I wrote an article about film study that was published in the September issue of Rostrum, the National Forensic League’s monthly magazine. Based on a lecture I gave this summer at Georgetown, the article is reprinted below the fold.

You can observe a lot by watching. — Yogi Berra

One of the best ways for students to improve at debate is to watch themselves in action. While coaches, judges, and teammates can comment on a student’s performance and provide helpful suggestions and feedback, there is no substitute for seeing oneself debate—warts and all.

While debate coaches have long understood the power of film study, it has only been recently that accessible and affordable recording technologies have made routinized film study practical for most high school debate squads. Despite the ubiquity of recording tools, however, the vast majority of debaters are not taking advantage of opportunities to record and review their speeches.

Based on a lecture delivered at this summer’s Georgetown Debate Seminar , the goal of this article is to help students (and coaches) make the most of film study. Those wishing to learn more about the application of observational learning to high school debate are also encouraged to view “How To Learn By Watching,” a recording of a lecture delivered at the Spartan Debate Institutes that discusses the value for students of watching (and judging) debates.

What To Record

Students are strongly encouraged to record all of their debates. Be sure to ask the opposing team for permission to record their speeches; most students are happy to do so, especially when offered a copy of the video after the debate. If they say no, just record one’s own speeches. Do not post videos of debates on the public internet unless explicit permission is provided. Even then, legal restrictions may apply. Always be mature: some people really dislike video recording and will feel uncomfortable about it. If that is the case, live with it.

How To Record Debates

Once the decision has been made to record debates, there are several steps that need to be taken.

1. Get a camera. Some schools have video cameras that students can check out for tournaments. If a student does not have access to an actual video camera, many laptops have built-in microphones and webcams that can be turned on to record speeches. If neither of those is an option, digital video cameras can be purchased on e-Bay or in closeout specials for very reasonable prices; functional cameras are available for less than $100. If acquiring a camera proves too difficult, students should still try to get a copy of videos that other teams record—this is better than nothing. For the vast majority of students, however, video recording technology should now be (at least reasonably) accessible.

2. Set up the camera. Tripods are essential. Make sure the camera can be powered externally with a power cable and ensure that a power strip and extension cord is available. For many students that are already debating paperlessly, this will require no additional investment. Set up the camera in a location where it can be plugged in and where it can clearly record the debate. Audio quality is more important than video quality so it is important to make sure that the camera’s microphone picks up the debaters’ voices loud and clear.

3. Don’t forget. Students need to train themselves to make recording a part of their pre-round routine. Once one gets good at it, the process doesn’t take very long. The biggest issue students have is that they forget to set up their camera or forget to press play; if this is part of the pre-round routine, it is more likely to be remembered.

4. Pack everything up. Even inexpensive cameras are valuable pieces of technology that can easily be lost or stolen. Labeling each component with a name and contact information will help locate lost items but it is important that debaters make packing up their equipment part of their routine.

5. Upload to a computer. This is very easy: many cameras have built-in USB capabilities while others connect via USB or Firewire cables. Once the video is transferred to a computer, rename it according to a naming convention (e.g. “2011-09-01 Round 1 vs. Central High AB”) and save it. Video files are huge, so an external drive just for debate videos might make sense. A high-definition video of a policy debate requires about one gigabyte of storage space, so space is at a premium. Once the video has been transferred to a computer, delete it from the camera’s hard drive or memory card.

How To Use Debate Recordings

Getting the videos is the easy part; making use of them is harder. The following tips will help students make the most of their film study.

1. Assess. Watch debates with a critical eye; instead of passively observing, students should approach the process as active critics. Students are naturally their own harshest judges—they care more than anyone about their performance, after all—and will often pick up on small things that never come up on written ballots or in post-round discussions. If an issue was raised on a ballot or in a post-round discussion, students should explicitly watch their performance with that comment in mind. Coaches can assist students by providing them with a set of guided questions.

2. Correct. Once an area that needs improvement has been identified, students need to work hard to fix it. If it is a speaking or physical presence issue, students should commit to a set of drills to correct the problem. If it is a content issue, arguments must be reworked. The goal of video study is to see what others see and thereby improve a student’s ability to debate better. If a student is not constantly making corrections based on video study, they are wasting their time.

3. Revise. Video recordings are great tools for supercharging the value of speech revisions (“rebuttal redos” in the common vernacular). Students should watch and flow the debate up to the point where the speech that they are reworking occurred. Adding video to the revision process keeps students in the moment and offers a more realistic simulation of game conditions than does a blind redo. If students are fortunate enough to have a coach with whom to work on speech revisions, a video of the original speech should be shared with the coach and the student should identify the components of the speech that they are attempting to improve upon in the revision (i.e. speaking fluidity, argument selection, efficiency, etc.). Reworked speeches should also be recorded so that students can assess their improvement.

4. Compare. Students should periodically revisit earlier videos in order to track their season-long progress. This technique works particularly well when the areas needing improvement involve skills—speaking, physical presence, ethos, cross-examination, evidence comparison, rebuttal efficiency, etc.—rather than arguments or in-round decision-making. It is important that students be honest with themselves when assessing their progress. If improvement is slow or non-existent, a new game plan needs to be established so that a student’s investment in practice pays dividends in competition.

5. Get specific feedback. Students routinely underestimate the time investment required of their coaches to review speeches and critique revisions. In order to reduce the coaching burden, students should clip small parts of a video (or reference a specific time marker) and ask very specific questions about that aspect of their speech. If a student is working on improving a final rebuttal overview, for example, they can send their coach a clip of only that part of their original speech and their revised speech as well as specific questions about the improvements they were attempting to make. If students can reduce the burden required of coaches to provide feedback, they will be more likely to get that feedback—and in many cases the feedback will be more specific and therefore more helpful.

Specialized Techniques

There are several specialized techniques that students can use to improve by watching videos of their own debates:

1. Flow. Students need to know what it is like for judges to flow their speeches. What is hard to flow? Are tags, cites, and cards crisp and clear? Are arguments front-loaded with helpful labels? Is the speech powerfully projected toward the judge or focused downward and into the speaker’s laptop or podium? Often, a debater’s perception of their speaking is dramatically different from the perception held by their judges. Flowing oneself’s speeches is one of the most powerful ways to use video to improve as a debater.

2. Don’t flow. Instead of flowing, students should watch themselves throughout a debate. Are they focused or distracted? Are they confident or intimidated? Do they come off as arrogant or respectful? As aggressive or passive? Are they steady or inconsistent? Are they making good connections? Are they enjoyable to listen to? Are they in control of the debate? Students can learn a lot from non-verbals and from simply watching and listening to themselves in a debate.

3. Watch during prep time. This technique is especially helpful for students that struggle to manage their preparation time. If this is an issue, students should set up a camera that is aimed at their preparation area (either the table they are sitting at or their laptop screen). By recording the debate from this perspective, students can listen to the debate while focusing exclusively on how they spent their preparation time. To make this even more effective, students that prepare their speeches on a laptop can download and install a screen-recording program that captures a video of what they did during preparation time. This technique, while specialized, is underutilized and potentially powerful.

4. Watch during opposing speeches. Another specialized technique, this approach is particularly helpful for students that struggle with flowing, prep time issues, and in-round presence. If a student constantly looks distracted, frustrated, exasperated, or frantic, the judge will notice. Film study offers students a unique opportunity to correct flaws in these areas.

To make it easier to use the speaking drills referenced in the hip-hop article, I have compiled a document with all of the materials formatted and organized for ease of use. This freely available resource includes all of the hip-hop and other songs as well as a few additional materials that are helpful when doing speaking drills. Enjoy!

Over the course of the summer I recorded several lectures that have been posted to Debate Vision. While some readers might have already seen them, it can’t hurt to share them again here on The 3NR. On the heels of the film study lecture, this one discusses strategies for learning by watching others debate — it is embedded below the fold.

Note: The version posted on Debate Vision has the audio and video out of sync. A properly synced version is available for download from Mediafire.

“Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can—there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.” — Sarah Caldwell

If one looks closely enough, there are lessons to be learned about debate almost everywhere. The book Moneyball—Michael Lewis’s look at the exploitation of market inefficiencies in Major League Baseball—for example, can help us consider ways to exploit market inefficiencies in debate. While management strategies in professional baseball would seem at first glance to have little to do with high school debate, important lessons can nonetheless be learned—if only we take the time to dig a bit deeper.

In the same way that Moneyball inspired reflection about market inefficiencies in debate, Paul Edwards’ How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC provides the astute observer with a wealth of lessons for high school debaters. How to Rap is a comprehensive guide to hip-hop MCing that includes lengthy discussions of content, flow, writing, and delivery. Based on interviews with more than 100 MCs, Edwards’ book “marks a cultural coming-of-age for hip-hop — the first comprehensive poetics of this new literary form.”

While the entire book is fascinating, the section about delivery is particularly useful for high school debate. This article refashions Edwards’ advice to prospective MCs and applies it to debate. Five areas of advice are outlined: Breath Control, Taking Care of Your Voice, Enunciation, Vocal Style, and Presence/Swagger.

Breath Control

Breath control allows you to say your rhymes without running out of breath and to adjust the volume and strength of your vocals. If you’re not in control of your breathing and you don’t get enough air when you’re performing your lyrics, then either you won’t be able to complete your rhymes or they won’t come out the way you intended. (p. 239)

Like MCs, debaters need to speak with maximum effort for long periods of time. Unfortunately, few coaches teach proper breath control and many debaters develop poor breathing habits that remain uncorrected for their entire careers. To effectively control breathing, debaters (like MCs) need to breathe diaphragmatically—from the belly, not the chest.

