I have prepared for a verbal PF debate tournament, for the first ever time. Honestly, they have this kind of topics all the time. On balance, the benefit>harms for X, bla bla bla. Bearing the creed of that "If people vote against you, it is because your argument is not strong enough", I started looking for bombs for this kind of topics. Being a DART user inexperienced in PF debating(in which you have to actually speak to win), I forgot to take account in for execution, which my stuttering made me lose the first tournament and got me eliminated.
My main frame of arguments is as follows(Most topics in this format applies).
1. It is true that humans can evaluate benefits and costs.2. When something is done, the sum of benefits is larger than the sum of costs, vice versa(this is a basic economic principle).3. Opportunity costs exist and is the benefit being given up if one chooses to instead do an alternative act than the act that gives said benefit.4. Thus, taking account in all costs and benefits, because only the optimal choice of action results in that when accounting for the opportunity cost, the total net benefit is the most positive, humans will choose to act upon what they consider to be the optimal action every time they do ()anything.5PRO. X has been done6PRO. Because when humans do it, they mean it, thus the benefit must outweigh the cost for X's existence.5CON. Less than 3.5B people do X ever6CON. Because the average individual does not do X, thus the benefit for X is less than the costs for the average person, or "On balanace".
In other words, "on balance" debates have essentially reduced itself to an argument about the domain of where the debate topic should apply, and sadly I have yet to find a solution to counter those two head to head each other. Luckily, no opponent has tried to even consider anything close to this in PF debating.
So...change my mind, and maybe find flaws to this argument if you really want to.
