Since back in the day when I started sp debate kids have been saying the same thing over and over again
“Oh sp, your a genius and I totally agree with XYZ, however judges don’t like that so untill judges change I will just keep doing the losing thing that I have been doing kthnxbai”.
Most recently Anshu’s sock puppet echoed these sentiments in regards to making arguments about evidence. So lets clear this up once and for all: this is not a chicken/egg thing, debaters drive change- not judges. Let’s look at this logically with 2 examples: K’s and CPs. Here is how debaters caused CP’s to happen
1. Debaters on the neg hated losing
2. They thought “hmm, let me see… how can I … “counter” if you will… all these aff plans…
3. They read some CP’s
4. Judges were like “uh this is weird, don’t know how I feel about this”
5. Bad ass debaters were like “tough I am gonna keep reading this”
6. Judges were like “ok”
How would this have worked if judges created the change?
1. Judges are like “i sure don’t like voting aff so much”
2.?????
3. Profit.
What? Argument innovation has to be driven by debaters because you are the ones making the arguments. Debate is like fashion only lamer and generally people eat things. Somebody decides “cap K is the new black” , then they get to a late elim at a tournament and all their little disciples are like “super sweet cap K”. These people are like old navy- they mass produce a cheap immitation of the original product. Now next weekend I am at a tournament with the cap K every round and I’m like “well this is stupid”- how do I as a judge go about changing that? Well I can write in my judge philosophy- how well does that work? Not at all. Since I wrote it my JP has had a pretty big section about
-how I think pics are ridic
-how the politics disad has no link threshold and is a joke
-XYZ other things
Most people still go for politics /ridic strats and the aff just rolls over.
The other thing I could do is start writing ablog- but only narcisistic losers would do that.
Now- The K. What happend here- since we can agree the K is less universally accepted than say a CP. Did this happen because
1. Judges were sitting there going “man, I really wish someone would bring back the question of being cause, jesus, we’ve almost totally forgotten about that mother”
or
2. Debaters were like “hmmm, super cheap shot win ftw”
You be the judge… although now that you are a judge you are largely incapable of changing anything.
Now we get to the meat of the issue- you are all probably thinking “oh well great, what can I do, I will just make this arg and then judges will blow it off and I’ll be like “i told you so”.
Seriously, get over it. Before you wrote (insert the stupid aff you read last year) you didn’t worry- oh will judges accept this? You just did it, and you got to a tournament and did your thing. Judges are like sheep- if you tell them what to do and you insist on it they will do it. There is a reason the pool of successful debaters contains so many cocky d-bags in it- because they lack any social graces and so they aren’t opposed to just demanding that people do things for them. Most people lack the gumption to stand up to people like this so the judge/other team just let it slide.
I wrote up a bunch of examples of times this has occured but they are totally irrelevant. The point is this- Insist on it. The best debaters are people who by the end of their speech have their opponents believing that their arguments were silly and fraudulous- they do this because they hammer it home. All of you have grown up in a world of speed and tech and offense/defense and much like calculative thinkers you can’t envision that another world is even possible. However, such a world existed only like a decade ago. When I debated in HS through my junior year judge comments I got were always too fast, conditionality is illegit, risk of solvency deficit to states o/w politics etc etc. And this wasn’t at like bumpkin local tournaments either. But did I quit? Did I listen to judge comments and learn from them and adapt? Of course not, I put my head down and plowed through it and now I am in a promising career field with plenty of opportunities for advancement…
Generally, when I see people try and go out on a limb and try a new argument they mutter it out the side of thier mouth and try and sneak it in like its something to be ashamed of, and they don’t forcefully extend it. No value to life- that they will scream about for 5 minutes but blog evidence bad- heavens no they can’t talk about that with any sort of emphasis.
So in summation- before you reply with another “judges are the problem blah blah blah” rant, think about this:
For starters, I think anyone would pick being Anshu’s sock puppet over Cyrus’s toolbox, but that’s besides the point.
Regardless, you falsely depict the choices available to us as between debaters changing it themselves and waiting for the Rev, rather than what I advocate as Judges opening up first then allowing for debaters to take that momentum and create a change.
Saying that in the past K’s and CP’s have been debater innovations does NOT mean this is the most effective way of bringing about change. The logic of blind focus on “empiricism clearly shows the best and only strategy” is like saying post nuke war, “that successfully de-established society, solving our problem with industrialization and warming! This is clearly the best strategy since it worked.”
In fact, what you described was fraught with errors. Though you probably debated at the time when CP’s were starting when you were 6, and I was not, I can still see the transition to allowing counter-advocacies resulted slowly, and caused many teams to abandon the movement because of the risk of losing ballots. The K follows the same logic; during the transition toward critical args the lack of judge support made the switch to the mainstream very slow and tedious–teams who were who were initially ideologically against it had a stronger hand because they were on the side of the judging community, allowing for their resistance to last FAR longer than it should have.
Assuming the ideas that debaters innovations have been good for the community (CP’s (probably, yes), K’s (No), speed (maybe, if you aren’t david) etc. but really, ev quality (100% yes)) then why not bring them about in the quickest manner possible? If coaches/judges are truly campaigning for a change in debate practices then I’d suggest stop writing comments on Roy’s blog posts, which I can guarantee, I am the only soul* under the age of 25 reading, and update your judge philosophy. Change will occur quicker if judges give incentives for debaters to do things that are GOOD for the community, i.e. better evidence standards.
Debaters will react to incentives. I had a conversation with Roy about this earlier, and even with the Heidt’s who are the most moral people I know, we aren’t Saints. Have I come across a card from an unqualified staff writer while writing Iter add-ons? Yes. Has that stopped me from properly cutting that card, citing it, listing no qualifications, posting the newspaper title, and website name, and proceeding to go for it in the 2AR in 10 rounds? No.
And I am far from being alone. I am NOT the only one saying that if I were going to lose a round UNLESS I read a card from an unqual’d author, I would do so. Hell, look at Bishop Guertin’s Solar aff, or make that every card West Georgia has read. Or every politics DA ever. I cannot possibly see an incentive to hold up to a higher standard unless teams start calling people out others on qualifications. Nor do I see an incentive to waste 20 seconds making analytical attacks on unqual’d cards to have the judge call for them anyway. If you start losing rounds trying to be morals cop, that doesn’t strengthen your cause.
If the goal is a transition toward a better community, judges should help debaters speed that up.
*Layne does not have a soul.
Side-note — We actually still do go for quals/methodology matters alot, but have rarely, if ever, won that when we didn’t have a card making the opposite point. It’s not like we aren’t trying, it’s just not working.
1. This blog is totally wasting my life. Not complaining, just saying
2. I have a soul, Rajesh.
3. I don’t think anyone is saying judges need to actively protest to change debate. I don’t want dheidt, roy, and alderete with knives, torches, and pitchforks demanding that blogs not be used in debate. Rather, the judging community needs to be more open to “this evidence sucks monkey butt. Don’t evaluate Marko” for XYZ reasons. Scott’s analogy of the CP and debaters being like “tough. im gonna keep doing it” is the problem with cards from emails. When people say u can’t read email ev and people were like suck it, many times judges a) were unwilling to treat those args as 100% takeouts to the evidence b) didn’t want to even look at the discussion and pushed it aside and evaluated other stuff as the basis for their decision.
So yes, it’s up to debaters. But there has to be some middle ground where judges don’t auto-default to “well, they have ev and you have Kirshon ’09 saying this card sucks. I’ll default to the real ev.”
“Regardless, you falsely depict the choices available to us as between debaters changing it themselves and waiting for the Rev, rather than what I advocate as Judges opening up first then allowing for debaters to take that momentum and create a change.”
How did I do this? I said “i’m open now” and “judges are open if u make them”. How would you recommend we go about “opening” more judges?
“Saying that in the past K’s and CP’s have been debater innovations does NOT mean this is the most effective way of bringing about change.”
Your right, its the ONLY way. There is no alt- absent alternative methodology your arg is on par with cap k.
“The logic of blind focus on “empiricism clearly shows the best and only strategy” is like saying post nuke war, “that successfully de-established society, solving our problem with industrialization and warming! This is clearly the best strategy since it worked.””
wat
“In fact, what you described was fraught with errors. Though you probably debated at the time when CP’s were starting when you were 6, and I was not, I can still see the transition to allowing counter-advocacies resulted slowly, and caused many teams to abandon the movement because of the risk of losing ballots.”
Cowards. Like everything else in life increased risk= reward. Here is the problem- you want to play it safe, have your cake, and then eat your safe cake too. You are basically saying ” I see a big problem with debate, but I don’t want to do anything to risky to change it”.
If we are mark’d to die, we are now
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
“The K follows the same logic; during the transition toward critical args the lack of judge support made the switch to the mainstream very slow and tedious–teams who were who were initially ideologically against it had a stronger hand because they were on the side of the judging community, allowing for their resistance to last FAR longer than it should have.”
