s an RVI not a voter since I haven’t violated your shell yet by acting on the interp.
1:20
Part 6) T-interps I define “ought” as consequentialism. A) Most real world. Knowing how to do net benefit calculus is useful for jobs and is better liked by society. Real world is the most key to education since states only fund schools for the economy, not to think about gibberish. B) Common usage. Every think tank that informs policy-making looks to concrete utilitarian harms and that’s what people do too when they consider policy. Common usage is key to fairness because not all debaters have access to ridiculous philosophy books or esoteric definitions. This is structural reciprocity and outweighs on scope since it affects A LOT of people in this country, not just a hundred debaters. C) The topic. We need to talk about the topic since talking about Kant and morals every round of our debate career is uneducational. ALSO, philosophy debates encourage dumb tricks your opponent cant realize because they’re too busy trying to answer the framework or can’t see through smokes and mirrors of esoteric rhetoric. Preventing possible ground skew is also key to fairness. We need to make sure cases are fair. Last, ought is a word in the resolution. So it’s up for the same T-debates like any other word in the resolution. This isn’t AFC, it’s about definitions, which the neg can contest.

() Truth is a social agreement aimed to preserve us, not to know things-in-themselves. Nietzsche:
 And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no additional mission which would cant lead it beyond human life since. Rather, it is human, and only its possessor and begetter takes it so solemnly-as though the world's axis turned within it. But if we could communicate with the gnat, we would learn that he likewise flies through the air with the same solemnity, that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself. There is nothing so reprehensible and unimportant in nature that it would not immediately swell up like a balloon at the slightest puff of this power of knowing. And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought. It is remarkable that this was brought about by the intellect, which was certainly allotted to these most unfortunate, delicate, and ephemeral beings merely as a device for detaining them a minute within existence. For without this addition they would have every reason to flee this existence as quickly as Lessing's son. The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence. For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing. Deception is the most general effect of such pride, but even its most particular effects contain within themselves something of the same deceitful character. As a means for the preserving of the individual, the intellect unfolds its principle powers in dissimulation, which is the means by which so weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves-since they have been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of prey, This art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man. Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself-in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms." Their senses nowhere lead to truth; on the contrary, they are content to receive stimuli and, as it were, to engage in a groping game on the backs of things. Moreover, man permits himself to be deceived in his dreams every night of his life. His moral sentiment does not even make an attempt to prevent this, whereas there are supposed to be men who have stopped snoring through sheer will power. What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him-even concerning his own body-in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key. And woe to that fatal curiosity which might one day have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and then suspect that man is sustained in the indifference of his ignorance by that which is pitiless, greedy, insatiable, and murderous-as if hanging in dreams on the back of a tiger. Given this situation, where in the world could the drive for truth have come from? Insofar as the individual wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under natural circumstances employ the intellect mainly for dissimulation. But at the same time, from boredom and necessity, man wishes to exist socially and with the herd; therefore, he needs to makes peace and strives accordingly to banish from his world at least the most flagrant bellum omni contra omnes. This peace treaty brings in its wake something which appears to be the first step toward a acquiring that puzzling truth drive: to wit, that which shall count as "truth" from now on is established. That is to say, a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth. For the contrast between truth and lie arises here for the first time. The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined. And besides, what about these linguistic conventions themselves? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, that is, of the sense of truth? Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities? It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions. What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus. But the further inference from the nerve stimulus to a cause outside of us is already the result of a false and unjustifiable application of the principle of sufficient reason. If truth alone had been the deciding factor in the genesis of language, and if the standpoint of certainty had been decisive for designations, then how could we still dare to say "the stone is hard," as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation! We  separate things according to gender, designating the tree as masculine and the plant as feminine. What arbitrary assignments! How far this oversteps the canons of certainty! We speak of a "snake": this designation touches only upon its ability to twist itself and could therefore also fit a worm. What arbitrary differentiations! What one-sided preferences, first for this, then for that property of a thing! The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. 

Thus, truth is just a tool to protect our interests. This implies util since statements are true as long as they protect the herd’s interests. This also comes first since other arguments assume what truth is.

() Extinction precedes ethics. Bostrom writes:
Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know— at least not in concrete detail—what outcomes are moral would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving— and ideally improving—our ability to recognize value and to steer the future in accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe.