Complex Question
A complex question hides an assumption inside a question, such as "why did you stop?", so any direct answer concedes the assumption. Debaters answer by separating the parts of the question and rejecting the hidden premise before answering.
Complex Question as it appears in championship debate rounds. Each example below is a moment from a real round, with a note on why it illustrates the technique and how a debater can use it, or answer it.
Example 1
The speaker explains the complex (loaded) question with 'given that puppies are evil, why shouldn't we get rid of them?' The question smuggles in a presupposition the opponent rejects, so any answer either accepts it or looks long and evasive. To counter it, name the hidden premise and reject it in one short sentence before answering, so the audience doesn't read your answer as dodging.
Example 2
In cross-ex, the negative builds a hypothetical ('say we win socialism is anti-migrant') and demands a yes-or-no answer to 'does warming outweigh that?' When the affirmative says yes, the questioner immediately recasts it as 'warming outweighs xenophobia, that's messed up.' This is a complex or loaded question: the hypothetical premise is smuggled in so that any direct answer sounds damning. When you face this, reject the premise out loud and answer conditionally, as the affirmative partly tries to do. When you ask questions like this, be ready for a judge who sees the trap.
Sources: every example links to the YouTube video of the championship debate it comes from, at the moment described.
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