Tournament:  | Round:  | Opponent:  | Judge:
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Adams, 1980 Douglas, pen of the gods, “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe,” pp. 177-184.
"Do you rule the Universe?" said Zaphod.
The man smiled at him.
"I try not to," he said, "Are you wet?"
Zaphod looked at him in astonishment.
"Wet?" he cried, "Doesn't it look as if we're wet?"
"That's how it looks to me," said the man, "but how you feel about it might be an altogether different matter. If you feel warmth makes you dry, you'd better come in."
They went in.
They looked around the tiny shack, Zarniwoop with slight distaste, Trillian with interest, Zaphod with delight.
"Hey, er ..." said Zaphod, "what's your name?"
The man looked at them doubtfully.
"I don't know. Why, do you think I should have one? It seems very odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name."
He invited Trillian to sit in the chair. He sat on the edge of the chair, Zarniwoop leaned stiffly against the table and Zaphod lay on the mattress.
"Wowee!" said Zaphod, "the seat of power!" He tickled the cat.
"Listen," said Zarniwoop, "I must ask you some questions."
"Alright," said the man kindly, "you can sing to my cat if you like."
"Would he like that?" asked Zaphod.
"You'd better ask him," said the man.
"Does he talk?" said Zaphod.
"I have no memory of him talking," said the man, "but I am very unreliable."
Zarniwoop pulled some notes out of a pocket.
"Now," he said, "you do rule the Universe, do you?"
"How can I tell?" said the man.
Zarniwoop ticked off a note on the paper.
"How long have you been doing this?"
"Ah," said the man, "this is a question about the past is it?"
Zarniwoop looked at him in puzzlement. This wasn't exactly what he had been
expecting.
"Yes," he said.
"How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?"
Zarniwoop stared at him. The steam began to rise from his sodden clothes.
"So you answer all questions like this?" he said.
The man answered quickly.
"I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say."
Zaphod laughed happily.
"I'll drink to that," he said and pulled out the bottle of Janx spirit. He leaped up and handed the bottle to the ruler of the Universe, who took it with pleasure.
"Good on you, great ruler," he said, "tell it like it is."
"No, listen to me," said Zarniwoop, "people come to you do they?
In ships ..."
"I think so," said the man. He handed the bottle to Trillian.
"And they ask you," said Zarniwoop, "to take decisions for them? About people's lives, about worlds, about economies, about wars, about everything going on out there in the Universe?"
"Out there?" said the man, "out where?"
"Out there!" said Zarniwoop pointing at the door.
"How can you tell there's anything out there," said the man politely, "the door's closed."
The rain continued to pound the roof. Inside the shack it was warm.
"But you know there's a whole Universe out there!" cried Zarniwoop. "You can't
dodge your responsibilities by saying they don't exist!"
The ruler of the Universe thought for a long while whilst Zarniwoop quivered with
anger.
"You're very sure of your facts," he said at last, "I couldn't trust the thinking of a man who takes the Universe - if there is one - for granted."
Zarniwoop still quivered, but was silent.
"I only decide about my Universe," continued the man quietly. "My Universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay."
"But don't you believe in anything?"
The man shrugged and picked up his cat.
"I don't understand what you mean," he said.
"You don't understand that what you decide in this shack of yours affects the lives and fates of millions of people? This is all monstrously wrong!"
"I don't know. I've never met all these people you speak of. And neither, I suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears."
Trillian said:
"I think I'm just popping outside for a moment."
She left and walked into the rain.
"Do you believe other people exist?" insisted Zarniwoop.
"I have no opinion. How can I say?"
"I'd better see what's up with Trillian," said Zaphod and slipped out.
Outside, he said to her:
"I think the Universe is in pretty good hands, yeah?"
"Very good," said Trillian. They walked off into the rain.
The logic of the affirmative is only concerned with the environment insofar as it coincides with human interests – this creates ecological catastrophism that whirls us into a fantasy of impact scenarios and policy making – distorting causality beyond intelligibility and causing committing endless violence against those around us.
Shapiro 2011 Alan N., technology theorist “Jean Baudrillard and Doomsday: On Louis Arnoux’s “Catastrophe Warning” Discourse,” https://profiles.google.com/100747981746333659560/buzz/66aoa1MYfju
Continuing on with The Illusion of the End: “The virtual produces the real
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and further from the initial conditions of the real world.” (113)
This stringing together of impact scenarios with a magical tech solution carries over into our lives – it makes us indifferent, cynical, skeptical because we’re burned out by catastrophe, impact frontlines, guarantees that we retreat from environmental collapse inside of our air-conditioned classrooms.
Baudrillard in 94 Jean, “The Illusion of the End” p. 85-88
The finest example of what the human species is capable of inflicting upon itself is
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m a scientific euphoria sustained by dripfeed.
we can’t predict anything – means their policy making is terminally fucked
Gardner and Tetlock 2011 Dan, columnist and senior writer with the Ottawa Citizen, and Philip, Leonore Annenberg University Professor @ UPenn “Overcoming Our Aversion to Acknowledging Our Ignorance” Cato Unbound 7-11 http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/11/dan-gardner-and-philip-tetlock/overcoming-our-aversion-to-acknowledging-our-ignorance\
Cynics resonate to these results and sometimes cite them to justify a stance of populist
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out of alignment with reality were the hedgehogs.
Even if warming is true, framing it as apocalypse is strategically even more dangerous.
Crist ‘7 – Ass. Prof. Sci and Tech in Society @ VT (Eileen, Telos 141, Winter, Beyond the Climate Crisis)

While the dangers of climate change are real, I argue that there are even
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to—will barely address—the ongoing destruction of life on Earth.
Disease descriptions are shaped by political interests and in turn shape reality – turns the aff
MacPhail 2009 (Theresa, medical anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley “The Politics of Bird Flu: The Battle over Viral Samples and China’s Role in Global Public Health,” Journal of language and politics, 8:3, 2009)
In fact, the health development strategies of international organizations are judged as significant in
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samples. Politics and health have always arguably gone hand-in-hand 

Diplomacy is warfare. Maintenance of global civil peace is a front in the perpetual war that structures dominating social relations between and within nations – causes extinction
Foucault 1976 (Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews, Ed. Gordon, Pg. 90-91)

Then again, there is a second reply we might make: if power is
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once and for all, to the exercise of power as continual war.
US Leadership ensures destruction – we only believe it is stabilizing because we refuse to question it
Anthony Burke, Senior Lecturer @ School of Politics and IR @ Univ. of New South Wales, ‘7 Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence, p. 231-2

Yet the first act in America's 'forward strategy of freedom' was to invade and attempt
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we act, we create our own reality . . We're history's actors."
Their failure to problematize the industries of production allows for the ongoing exploitation of the colored poor – this is not a link of omission rather it is systematic ignorance – the increase of financial incentives here allows the rich to get richer and the poor to be poisoned.
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY, ’02 (Robert, http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/PovpolEj.html, “Poverty, pollution, and environmental racism)
The systematic destruction of indigenous peoples' land and sacred sites, the poisoning of Native
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--especially where ethnic or racial groups form a political and or numerical minority.
And this catastrophism perfects itself – catastrophe is a rhetorical tool that renders everything into nails to either be hammered in or yanked out – becomes a survival imperative – makes unending conflict inevitable
Baudrillard, 2004 Jean, The Phantom Menace “The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact,” 117-121
At this present stage of a networking of all functions - of the body, of time, of language - of a drip-feeding of all minds, the slightest event is a threat; even history is a threat.
It is going to be necessary, then, to invent a security system that prevents any event whatever from occurring. A whole strategy of deterrence that does service today for a global strategy.
Steven Spielberg's recent film, Minority Report, provides an illustration of such a system
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of its mastery, it can now only' lose face.
This is, literally, the 'Hell of Power'
The alternative is an affirmation of irrational decision making - the scenarios they spin – the cards they read – overwhelm the real within simulation and force the system to its cracking point – we need less rationalization less information less certainty, only our calculated irrationality in the face of hyperationality can guide us out of the storm
Baudrillard, France's top model, 2005 Jean, The Intelligence of Evil, 191-6
Lines of fracture, inversions, splits, rifts: there is, as it were, a line beyond which, for every expanding system - every system which, by dint of exponential growth, passes beyond its own end - a catastrophe looms.
equal or even greater uncertainty.
Etc.
Every process growing exponentially
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ceasing to exist once its much more efficient artificial counterpart comes into being?
ituation, where we are everywhere on the verge of this critical density, if not indeed beyond it, the wise thing would be to act generally in irrational ways. Out of intolerance to the system itself.