The breath control needed in MCing is similar to the breath control singing and acting require, so MCs use the same techniques and exercises singers and actors use to project their vocals through their breathing. (p. 242)

A variety of symptoms manifest themselves in debaters that are not breathing diaphragmatically: they have trouble projecting their voices, they struggle with breathing (double-breathing or taking breaths often and in a distracting way), they become exhausted during speeches, and they often lose their voice or develop a sore throat during tournaments.

There are a variety of exercises that can be used to develop diaphragmatic breathing. Because it is the natural way for humans to breathe, it is relatively easy for most people to learn.

The importance of diaphragmatic breathing for debaters can’t be overstated. By breathing correctly, debaters can better project their voices, maintain stronger volume and clarity, and sustain their vocal quality throughout a long tournament. Like an MC performing a long concert, a debater that reaches the late elimination rounds needs to perform at their best for several consecutive days and in high-pressure situations. Only debaters with proper technique will be able to do so.

Taking Care of Your Voice

Because your voice is your instrument for delivering your rhymes to people, it is important to look after it. You can damage your voice by straining it and not properly resting it, so be careful to avoid these tendencies when recording or performing live. (p. 260)

MCs need to maintain their voices for long recording sessions and concert tours. In the same way, debaters need to maintain their voices for long tournaments and full seasons.

Many up-and-coming MCs don’t pay proper attention to main- taining their voices. Vinnie Paz of Jedi Mind Tricks, known for his guttural vocals, explains that “the process of taking care of your voice is a whole art in and of itself. There are a lot of younger MCs, you see them do one show and their voice will be blown out.” (p. 261)

Learning to breathe and speak diaphragmatically is the single most important way to build stamina as a speaker. Beyond good technique, debaters should practice their speaking every day, drink plenty of water, and keep themselves physically healthy. Illnesses can wreak havoc on debaters’ voices and can make it difficult to make it through long tournaments.

In debate as in hip-hop, it is important to take care of one’s voice.

Enunciation

Enunciation refers to how accurately and clearly words are said. You have to have good enunciation to be able to pronounce all the separate syllables fluidly and quickly enough to stay in time with the beat. Writing great lyrics with a great flow means nothing if you are stumbling over the words, they are not in time, and no one can tell what you’re saying. (p. 244)

In debate as in hip-hop, the quality of one’s content matters only to the extent that it is effectively communicated to the audience. Debaters who struggle to enunciate their words are difficult to flow, irritating to listen to, and substantially less persuasive than their peers.

Enunciation is especially important if you plan on rapping fast, because if syllables have to be said more quickly, there is a greater risk that you will mumble or mispronounce them. (p. 245)

Because of time constraints, debaters feel pressure to fill their speeches with as much content as possible. That means going fast—too fast to be understood, in some cases. While MCs can write slower songs to make enunciation easier, debaters need to effectively enunciate at very high speeds.

The most straightforward way to improve your enunciation is to repeat lyrics over and over until you can say them fluidly with no mistakes, with every syllable under your control. Gift of Gab of Blackalicious, known for his strong enunciation and fast rapping style, says, “It doesn’t take real long. It’s just a matter of going over it, repeating it, repeating it, repeating it—just getting comfortable with what you’ve just written.” If the flow is particularly dense and fast, it pays to practice more than usual. (p. 245)

Practice is the best way for debaters to improve their enunciation, too. Unlike MCs, however, debaters must develop the ability to enunciate well even when they have not previously practiced the particular text they are speaking. While MCs can practice a song exhaustively before performing it live or recording it in the studio, debaters need to be prepared to deliver speeches with content that they have not explicitly practiced.

It turns out that hip-hop songs provide debaters with some of the best materials for practicing proper enunciation. While it is helpful and important to practice enunciating debate materials, too, every debater should incorporate hip-hop drills into their practice routine. The following songs have proven particularly effective at training students to enunciate well:

• “Alphabet Aerobics” — Blackalicious (Gift Of Gab)
• “Chemical Calisthenics” — Blackalicious (Gift Of Gab)
• “A To G” — Blackalicious (Gift Of Gab)
• “Clockwork” — Blackalicious (Gift Of Gab)
• “Alphabetical Slaughter” — Papoose
• “Worldwide Choppers” — Tech N9ne
• “Ratatattat” — Twista
• “Frum Da Tip Of My Tongue” — Twista
• “Razzamatazz / Jazzamatazz” — Twista
• “Mista Tung Twista” — Twista
• “Runnin’ Off At Da Mouth” — Twista
• “Fastest Rhyme” — Young MC

(Note: some of these songs contain lyrics that some readers may find inappropriate. Discretion is advised.)

Other materials that are effective for practicing enunciation include:

• Random Paragraph Generator — available from GDS wiki
• Tongue Twisters — available from SDI platform
• “Technologic” — Daft Punk
• “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” — REM
• “Subterranean Homesick Blues” — Bob Dylan
• “KMAG YOYO” — Hayes Carll
• “I’ve Been Everywhere” — Johnny Cash

When practicing enunciation, debaters should focus on clearly pronouncing every syllable of every word. The goal should be for every word to be clearly understandable.

“MCs are often praised for how sharply and clearly they say every syllable in a rhyme—so that the listener can make out every word. For example, Slick Rick and Eminem are considered masters of enunciation.” (p. 244)

Good debaters, like good MCs, make it easy for the listener to hear every word they say. Strong enunciation is critical to establish this level of clarity.

Practice, practice, f@#!ing practice, practice, practice, practice, and practice, then you go practice some more. — RBX (p. 313)

Vocal Style

When you deliver your lyrics, you can adjust your voice in many different ways to create a particular vocal style. You can alter the pitch of your voice and make your delivery more or less melodic. You can adjust how muffled, clear, or nasal your vocals are. You can control your voice’s volume and how smooth or harsh it is. An outstanding and unique vocal style can help you to stand out from other MCs. (p. 247)

One of the most important ways for debaters to improve their speaking is to find their own voice. In the same way that MCs have unique styles, good debaters sound like themselves—they have distinctive styles that are easily recognizable as their own. Good debaters sound in debates like they do outside of debates—only with a different cadence, rhythm, etc.

The goal of a debater should be to speak well, fast—not to speak fast, well. Too many debaters attempt to speak quickly before they learn to speak well. As a result, they never develop a vocal style that is comfortable and compatible with their unique voice. The best debaters—the ones that consistently win top speaker awards—are good speakers who simply turn up the tempo in order to jam more content into their speeches; they still speak well, but they do so more quickly.

While vocal style is more obvious in MCs than in debaters, the same principles apply in both contexts.

One of the main points of vocal style, according to Akir, is “not being monotone, having a certain level of expression in the recording, which is something that a lot of people don’t really take into consideration.” He adds that “some people just have it naturally, but part of being a recording artist is to be able to bring that expression out and that feeling on the actual recording.” This natural vocal expressiveness can often be the sign of a particularly talented artist. (p. 247)

Good debaters, like good MCs, are not monotone—they have “a certain level of expression” and are able to “bring that expression out.” Connection moments in debate are all about style: in the midst of a high-speed speech, speakers find opportunities to slow down a bit, vary their pitch, and really connect with the judge on an important argument.

Vocal style is certainly an art, not a science. Listening to great MCs can help debaters hone their appreciation for stylistic techniques that they can incorporate into their debating. Some of the fastest MCs include:

• Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (including solo work from Bizzy Bone, Flesh-n-Bone, and Krayzie Bone)
• Gift Of Gab (solo and Blackalicious)
• KRS-One (including Boogie Down Productions)
• NoClue
• Papoose
• Tech N9ne
• Tonedeff
• Twista (formerly known as Tung Twista)

Because these MCs often rap at high speeds, their deliveries are remarkably similar to those one finds at a debate tournament. In listening to these MCs, debaters should be attentive to the ways these rappers vary their deliveries, emphasize parts of their songs, project their voices, and maintain a powerful delivery without taking distracting breathes.

Being better at MCing? Be yourself. If you can be yourself and feel like you’re fresh, dog, you gonna be the man—you’re gonna be light-years ahead of everybody else because a lot of these people ain’t being their self. — Pusha-T, Clipse (p. 313)

Each MC has their own unique style; so do good debaters.

Presence/Swagger

Your presence and attitude on the microphone also can be important elements of your vocal style. Some rappers don’t necessarily have the greatest content or flow, or the most precise delivery, but they give themselves an edge by conveying their personality and charisma through their delivery. (p. 257)

Ethos matters in hip-hop as much as it does in debate. Lil Wayne—arguably the most popular MC in the world—relies largely on swagger to distinguish himself from his peers.

Guerilla Black says, “The swagger—that’s one of the big things right now,” which can be seen in the rise of Lil Wayne, who is often commended for the swagger he has on his records. By injecting your delivery with this kind of personality, you can add more life and intrigue to ordinary words and phrases and make even a well-written verse more entertaining. (p. 258)

While its meaning is different in debate, swagger still matters. The best debaters control the room from the podium in the same way that the best MCs control the room from the stage. Good physical presence and a sense of being in control are evident in debaters that project confidence and credibility to the judge. Debaters that are perceived in this way win close debates and earn higher speaker points.

Strategies for improving one’s ethos are beyond the scope of this article. In debate as in hip-hop, however, swagger sells.

Notes

1. Paul Edwards, How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC, Published by Chicago Review Press, ISBN 978-1-55652-816-3, 2009.

2. Many of the interviews from the book are posted on Edwards’ Youtube Channel.

3. Special thanks to Noah Goetz of St. Mark’s for uncovering Edwards’ book and for inspiring this article.

Debate is a speaking activity, certainly, but it is also a writing activity. Good constructive speeches rely in large part on well-written prepared materials, but rebuttals are where the real writing occurs. To deliver a powerful rebuttal, students must verbalize their arguments clearly and persuasively—but do so extemporaneously, without a script. Good speaking, like good writing, must be clear, concise, and well organized: the content needs to be allowed to shine through.

As part of this summer’s Hoya Spartan Scholars program, students were given an opportunity to transcribe and edit their rebuttal speeches. The transcription process is tedious—it takes a lot of time and concentration to accurately and completely transcribe a debate speech—but the payout is substantial. By transforming a spoken speech into a written text, students can more rigorously assess the content of their speeches and dramatically improve their efficiency and language choices. And by doing so, the connection between good speaking and good writing becomes obvious.

In the course of editing students’ transcriptions, one thing became abundantly clear: debaters do not communicate efficiently. Most rebuttals overflow with filler language, distracting sentence structures, and imprecise word choices. This undermines persuasiveness, of course, but it also directly sacrifices content by wasting precious speech time. The goal of a debater should be to effectively communicate as many important arguments as possible to the judge within the time constraints. Doing so requires not just speed but efficiency. And while gains in speaking speed are certainly valuable, improvements in efficiency can be much more dramatic.

A list of 16 common efficiency problems is provided below the fold. Did we miss one? Share it in the comments.

1. “In The Round” (and “In The Debate”)

Examples: “We access the biggest impact in the round—nuclear war causes extinction!” “They have no offense in the debate—any risk of our impact outweighs!”

Yes, this is a debate round. No, the judge does not need to be reminded. A related inefficiency is “on the flow”: “They have no offense on the flow—any risk of our impact outweighs!” or “There is no ink on the flow here—they cold conceded it!” Obviously, everything is “on the flow”—there is no need to point that out.

2. “Solve Back” (and “Check Back,” “Link Back,” “Turn Back,” etc.)

Examples: “We solve back for their economy impact.” “Our interpretation checks back their limits offense.”

Huh? What does “solve back” even mean? This one is totally stupid and annoyingly pervasive.

3. Long Introductions

Examples: “I have three answers—my first argument will be that the counterplan solves this warrant.” “First of all, we meet their interpretation.”

Substructure and numbering can be a powerful way to improve flowability and efficiency. Used in this way, however, it is annoying and a waste of speech time.

4. “Things Like” (and “Things Such As”)

Examples: “The DA turns the case—it accesses things like war and the economy.” “Capitalism makes things such as environmental destruction and global warming inevitable.”

Just take those extra words out. The thing being discussed doesn’t “access things like war,” it “accesses war.”

5. “As To Why”

Examples: “There’s no reason as to why the alternative solves the case.” “Our interpretation captures all the reasons as to why their interpretation solves limits.”

A classic example of filler language, “as to why” is a phrase that serves no purpose. Instead of “there’s no reason as to why the alternative solves the case,” just say “there’s no reason the alternative solves the case”—or better yet, “the alternative doesn’t solve the case.” Whenever possible, speak clearly and in active voice—say what you mean instead of dancing around it.

6. “The Fact That”

Examples: “The fact that our interpretation gives them ground means you should err aff on reasonability.” “The fact that economic collapse causes war means our impact outweighs.”

This is another classic example of filler language that transforms clear sentences into passive-voiced mumbo jumbo. Instead of saying “the fact that our interpretation gives them ground means you should err aff on reasonability,” say “our interpretation gives them ground—err aff on reasonability” or “err aff on reasonability because our interpretation gives them ground.”

7. “Probably”

Example: “The DA probably turns the case because economic decline causes war.” “Our link turn probably outweighs the link because it is more specific to the plan.”

A relatively recent addition to the pantheon of annoying debate inefficiencies, the word “probably” has taken center stage in many students’ speeches and is now used as an all-purpose preface to every argument advanced in the debate. If the intended meaning is “almost certainly; as far as one knows or can tell,” the word “probably” is appropriate. If not, it is meaningless filler.

8. “Default To” (and “Defer To”)

Examples: “The fact that our interpretation solves back their offense probably means you should default to it.” “The fact that they have no offense means you should defer to our DA.”

Often used in conjunction with “probably” and “the fact that,” this phrase plays an essential part in the construction of many of debate’s most inefficient sentences. Beyond its simple inelegance, this phrasing makes very little sense: no one says “default to” in everyday conversation. When is the last time you heard someone say “I don’t really like coffee so I’ll default to having the orange juice”?

9. “Go To The X Debate” (and “Drop Down To The X Debate,” “Drop Down To X,” etc.)

Examples: “Drop down to the solvency debate.” “Now go to the permutation debate.”

Signposting is good, but debaters frequently fall victim to over-narration. Visual directions in particular are unnecessary and inefficient. (For a hilarious critique of this style of writing as manifested in scholarly publication, check out Geoff Dwyer’s “An Academic Author’s Unintentional Masterpiece” in the New York Times.)

10. “Extend Across”

Examples: “Extend across the 2AC #1—we meet.” “They have cold conceded our impact—extend across that economic decline causes war.”

Another visual direction that adds nothing to a speech, this one is quite pervasive. Eliminating “across” is certainly an improvement, but even the word “extend” is unnecessary. Instead of instructing the judge to “extend 2AC #1,” just make the argument contained in 2AC #1. By developing the argument, the speaker is performatively “extending” it—an explicit instruction is not necessary.

11. “On This Question”

Examples: “Cross-ex was embarrassing on this question.” “Our evidence is surprisingly good on this question.”

Who asked a question? This one has become more popular in recent years and the cross-ex manifestation (“cross-ex was embarrassing on this question!”) is particularly pervasive. In general, this phrasing is used to conceal vacuousness and scarcity of content: “our evidence is surprisingly good on this question” doesn’t mean anything more than “our cards are good, judge.”

12. “Always Going To Win” (and “Never Going To Win”)

Examples: “We’re always going to win that the economy is strong now.” “They’re never going to win a link turn because we control uniqueness.”

Debating about possible ballots is useful and effective: there’s a reason that “even if they win X, we win Y and Y is more important than X” is a classic framework for good rebuttals. The addition of “always” transforms this technique into wasteful boasting and reflects an unrealistic assessment of the round.

13. “In A World” (and “At The Point Where,” “At The Point When,” etc.)

Examples: “The economy will never be able to survive in a world of nuclear war.” “In a world where we win uniqueness, there’s only a risk of a link.” “At the point where we win uniqueness, there’s only a risk of a link.”

Another classic example of filler language, the phrase “in a world” adds words but not meaning to a speech. Instead of “the economy will never be able to survive in a world of nuclear war,” say “the economy won’t survive a nuclear war” or, even better, “nuclear war will devastate the economy.”

14. “Right Now” (and “In The Status Quo”)

Examples: “Poverty is not being solved right now.” “China is not pursuing space weapons in the status quo.”

These phrases make explicit something that was already understood implicitly. “Poverty is not being solved” implies that poverty is not being solved now; in the same way, “China is not pursuing space weapons” implies that China is not pursuing space weapons in the status quo.

15. “Actually Going To Be Able To” (and “Actually”)

Examples: “They’re not actually going to be able to solve for the economy because nuclear war collapses infrastructure.” “The disad actually turns the case because economic decline makes war more likely.”

A first cousin of “probably,” the word “actually” is deployed in similar ways. Frequently, the phrase “actually going to be able to” is deployed to transform simple, straightforward sentences into passive-voiced obfuscations. Instead of “they’re not actually going to be able to solve for the economy because nuclear war collapses infrastructure,” say “nuclear war undermines the economy because it collapses infrastructure.”

16. “Which Means”

Examples: “The United States has a strong military and the world’s largest economy which means that hegemony is resilient and sustainable.” “Predictability is the biggest internal link to limits which means that our interpretation solves limits better.”

The most powerful enabler of passive voice sentence constructions, the phrase “which means” is added to connect two statements. The clear, straightforward sentence is thereby reversed and transformed into a passive-voiced monstrosity. Instead of “the U.S. has a strong military and the world’s largest economy which means that hegemony is resilient and sustainable,” say “hegemony is resilient and sustainable because the U.S. has a strong military and the world’s largest economy.”

Part 1 discussed in detail how to work on the actual speaking to improve your points, part 2 is going to discuss a few ways to improve the things you are saying. Before doing that I will quickly address some questions I got about part 1.

Questions about part 1

1. What sort of volume should I aim for- this is tricky. It depends a lot on the room you are speaking in, but basically you need to speak so that the judge can hear you in the same way they would hear a regular conversation- not too loud, not too quiet. Speaking quietly gives you an artificial feeling of speed-since you are using less oxygen you can get more out between breaths and up your overall amount of delivery. Too loud slows you down and is really frustrating to listen to. You can figure this out easily by just having your partner or coach listen to you and let you know a good volume.

2. My voice changes xyz way when I spread- no it doesn’t. You are changing your voice when you speak for some reason. If the way you talk sounds dramatically different from the way you spread YOU are doing that, there is no part of the human brain that detects you are going fast and changes your voice. Similarly- if you wave your hands crazily and jump up and down you are in control of that as well. You have developed a “habit” of doing these things when you speak, and like all bad habits (biting your nails, picking your nose, buying Maroon 5 albums) it can be hard to break. That DOESN’T mean you don’t control it- you just need to practice not doing it by thinking about it consciously. For your voice, your spreading should sound like you sound when talking. If it doesn’t, modify your voice until it does. Your voice should not go up or down in pitch dramatically, you shouldn’t suddenly speak with a British accent.

3. Why does it matter if I stutter/double breathe/do weird things- these questions are silly. Ask ANY judge in the country if they like hearing these things. Look at the top 5 speakers at tournaments and see if they do them. Next question

4.Do I really need to speak that much? I think I have gone through the rational reasons for this in detail in the past, so I won’t beat a dead horse here. I will just say one final thing: for better or worse this is a communicative activity. Improving your ability to be understood should be the primary goal of every debater until they never hear “you were unclear” or “I didn’t get that” or “you’re ugly” (more on that later) from a judge at the end of the round.

Onto Craft. I want to address 5 main things here, but all of them rely on the fact that you should write blocks. A lot of blocks. I wrote about 3 paragraphs about why you should write blocks but I deleted them because if you don’t understand that you need to write a lot of blocks then you are not going to be the top speaker at the TOC. If you really care, you can see here .

Thing 1: Clear Argument tags.

Why is this so important? The argument tag is what the judge writes down, its how they remember your argument. You want it to be clear so they get what you are saying and get it written down. This is by far the most underrated/least focused on portion of block writing. Most people think writing a block is just listing arguments with numbers.

Extra T is a voter

1. It makes debate hard

2. come on

3. See number 1

4. We are 4 pointing them

The purpose of block writing is to be efficient, clear, and to break arguments up into manageable chunks. An (ironically) good example of this is theory. At this point, everyone knows the clear argument tags of theory debates from repetition- best policy option, most real world etc. Judges can write down this shorthand and even though the debaters are going fast on short arguments have a reasonably well flushed out record of what was said. You want to bring that element to all your blocks. So lets say you are breaking a new K. And your K has 3 main link arguments, instead of jumbling them all together into a stream of consciousness overview that looks like one paragraph of text, break them down conceptually:

We have 3 link arguments

1. No Nonsense- the aff doesn’t speak in nonsense, they used rational thought to express themselves. That means they are the opposite of our K

2. Qualif(a)i(l)cations- they read evidence from authors who know what they are talking about

3. Policy (ir)relevance- they discuss the topic- what n00bs!

You should put a lot of thought into that first part before the hyphen- it is your “slogan” if you want to think in advertising terms. You want something catchy and easy to remember. “crises focus” is a good slogan because its short and it conveys exactly what the positive peace link is. Think about each slogan for a few minutes, toss out some options. Don’t just write it and move on. These are blocks you theoretically will be using repeatedly, so make sure they are as good as you can make them. This doesn’t just apply to link arguments, any block that has more than 2 arguments should have clearly thought out slogans to make it easy to flow. When you read the slogans it should be clear something special is happening- emphasize them. Refer to these arguments later as the slogan “extend our crises focus link” – this gives the judge a clear way to refer back to earlier speeches and an easy shorthand.

How important are argument tags/slogans? On a scale of 1-4, with 7 being the highest, they are a 12. One thing that people often don’t get is that they force you to start identifying and using warrants. So instead of saying “winners win, more evidence, still winning” you have to think about why are these arguments different and explain so-

Winners win

A. legislative victories build capital with base

B. Wins generate public support which translates into agenda success

C. OBAMA SMASH-ornstein 93

If you can’t think of a new slogan for a card, it probably isn’t bringing much to the table. To continue with the above example, slogans need not be super long. A lot of people have 2NC politics U blocks like

KORUS will pass

A. momentum

B. Vote counts

etc. These are fine because the arguments you are conveying aren’t complex /judges will get what you are saying. In fact they are probably better than overly long tags that obscure the point.

2. Use humor. I know I know, “you aren’t funny”. Well get over it- comedy isn’t a talent, it is a skill you can learn. I’m not going to spend any time explaining to you why this is true or how, I am just going to give you two examples of the simplest jokes you can use in any block and then encourage you to experiment/try on your own time.

A. The list twist- this joke is so simple anyone who says they can’t do it should be killed. All you do is make an argument, then provide a list of examples. In the list you give 2-3 serious examples, and then a final example that is a joke. That’s it. The first few items establish the expectation that you are giving a serious list, and then you hit them with the punchline- the joke example and the fact that you are working against expectations makes it funny. Lets say you are debating is global warming real. You are going to list the evidence that climate change is happening, so you say “Climate change is real (slogan)- this is proven by the majority of scientific evidence- ice core data, satellite temperature readings, computer models and _____” that and is where you slip in a humorous example. So think, what could be humorous examples of increasing global temperatures? Your partners BO(insulting partners is good, doesn’t come of as mean as insulting the other team, though if you can pull it off insulting the judge can be better)? Rising air conditioner sales among inuits? It doesn’t have to be great because the vast majority of debates are so boring for judges that even a small amount of effort/humor will pay off.

B. Quals jokes-these are super simple, you just find a random qual that an author of a card you are going to read frequently has. Say you were reading the Afghan cred DA with a Kagan link, you could say “Prefer our evidence- according to menand eve a dart throwing monkey is right 1/3 times” making a joke about the Kagan clans predictive track record. Or if you read a card that quotes Obama on the US ability to win Muslim hearts and minds you could say “prefer our evidence because it comes from a real live muslim”. Obviously jokes like this are not the kill shot leaving your judge in hysterics for the rest of the 2NC- but having 5-10 of them could be the difference between 28.5 and 29 in a lot of debates. And given how easy they are to come up with you really have no excuse for not making them.

Sidebar- a quick note on insulting the judge. By this I don’t mean be like “your dumb”. I mean you should know something about them and make a joke based on this personal knowledge. Coaches, friends, FBI dossiers are all good places to get these personal details. Insulting the judge creates a good dynamic because it establishes an inside joke that only you and the judge are in on- which chimp studies tell us converts easily into report. This is also an adaptation issue- you have to know where the line is for a particular judge, and gauge their reaction to the joke to see if it was a success.

One last point on humor- many people are afraid to tell a joke because they think it will bomb. If you are a fast policy debater and your joke bombs it is forgotten in 5 seconds because you have moved onto the next argument. You need to take an approach like the movie Dodgeball- if 60% of what you say is funny people will end up loving it and end up forgetting the rest.

3. Don’t make arguments, resolve arguments. Many of your speaker points are decided by your rebuttal. In your rebuttal (the 1NR largely excluded since it is part of the block)you need to transition away from making arguments and move towards resolving arguments. There are a few ways you should think about doing this

A. making impact assessments comparative- don’t say “heg solves all wars” say ” a reduced risk of our hegemony advantage outweighs the mitigated politics disad because…”

Several issues need to be addressed when making comparative impact assessments

-does the disad turn the case or does the case turn the disad- if you said KORUS is k2 heg and they said overstretch hurts heg which is more important and why- is one faster, more probable etc. This gets more complicated the more impacts you have, so think about comparisons you could make in this hypothetical

Aff Advantages: Hegemony (overstretch) , Terrorism(bw)

Neg DA: Free trade impact, Asia stability impact, turns heg, turns terrorism

If you were neg, many people would just go “turns the case” and be done. But realistically- does your disad really turn the whole case? If not then you need to explain why your external impact outweighs the reduced risk of case (from the DA turning it). For the aff- you need to spend time explaining why the DA doesn’t turn the case and why the large risk of your advantages outweighs the external impact.

These are things you can start thinking about in advance- you know what your advantages are, you know what the major politics disad is. Thinking through ahead of time also makes it easier when you have to make up these kind of comparisons on the spot. Particularly in a 2Ar or 2NR you cant get detailed enough or give too many even if statements in this regard.

I will give one example: Lets say the aff is Afghanistan /heg/thayer impact card. The neg is KORUS DA with trade solves war, and KORUS k2 leadership. (the korus impact debate has been discussed in previous posts you should check out for additional insight). In a 2AR I would make some of the following arguments

-KORUS doesn’t turn the case- we havent passed it for years and it hasn’t collapsed leadership- their impact is empirically denied. KORUS may contribute to leadership, but its not necessary for leadership. AND our internal link to hegemony is bigger and more meaningful- the eyes of the world are on Afghanistan- most countries don’t even care about South Korea. Visible overextension of our ground forces is percieved in a certain way by Russia, China, Iran, and the AEI (list humor) that failure to pass KORUS is not. It may be true failure of KORUS would diminish our leadership in Asia- but their evidence is about economic leadership not military hardpower- we access the most immediate internal link to leadership

-Hegemony turns trade, not vice versa- economic growth may have been critical to US leadership at one point but we are increasing defense spending in a recession for the 4th straight year- no one cares anymore- 911 has us so afraid of terrorists hating our freedom no one will turn isolationist. Now the only question is can we maintain military strength necessary to keep sea lanes open, and give us leverage in future negotiations about trade- India and China won’t agree to WTO reform because of the KORUS, they will agree because US dominance still makes the world go round- hegemony is a longer lasting and more sustainable impetus for global trade than a minor FTA between the US and Korea. This makes defense vs the disad more persuasive- there are alternative routes to preventing a collapse of trade leadership diminishing the likelihood that KORUS is key

-External impacts to hegemony outweigh the disad -trade doesn’t interact with proliferation or terrorism, two impacts discussed in Thayer- we’re all adults here, their turns the case arg is laughable. Trade may create incentives to keep the peace, but those aren’t persuasive to religious fanatics, nor to nuclear weapons accidentally launched by new and unstable nuclear regimes.

Isn’t this a lot of impact arguments/time to spend here? Yes it is, but if this is the crux of the debate you need to spend the time. You make that time available by collapsing other areas of the debate/going for less arguments-i.e. by making choices.

4. Refer to specific pieces of evidence- FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. I am not the only judge who is getting tired of getting handed 50 cards to read through and find the one that makes the warrant you are referencing. This is indicative of 2 things: people are reading too many repetitive cards, and people don’t know their evidence well enough. Don’t be one of these people- prep ahead of time/write blocks, or use your time during the debate to get together the most important cards /warrants and reference them.

5. Use CX effectively- stop using lines of questioning that can’t go anywhere. 2 things I have noticed recently fit this mold the most

-the ol read parts of their evidence in cx trick – no matter what it says, they aren’t going to agree with you on this. Reading the other teams evidence is a good way to set up a multi part question, or to setup an argument you want to make later in a speech. It’s not a good way to get the other team to concede.

-Don’t ask questions that are totally irrelevant to your strategy/the arguments you are going to make. Grilling the 1AC for 3 mn on their economy impact when you are going for consult Japan is a total waste of time no matter how brilliant your questioning was.

A few have emailed/posted questions about prep for the toc. Loyal 3nr readers know most every question about how to win the TOC was answered step by step in my pulitzer prize winning series (here, here, here, ). One thing that was not addressed in great detail there was how to become the top speaker at the TOC and so this series will address this.

First I want to examine the main ways the TOC is different from most high school tournaments.

1. On average, the debates are much tougher. Since you have to do well at other tournaments to qualify to the TOC, a lot of the weaker teams you usually debate will not be there. To use myself as an example, my sophomore year of high school I cleared at every national tournament I attended but only managed to go 1-6 at the TOC. We were usually clearing in the bottom of the bracket, having just won a break round vs a mediocre opponent. At the TOC we entered a world of pain as basically every debate was against the kind of team that was knocking us out of the elims at these tournaments. We also prepared very poorly as the winning advice I linked to above was not readily available at the time. Point being- your debates will be tougher than usual. This means you will have to be more prepared, and probably more importantly, you will have to really bring your A game/try a lot harder. At a regular tournament you may lose to a top 5 baker team in the doubles and feel good and go relax with your friends. At the TOC that is your round 1 draw, and after losing you half to pick yourself up and get ready to win 5 of the next 6.

2. There is more down time in between prelim debates. This is because things are a little more relaxed schedule wise, and because there are always at least a few decisions that take a long time, thus delaying the start of the next round for everyone. If you want to be top speaker at the TOC you need to take advantage of this time to prepare for your upcoming debates. An extra 20-30 minutes in between all your other rounds adds up to hours of extra prep for your crucial round 7. I will go into detail later on about what I think you should be doing with this time, but you should also figure out with your own team what your game plan is- who is going to scout/get cites, who is going to be cutting cards etc.

3. The judging pool will be much more heavily tilted toward college judges/debaters than the average high school tournament- this is because there is no competing college tournament that weekend and high schools usually save a little of the budget to bring out some extra help for the TOC. This means you need to think about your strike sheet and read a lot of judge philosophies. (one related note is that lots of high school coaches who usually judge a lot/full commitments will reduce their judging load to free up more time for coaching)

Those 3 things will be overarching concerns that I will come back to throughout this series. For the rest of this article, I would like to establish a speaking drill training program and give you some examples to work with. In order to do this you have to do a few things:

1. You have to find your smooth rate of delivery (SRD)- The SRD is not the fastest you can go, its not the clearest you can be. Your SRD is the rate at which you can speak in a smooth uninterrupted fashion- no double breathing, no stuttering, and a judge should be able to understand every word. For me, when I was in high school my SRD worked out to be about 80% of the top speed when I was just trying to read as fast as possible. As I worked at it in college it got higher. But working on improving your SRD requires you to practice that actual way of speaking, which is something most people do not do. Most people do the standard speaking drills- pen, as fast as possible, backwards etc. This is what most debate labs do when they do speed drills for 20 minutes or so. Few people really practice the way they want to actually be speaking when in a debate. This is an ok system, but far from optimal- you want to practice game conditions. So you need to find your SRD and more importantly be comfortable with it so that you can easily do it in debates. What I mean by that is people often speak very differently from debate to debate- they go faster or slower, louder, spit more etc. You don’t want to do that, you want to give your best at all times.

How to find your SRD

Lets assume you have no one to practice with (if you do it should be obvious how to make these steps simpler). What you need to do is record yourself reading for about 10 minutes. Start out just reading as fast as you possibly can. About every 30 seconds, try and slow yourself down 5%. For a lot of people its hard to conceptualize what I mean when I say slow down 5% since the difference is only like 15 words if you are speaking 300 words per minute. So it will take a little practice, but for that 10 minutes slow down every 30 seconds a small amount.

Now you are going to listen to that recording and try and be as honest with yourself as possible- at what speed did you sound the best? By that I mean clarity, lack of stuttering, breathing well etc. It may be as low as 60%- it doesnt matter. Trust me when I say you will debate a lot better and get better points at your SRD then you will going faster than it- if you cant understand yourself, how do you expect anyone else to? And by understand I mean you should be able to clearly hear every word and differentiate it.

Now that you have your SRD you need to get comfortable with it. So what I want you to do is start reading for a 10 minute block, and I want you to start reading as fast as possible and then after about 15 seconds I want you to quickly transition into your SRD. Read that way for a few minutes, then slow down even more to about 30-40%. Read that way for about 15-20 seconds, and then accelerate to your SRD. The point of this drill is that you want your SRD to become 2nd nature- you shouldn’t have to think about it. Most people get up and just read as fast as they can, so even when they know their SRD their tendency is to slowly accelerate out of it. Or they slow down to make a point, and then have trouble transitioning back to their SRD.

The combined task of finding your SRD and getting comfortable finding it quickly will not be easy. If you dont have someone to listen to you, it will take a lot of recording yourself and then listening back to it (which obviously doubles the time it takes, unless you get good at listening while you are speaking). This can be very frustrating/discouraging. Maybe you have debate friends on the internet- get them to listen and give you feedback if you don’t have a coach/partner who can do so. The point is- if you want to get top speaker awards you have to be either super talented at speaking, or you have to put in the work.

2. Now you have your SRD. It’s time to establish a baseline. For your baseline test I have uploaded the TNW 1AC I read on the college Europe topic at GSU. I didn’t include 3 cards that as far as I remember took me a little over a minute to read so this should be cut down from the 9 mn college version to an 8 minute version*. The reason I chose this 1AC was because this was what really drilled into me the concept of the SRD. I realized after much huffing and puffing that I basically got through the same amount of cards when I went a little faster but lost some clarity than when I just went with my SRD. Once I figured that out my points took a sever uptick.

Prolif 1AC

What I want you to do is read through this once, and then time yourself reading it at your SRD. Then at the end of 3 weeks of practice you will read it again and see if you have improved your time (which if you don’t cheat, you will have greatly).

Now, for the next 5 days I have devised a little practice schedule (this is in addition to finding your SRD/doing the test).

The way this will be broken down is into skills days and game days. On skills days you will work on the sort of “regular” speaking drills that people usually do. On game days you will be practicing your SRD. Each day consists of 30 minutes of speaking, the bare minimum you should be doing. For each 30 minutes, you should break it into 10 minute blocks where you are speaking for the whole 10 minutes. This is so that you get used to speaking for longer than the longest speech/don’t run out of breath.

Day 1- Skills

Three 10 minute blocks

1. As fast as possible (AFAP)

2. Over-annunciate/backwards split (5-5)

3. AFAP

Day 2- game

1. Practice finding your SRD (described above, start faster, slow into it, start slow, accel into it)

2. Theory- read theory blocks for 10 minutes at SRD

3. Blocks- read 2AC or 2NC blocks on arguments you expect to debate for 10 mns. Note the time it takes you to read each block to assist in planning your speech time later

Day 3- skills

1. AFAP

2. Breathing focus- work on eliminating bad breathing habits (double breaths, screeching), breathing at good places (ends of tags, ends of sentences, not in random places) and try and work on reading more with each breath so you take less of them (many people breath too frequently often because they speak to loud or are so animated they have to breath more)

3. AFAP

Day 4- Game

1. Finding SRD practice

2. Blocks

3. Do the above breathing exercise but using your SRD

Day 5 Skills

1. AFAP

2. Analytics- something like a rebuttal redo where you aren’t just reading, but practicing making up arguments off the top of your head. Take 2NC theory blocks and instead of reading the argument go down the list and make a response argument (see past 3nr speaker point posts for other examples

3. AFAP

*To stem of the tide of “kirshon” questions-obviously the plan isn’t in there cause I couldn’t find it, the contentions had names etc. Also the quals were read.

The 1AR, like the lamer Matrix movies, is all about choice. A good 1AR picks from the options presented in the 2AC and hammers home a few key points, it doesn’t crappily extend every argument. I feel like past posts have gone into why this is so ad nausea, so this post will take for granted that you agree the 1AR must collapse and will instead focus on an example. In the attached xl document you will find the flow of a politics debate through the 2NC. The 2NC has done a decent job of extending the disad- no arguments are dropped, there are diverse answers to each 2AC argument, and there is some impact jive at the top. If you give the 1AR you will find yourself giving politics 1AR’s like this frequently because people have blocks to most of the 2AC arguments given in the demo speech.

Below the fold I am going to discuss ways to chose what arguments to go for and why, but before you read that look at the flow and think about what arguments you would select to go for and why. Think about different circumstances

-do they have a cp?

-is the cp plan inclusive?

-are you going to win a big risk of the case or a solvency deficit?

Then think about why these factors might affect what arguments you chose to extend.

1AR demo

I will leave a large part of the discussion of the questions above to the comments, but will briefly discuss a few of them. If the neg has a plan inclusive counterplan that politics is the net benefit to then you should probably be focusing on the link turns. It is hard to win a solvency deficit to the PIC so having offense on the net benefit is a lot more important. If you go for link turns spending a large amount of time on the impact overview becomes linearly less relevant the more likely it is you will win a turn. The presence of a conditional or plan inclusive counterplan could help your theoretical arguments for intrinsicness. If you are going to win a huge risk of the case going for a few true defensive arguments may be easier than time and evidence intensive link turns. If you don’t have time to read cards impact D may also be difficult given the presence of an add on impact. And no matter what you extend you need to answer the cheap shot.

Let’s assume the neg is not going for a counterplan and you suspect you will win a large risk of the case. Let’s also assume you have about 1:30 to spend on politics. With that amount of time I would recommend you handle around 3 arguments , for roughly 30 seconds a piece. This should give you enough time to make each argument a credible 2AR option and leave your partner with some choice. Extending diverse arguments also makes it possible that the 2NR could miscalculate their time and commit an error.

Since this will be a disad/case comparison in the final rebuttals answering the 2NC overview on impact calc has got to be 1 of your 3 args. There are many judges who will vote on a very small risk of a disad vs a large risk of the case when impact calc (especially turns the case arguments) are dropped. Making defensive arguments to answer impact calc does not necessarily mean you must extend your impact D below, but it does probably mean you want to answer (at least analytically) the add on impact.

That leaves us with 2 arguments to burn. For the sake of diversity I would pick 1 theory argument and 1 substantive argument. For this example I would pick the link uniqueness arg and Obama doesn’t push the plan. The rational for these choices will be explained below.

For the sake of simplicity lets assume that you can speak at 250 words per minute,so instead of measuring time we can measure word count to see how much we can say on each argument. That leaves us with 125 words to extend each argument. This is why word efficiency is crucially important in the 1AR- if instead of using inbedded clash you said “they say” and then a 5 word description of their argument, and you did it 4 times that would be 28 words- roughly 1/5th of the 125 words you have dedicated to each argument which means you are essentially giving a 4 minute 1AR. Perhaps you are good enough that you can give up 1 minute of one of the tougher speeches in debate, but odds are you aren’t.

To start with, lets write a block to the impact calc portion (assume the case advantage is just hegemony with the Thayer impact card). The best way to write blocks IMO is to write all the arguments you can think of and then prioritize them according to quality and highlight them for efficiency. So here are some answers I would make to this overview

-hegemony solves the impact- economic collapse doesn’t cause war when US leadership exists to de-escalate the impact- that’s why recessions since WW2 haven’t caused a war

-even if the economy acts on perception generally they don’t have a perception internal link- we havent had the trade agreement for decades, and hegemony is also perception based- failure in Afghanistan signals weakness to our enemies

-economic decline isn’t larger than loss of hegemony- their 10 word impact card doesn’t make that distinction whereas thayer outlines many impacts outside of general conflict like terrorism and proliferation

-can’t turn the case- we control uniqueness- hegemony is declining now, and overstretch is a better internal link- even if we have money the size of our army isn’t large enough to prevent collapse

-the warrant in Khalilzad is economic collapse causes withdrawal of public support- but the public is already against the war and we haven’t pulled out- empirically denies their turn

-prefer probability- we will win a larger internal link to the case- timeframe and magnitude claims are hyperbolic, prefer definite impacts

Then I would rework that as described above by organizing that stream of consciousness rant into a structure. Some of the arguments may need more explanation, some may be able to get away with less, which are things to consider when revising.

The important thing is that you include at least 1 argument to answer each 2NC claim and to focus time on the more important arguments as appropriate. I am pretty rusty at this, but the above took me maybe 5 minutes. If in the 20-30 minutes before an aff debate you try and write some similar blocks to args you anticipate the other team will go for you will see your 1AR points skyrocket.

Moving on, the next argument I wanted to extend was link uniqueness. A few notes on this example

-i didn’t have the 2AC read a card here. This is somewhat because I don’t always think you need a card and somewhat because I don’t think I have seen a 2AC make an analytic argument that wasn’t theory to politics in 5 or so years. In this case the 1NC did not present a piece of evidence that PC was high, so as far as I am concerned the 2AC doesn’t have to read a card either.

-while this arg specified the budget, I view “budget” as a warrant for “pc low”- so just like you can read additional warrants for other arguments, I think a 1AR here would be justified in expanding the warrants.

Anywhoo, top level of this- I think the 1AR should read 2 cards here that are relatively short

-a card that PC is low

-a card that nonuniques one of the links

For the first part, I would read  a card about an upcoming fight because the neg read a piece of evidence that he has PC now- not that he will keep it in the future. A subtle distinction, but nonetheless an important one.

For the second part, the 2NC read a tea party link, so I would read a new card that the Tea party is angry about something and argue that triggers the link.

These 2 cards would be relatively short and would probably constitute around 75-90 of my words. The rest of the args would look something like this

-Even if present capital is sufficient, predictive evidence proves he will lose it -no evidence indicates tuscon capital translates to the trade agenda

-Seidenfeld is generic- any legislation triggers the link

-links are all or nothing- triggering any one triggers the disad, its not linear and specific uniqueness can’t fix the link- thats illogical

Not a lot of in depth explanation, but all the pieces are there for the 2AR to really sit on that argument and blow it up

-all the 2NC arguments were answered on point

-a meta discussion of how to resolve the arguments was introduced

-diversity- you are non uniquing the tea party and the legislation link which gives the 2AR options and the 2N a chance to mess up

Onto the next argument. I chose Obama doesn’t push the plan because while it is similar in execution to intrinsicness it is much more theoretically conservative- many more judges think the aff gets the right to determine the plans implementation than think the plan can be amended.

It is debatable whether or not Obama pushing the plan or not affects the tea party link, but since the 2NC didn’t mention that in this speech I will ignore it. Thinking through those kind of potential cross applications should be a part of your process deciding what arguments to extend.

For any theory argument in the 1AR I would have a quick overview, meta level (or vi) and then potential responses to read to what the neg  can say. Here is an example for this argument

Extend Obama doesn’t push the plan- text says congress, aff gets to define implementation or the neg can arbitrarily construct unpredictable links, normal means is an irrelevant concern because we specified our agent- they could have read a different link or an agent counterplan but didnt- this is 100% defense if we win it- don’t assign a risk of a link

And our argument is most real world- afghanistan is Obama’s war, he wouldn’t spearhead its reversal

AT: Obama Always pushes

-Obama doesn’t always push- health care repeal on the agenda proves

-This takes out the link- if Obama pushes everything capital loss is inevitable

AT: Politics key to ground

-We don’t kill politics- they just don’t get president based links

-XAP politics kills topic research- this outweighs negative ground- they can recover with other generics, conditionality, and the block

AT: Plan doesn’t preclude Obama push

-Our interpretation of Fiat is minimal means- this means no extra actors get involved

-if PC is finite its illogical to assume Obama would get involved in the plan unnecessarily- he’s a genius

AT: 2AC Clarification

-not a 2AC clarification- its the 1AC plan text, they could of asked in CX

Arguments like no spillover and the president doesn’t push the plan were huge when I started debating but have fallen out of practice to a large degree (though “compartmentalization” which is basically no spillover has been coming back recently). These arguments have the benefit of largely being true, so if you spend a few minutes thinking through the base line neg spin they use you can generally punk teams as they won’t be ready for it.

If you post a sample 1AR for any of the other arguments in the comments I will post some feedback. Other questions/opinions on the strategy or examples discussed above will prob not be answered for a while until I finish a post on how to deal with this in the 2NR and then a 2AR post.

Debate is hard — there are no shortcuts to success. Students often look for a blueprint that will get them from the 2-4 bracket to the finals; in response, coaches emphasize that there’s no substitute for hard work. “Nose, meet grindstone” seems to be the best answer anyone faced with the “how do I get better at debate” question ever musters. But there are tangible steps that debaters can take to improve: this website alone has published hundreds of articles offering advice to students at all levels, and there is an abundance of material available in other places that can help put students on the right track.

But something is still missing. How can debaters take all of these various suggestions, tips, and drills and integrate them into a coherent plan for overall improvement? What is needed is a curriculum: an integrated, complete course of study and practice that a debater can use to transform the raw material of hard work into a finished product of competitive excellence. And while the specific details of any particular student’s curriculum ought to be developed with their needs and goals in mind, it is certainly possible to compose a general outline of a course of study that can benefit all debaters.

This article is the first in a series that will attempt to do exactly that: provide students with a basic outline that they can use to create a personalized curriculum to use outside of the classroom or formal organized practices that will help them acquire the knowledge and skills needed to compete successfully in debate. This first article will introduce the guiding principles that underlie the recommended curriculum; part two will provide suggestions for specific coursework.

Guiding Principle #1: Improvement happens fastest with consistent daily effort.

Students—and debate students in particular—have a tendency to put off their work until it gestates into a large, intimidating burden and requires extraordinary effort to overcome. Supposed to prepare a new negative strategy against your big rival’s case? Wait until the Thursday before the tournament and stay up all night to crank it out. Such approaches are rarely effective even in the short-term, but over the long-term they are extremely harmful. Instead of spending a reasonable amount of time on debate while balancing academic coursework and a healthy social and family life, students waste inordinate amounts of time procrastinating and leave themselves without the time or energy they need to devote in order to improve at debate (much less anything else).

A dedicated student should be able to spend only a few hours per day on debate while still enjoying a great deal of success. The key is not to work longer but to work smarter. By dedicating one-to-two hours per day to debate outside of the classroom or formal practice settings, students that work smart can quickly and dramatically improve.

Guiding Principle #2: Reducing broad concepts into small, manageable tasks is essential.

Competitive academic policy debate is one of the most difficult activities a high school student could possibly find: it requires a great deal of specialized skills, enormous amounts of background knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge to practical controversies, and mastery of an arcane language and rigorous interdisciplinary decision-making framework. It is nearly impossible to improve top-level debate skills without first improving the foundations upon which those skills are built.

“How can I make better 2NR decisions?,” for example, is a question that cannot really be answered. To figure out the causes of poor 2NR decision-making, a student must first untangle the problem of 2NR decision-making from a wide range of interrelated assessments of one’s debating: is the student too dependent on the critique? Are they struggling to confidently explain their arguments? Do they have trouble extending the positions that were in the 1NR? These explanations for poor 2NR decision-making can all be corrected, but the root cause is almost certainly something even more fundamental. The debater that is too dependent on the critique, for instance, would be well-served by increasing the amount of research they conduct in non-critique literatures. Likewise, the student that struggles to confidently explain their arguments might not be doing enough original research or might need to spend more time preparing and practicing efficient explanation blocks. And the student that has trouble extending the positions that were in the 1NR might be struggling to flow effectively or to create effective strategic divisions of the negative block.

In every case, this “root cause” must be addressed at a fundamental level before meaningful improvements can occur in the proximate issue being targeted by the student.

Guiding Principle #3: Integrative approaches are the most effective way to pursue meaningful improvements.

Debate is not graded using subcategories of achievement: there are no “A”s for research or for speaking or for preparation, only a final grade represented by speaker points and the win or loss. When thinking about how to get better at debate, students should focus on integrating all aspects of the debate process into their daily “course”. There are basically three components of debate preparation:

1. You have to know what you’re talking about.
2. You have to be ready to tell others what you’re talking about.
3. You have to effectively tell others what you’re talking about.

These components of preparation are often considered distinct: knowing what you’re talking about requires research, being ready to tell others what you’re talking about requires block-writing, and effectively telling others what you’re talking about requires speaking drills and rebuttal reworks. But this dichotomy between different aspects of preparation is unnecessary and unhelpful. Why practice speaking in the abstract, for example, when you can practice communicating a particular argument? Debate is the ultimate multidisciplinary activity and preparation should reflect that reality.

Guiding Principle #4: The work done outside the classroom determines the value of the work done inside the classroom.

Students have a tendency to place the burden of improvement on the shoulders of their coaches. When interacting with teachers and coaches, debaters frequently ask questions that can be fairly characterized as demands to “make me better now!”. In other cases, students complete the required work assigned by their coaches and then are baffled when they do not immediately achieve competitive success. “I did what you told me to do,” they argue, “but it obviously doesn’t matter!”.

This disconnect, of course, stems from the sizeable demands placed on students that wish to be successful in debate. It isn’t enough to simply meet the minimum requirements: students wishing to achieve competitive excellence must constantly challenge themselves to know more, prepare more, and practice more than their peers on other squads. Coaching plays an important part in a debater’s development, but it can never be a replacement for independent study. A coach can help a debater rework a rebuttal speech to improve its efficiency, for example, but the debater cannot deliver a truly excellent speech until she has confidently mastered the content of her arguments, carefully written and organized (and revised) her blocks, and repeatedly practiced her speaking. If these steps have been taken outside of the classroom, the student’s interaction with their coach will be incredibly valuable. If not, the interaction will be of limited utility.

Creating a Curriculum

Be realistic about the time that you can commit to debate work. Using a monthly planner or calendar, cross out all of the days on which you will be unable to spend time on debate—including days spent at debate tournaments. From there, assign yourself a project to complete each day and write it in your planner; suggestions for the kinds of projects you should include are discussed below. It is important to keep things interesting rather than planning to spend several days focused on one thing. By adding variety to your personal curriculum, you will be more enthusiastic about doing the required work and more likely to actually do it.

Once you have planned a few weeks worth of “courses,” stick with it. Every morning, challenge yourself to complete the work that you established as the day’s assignment and keep track of how you’re doing using a journal or log. The sense of satisfaction you feel at the end of the day knowing that you did the work you had assigned yourself is incredibly rewarding and can be used as motivation to continue working hard.

Things You Should Accomplish Every Day

Every day’s “course” should be able to answer “yes” to the following questions:

1. As a result of my work, do I know something better today than I did yesterday?
2. As a result of my work, are my debate materials more organized today than they were yesterday?
3. As a result of my work, am I more likely to win an important debate today than I was yesterday?

Every component of preparation should seek to increase one’s knowledge, improve one’s organization, and enrich one’s understanding of debate in a meaningful way.

In part two, the GPB model (Goals, Process, Benefits) will be introduced and specific courses will be described. The final article in the series will discuss ways to maximize the value of student-coach interactions.

I was reading this book on comedy writing and it had some chapter about how the reason most people aren’t funny is that they don’t really come up with their own jokes, they basically just re-hash jokes people wrote a long time ago that they have seen before. Since the majority of humor is based on surprise, these recycled jokes lose some of their impact with each retelling. On top of that, the more times a joke gets told by different people the more of its original meaning gets lost and the less funny it becomes.

This got me thinking about how arguments/strategies work in debate and a few thoughts came to mind.

1. The college case list- is a great resource to get cites/ideas for arguments. A lot of times though someone will take 2-4 cards they got off their and call it a day without actually putting in the work to try and make a file. This can sometimes work- a quick 2 card add on can win you a debate. But the more complex or research intensive arguments this is a terrible strategy for a few reasons

A. You will have no idea what you are talking about- this is particularly true for K arguments- you generally have to read the whole article if not several articles and a book to rap your head around a philosophically sophisticated argument. Just cutting and pasting in the requisite paragraphs from the 3 card shell on the casebook won’t give you the knowledge to explain your 1NC a lot of the time- and certainly won’t teach you how to respond to likely 2AC arguments or specifically apply your generic K to their specific aff.

B. They debate a different topic- while the cap K may spillover to both, and any other topic, most often you will need to find specific link arguments to really make your argument apply. Even if its something like a generic heg K a lot of time the arguments won’t be applicable. I judged a debate earlier in the year where the aff read a soft power adv with a sort of international coop key to solve climate change/prolif etc laundry list impact. The 2NC got up and read a huge link block with specific cards about Kagan, hard power, conventional superiority etc. The 1AR grouped it and said “no link, we don’t boost hard power”. Just kidding- obviously the 1AR didn’t go for no link but instead read a bunch more generic heg cards and said they were impact turns, but he SHOULD of grouped it all and just said no link…

C. I actually saw someone read a k pilfered from the case book where the college team hadn’t written in their full tags- and the neg just read them, nonsense lists of words like “nuke discourse agency alienation genocide”.  You should follow a rule whereby if you can’t understand a piece of evidence enough to write a complete tag, you probably shouldn’t be reading it.

Solution- this problem is simple, what you should do is try and write complete files and not just piece a few cards together on an issue. Obviously there are time constraints and sometimes you only have 20 minutes to cut cards on 10 issues etc. But the process of crafting a complete argument where you go through the process of reading a good chunk of the literature base, craft nuances, write and revise blocks etc. will make you 100X more effective when you go for that argument. Even if you are the only person doing work, if you went to 8 tournaments a year and only did 1 neg assignment for each of them by the TOC you would be a stone cold killer on 8 generics all of which you could go for at any time- think about how terrorizing that would be to the aff team you are debating. Think about how totally irrelevant it would be if they read a new case, new advantages, had a sweet coach etc. That last part is particularly important and it is how I learned to deal with bigger squads/better coached teams in high school- no matter if the other team has some kind of Heidt/Repko/Matheson coaching staff of the gods they still only get 30-40 minutes before the debate to talk to their kids. If they have to prepare for 8 things that means they only get 5 minutes to talk about each, and the kid then has to keep all that crap straight about 8 different arguments, highlight all the cards etc. Its an impossible burden for teams who are coach dependent. Whereas when you have 100 crappy arguments, they may only spend 2 minutes getting their answers ready- but that is the SAME amount of time you spent getting it ready so there is no asymmetry.

2. Exaggeration- everybody does this. The debate telephone effect is hurt by exaggeration in a few ways like what do judges like/don’t like- when it gets passed down by 10 people to a young debater they are hopelessly lost as to how judges actually feel about issues. The worst way this happens though is debaters teaching debaters. It has to happen- coaches can’t be everything to everyone, so at some point kids are going to try and pass knowledge on to one another. There are any number of ways this process can get screwed up but the most common one is big fish stories that get passed around about what happened in X debate and how it worked. I heard these when I debated and thought “why would X person make this up, they have no incentive to, so it must be accurate, maybe I will attempt strategy Y”. It seems like good logic, but you can easily see how things get out of hand when you hear people talk about what happened in a debate that you watched and they didn’t. It usually goes something like this

-Really good Team A screws something up, and to compensate does something sort of smart

-Mediocre Team B doesn’t pick up on it and goes on about their business and loses

-Observer reports facts to another person “omg, they facecrushed team B despite under covering conditionality”

-3rd party discusses round with 4th party “Team A won even though they dropped condo”

-4th party asks “how” a question 3rd party doesn’t know the answer too, so 3rd party hypothesizes “the judge said they would never vote on it”

-4th party retells story to 5th party with 3rd party’s hypothesis now inserted into the story as fact

-5th party debates in front of same judge and drops condo confident it won’t be voted on

Oops. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but consider that it goes on 10 times a tournament, 50 tournaments a year, for the last decade. Now you have near infinite amounts of information floating around out there that are all wrong. The internet makes this even worse- typing is such hard work that people “boil down” everything- stories, explanations etc. so that what ends up getting read are absurd simplifications and wild misnomers. Read any long thread on that other debate site and just look at the number of people who chime in with advice who, as evidenced by what they say, should probably be doing less typing and more thinking through.

Solution – you should rigorously question everything. Even things you read here (at least that are written by Roy/Batterman). Unless you can answer the “why” question you should not accept an argument, strategy, or debate convention. The best way I have found to think things through is imagine a debate. So you read online someone says “5 minutes of no neg fiat is a tuss 1AR strat”. Think about: what would I say for 5 minutes on no negative fiat? Cant fill that much time- that is sign 1. Then think ” how would the neg respond to 5 minutes of no neg fiat?”- they would prob kick the CP and extend all the crap you dropped. Then- can I make no neg fiat a VI? How?

Maybe your answers to those questions will be different from mine and you will decide it sounds like a smashing idea, well then you are sorted- at least you have thought it through.

3. Reporting judge comments to your coaches- this is pretty important. No one fills out paper ballots anymore, so they only way your coaches know what you need to work on is if you accurately write down judge feedback and report it. Usually this process breaks down pretty quickly. Even if you don’t agree with what the judge is saying its important to write it down so that you can both report it to your coaches, and also so that if you have that judge again you can use it. I know people who would lose the same debate in front of the same judge repeatedly and not get that while in their mind they kicked ass that the judge saw things differently- they didn’t just flip a coin and decide to screw you the first time.  You may think you are perfectly clear, but when several judges express that they feel otherwise its time to take not and ask your coach how to work on getting clearer.

By Christina Tallungan

Writing taglines for evidence can be tricky.  There is no one exact right tagline for every card so it is helpful to remember some basic guidelines:

Efficiency -
Write taglines without flowery language and cliches.
Avoid unnecessary adverbs or adjectives, e.g., completely, totally, probably, somewhat.
Substitute commas or dashes for conjunctions like “because” or “due to”
Do NOT write “in order to” instead of just writing “to.”

Accuracy –
Re-read evidence before tagging it in a file – make sure it accurately reflects the author’s
conclusion or argument.
Do NOT overstate your evidence, e.g., say the impact is extinction when the card does not say
that.
Consider the strategy of using evidence, but do NOT manipulate words in the evidence to make
argument that is not supported by the author.
Make sure the relationship you are expressing in the tagline is actually said in the evidence, e.g.,
an author saying that “global warming causes sea level rise” cannot be changed to “sea level
rise causes global warming.”   Debaters have a tendency to look for evidence that has key
words and overlook the relationship the author makes between those key words. Double check
your thinking and do NOT get overly excited because you found a card with key words.

Strategy –
Consider how this piece of evidence will be used in a debate round before writing the tagline.
The purpose for the card will determine the starting point for the tagline.  For example,  a uniqueness card for the military recruitment DA will not start by saying “Economic recession
causes an increase in military recruitment.”  While that tagline is accurate, it is not framed in an
ideal manner as a uniqueness card.  It will help the judge understand the purpose of the card
better if is it framed more clearly as “High military recruitment now – impoverished youth.”

Examples –
This section could have been called “Warrants,” but that did not sound as good.  Examples are
the data in the evidence that proves your overall argument in the tagline true.  These are the
parts that you will need to highlight in a comparative warrant debate.  As a result, include these
in your taglines, e.g., “Political capital high now – State of the Union address.  This example
shows how someone can include quick examples in a tagline to distinguish your evidence from an
opponent’s.

There is an activity that is attached for some practice writing taglines.

Writing Taglines Activity – Fall 2009

One of the things judges/coaches beat into debaters heads over and over again is that they need more explanation of things. Instead of explaining the importance of this instead I thought I would post some examples of how to explain things better.

Bad 2NR

Extend conditionality is key to negative flexibility- without it we couldn’t read a lot of arguments, reading a lot of arguments improves the quality of debate because we discuss more issues. Also the affirmative gets infinite prep so we should get something too. Not a voter- reject the argument.

Good 2NR

Conditionality is key to negative flexibility- the affirmative gets infinite prep to select the best case, best arguments, and best evidence. The negative can’t possibly bring this level of prep to every case- conditionality is an equalizer because it allows us to make in round decisions to compensate for the disparate level of preparation- we can kick arguments that are un-winnable and focus on others. The alternative is educationally bankrupt- forcing us to go for a counterplan that is doomed after the 2AC makes the rest of the debate pointless. This outweighs affirmative offense- the affirmative can adapt to conditionality by writing efficient blocks, selecting the best evidence, and having diverse strategic options- there is no other reasonable remedy for the preparation advantage garnered by the affirmative. And- the remedy should not be a voting issue- if the affirmative wins it is illegitimate for us to kick the counterplan then don’t let us kick it- they control their strategic choices like time allocation. If damage is already done its because they didn’t think through the 2AC not because we asserted the option to kick the counterplan.

Bad argument: Extend our evidence that Obama is spending capital on healthcare now. This proves their political capital link should have happened and there is no uniqueness for the Afghanistan DA.

Good Argument: Healthcare should trigger their political capital link- while they are right that they read specific link evidence to our case their internal link evidence is not specific- it just says political capital is key to getting more troops. There is no meaningful distinction between the capital Obama is spending on health care and the capital he would theoretically spend on the plan. In fact health care is a much larger and more controversial proposal than our case- the negative is in a double bind. Either passing big controversial social service programs costs enough capital to prevent troops at which point health care triggers the link, or its possible that Obama can do that and get troops at which point the plan wouldn’t be enough to trigger the link either. It is inconceivable that Obama has some magical goldilocks level of capital that is just enough to do health care and troops but not enough to add the plan- they have no evidence to support this. Don’t believe their BS assertions- failure to hold the negative to a high level of scrutiny on issues like this warps debate- it encourages them to research terrible politics disads that have no value other than they catch the aff by surprise and win because the aff has no specific carded responses- this encourages the neg to evade debate instead of clashing. Defense of this kind should be viewed as absolute- if we win this argument it doesn’t reduce the risk of the disad to 70%, it reduces it to Zero.

Bad 2NR on Try or Die: Our disad is faster than the case- so timeframe takes out their inevitability claims. You should vote negative to avoid war in the short term since we both access the same hegemony impact.

Good 2NR on Try or Die: Look try or die is code for we don’t solve anything- they may win the uniqueness claim that structural factors make long term collapse of hegemony inevitable- but that isn’t a reason to vote affirmative if our disad turns the case because that proves the aff will have no meaningful effect on hegemonic decline. While the economy may make hegemony fail in the long run, our disad is a more proximate cause of hegemonic decline. This means the disad turns the case more than the case turns the disad- its logically possible that failure in Afghanistan will short circuit affirmative solvency, it is not possible that the boost the affirmative provides to hegemony decades from now can prevent our impact. Short term factors should be given higher weight because long term factors are definitionally more uncertain and more likely to be solved by intervening actions.  Long term terminal impact uniqueness arguments have been vastly over emphasized in debates in the last decade- it is more meaningful to delay nuclear war for a decade then to vote aff on the absurdly low probability that impact uniqueness makes the da impact “inevitable”.

Bad 2AR on Value to life: Extend our not an idiot evidence that says value to life is inevitable- people will always have value for some reason so there is no way we kill all of it- plus you have to be alive to have value so the case outweighs.

Good 2AR on Value to Life: Existence is a philosophical pre-requisite to value- this makes the case’s death impact a logical prior to the negatives impact. Also- death is irreversible whereas value is fully reversible- we may lose ontology today but hire existential detectives who find it for us next week. This may appear a trivial distinction but if we both win the full weight of our impacts it should serve as the tie breaker. Finally, our impact outweighs on all levels

A. Magnitude- even if hegemony entails a violent ordering of the world that views people as mere objects- that doesn’t devalue every life on the globe- only the lives of countries opposed to US leadership. Extinction effects everyone equally- our impact accesses a broader spectrum than their value to life claims- and if value to life can truly be lost surely some of the people out there have already lost it- their uniqueness is highly suspect because the US has been managing the globe for decades. Death however has a clear brightline- 6.8 billion die if you vote neg- emo kids all ready think their lives have no value.

B. Timeframe- when exactly does our management devalue lives ? Surely it isn’t instantaneous because if it is than its already happened by us reading our case- you should privilege our concrete impacts over nebulous value to life claims. In reality lives wouldn’t be devalued until the US came in contact with resistors to the hegemonic order and had to violently manage them- if we win solvency this will never happen.

C. Probability- our not an idiot evidence indicates that multiple values like reciprocity, compassion, and aesthetics give life meaning. The likelihood that we eliminate all of them is very low whereas the likelihood that nuclear war kills people is certain- it hasn’t been contested. The negatives argument that our impacts are constructed threats is circular- our impacts are constructed because the people who write them construct threats- our Sokal evidence says empirical data should be given the most value- empirically we have been able to prevent war and people maintained their value to life. Prefer this to abstract theorizing.