This is kind of false and relies on a bad policy/k judge dichotomy. That is a false dichotomy. There are 2 kinds of judges
A. Open to argument
B. Not open to argument
The people who reject the K also reject all kinds of other arguments out of hand as well. The only reason the K is an issue is because at its heart the K is an argument always about rejection and exclusion, so rejecting it takes on an additional level of irony. Also, as I have explained ad nauseum- some people thought that the K was good and ran it- they accepted the risk vs reward ratio. Every argument has one.
“Assuming the ideas that debaters innovations have been good for the community (CP’s (probably, yes), K’s (No), speed (maybe, if you aren’t david) etc. but really, ev quality (100% yes)) then why not bring them about in the quickest manner possible? If coaches/judges are truly campaigning for a change in debate practices then I’d suggest stop writing comments on Roy’s blog posts, which I can guarantee, I am the only soul* under the age of 25 reading, and update your judge philosophy.”
Umm… As mentioned in op, my judge philosophy has had provisions on all of these things for some time.
Look this is simple: as a judge, you can only decide based on the arguments in the debate. If an argument is not made about evidence quality then you can do very little about it. If you want judges to insert themselves into the debate and reject evidence without the debaters making an argument than you and I part ways there. But even if that was good, one judge doing it changes very little.
“Change will occur quicker if judges give incentives for debaters to do things that are GOOD for the community, i.e. better evidence standards.
Debaters will react to incentives. ”
Hmm, so perhaps judges should explicitly tie evidence quality to speaker points? Someone should give that a try (http://judgephilosophies.wikispaces.com/+Phillips,+Scott)
“I had a conversation with Roy”
Mistake 1
“about this earlier, and even with the Heidt’s who are the most moral people I know”
They have Siamese cats- they are clearly evil
” I cannot possibly see an incentive to hold up to a higher standard unless teams start calling people out others on qualifications.”
Isn’t this my argument?
“Nor do I see an incentive to waste 20 seconds making analytical attacks on unqual’d cards to have the judge call for them anyway.”
I can’t believe I am saying it but you kids need to get some tapes of Andy Ryan debating and watch them. He had a debate in like the quarterfinals of the NDT where the other team went for vaccines bad and had probably some of the sickest ev in history, only problem- not from doctors. It was a massacre. Seriously, I have seen you debate and you are not too shabby. Are you telling me it is beyond your powers to give a 2AR where you persuasively argue that a piece of evidence from a random website with no author , quals, or warrants that argues that capitalism is the root cause of every evil in human history is biased and thus should not be given full weight? I mean if you are actually afraid that judges are doing this to you I think you are filling out your pref sheet poorly or grossly exagerating. What usually happens is the aff goes “no link, plan doesnt spend capital”. The neg reads 5 bs cards. The aff doesn’t address any of the warrants and just says “these cards suck” (which is NOT AN ARGUMENT, it is a value judgement) and then the judge defaults to ev.
If you could post a rough transcript of one of these debates were you indicted this card ( and by rough i obvi mean like short descriptions not court reporter style) I would be happy to offer advice on how to improve it. But I am not just speculating here about the ability of debaters to do these things- I have seen them done/done them.
“If you start losing rounds trying to be morals cop, that doesn’t strengthen your cause.”
I agree the W comes first, but this will help you win. Seriously.
“If the goal is a transition toward a better community, judges should help debaters speed that up.”
In what way, ohter than jps, which was addressed above?
“*Layne does not have a soul.”
He’s from tx, don’t hold it against him
The problem is that most of the time debaters end their protest with “this sucks monkey butt” and don’t make good with the “xyz reasons.” Saying “Bearden is a hack” constitutes uttering a statement not making an argument.
ok so like, i think this discussion is becoming largely irrelevant. Either ur judge is Scottish (lol) and u can debate out basically everything or your judge is an ideologue and you should adapt. Debate is a game of persuasion. “winning” a round only means you convince the judge you won. Lesson: fill out a good pref sheet.
@Layne Kirshon
Ok I mean, this “judges not receptive” thing is in all seriously probably not 100% objective from you/rajesh in that I don’t know if you have really given it the old sporting chance or just thrown it out there, nor what judges you had this experience with. I would love to hear some names (if u dont want to post them email me) but you know from just this discussion/edebate that people definately open to this are: heidt, batterman, roy, me, garner, hoe etc. are down.
And now I will go one better- I did some research (you 2 should try it some time). I typed “evidence quality” into the search function on the judge philosophy wiki
It matters
Logan Parke
Evidence quality is much more important than quantity, you should be adept at evidence comparison through a variety of means whether specificity, qualification, etc.
Noah Chestnut
Evidence quality trumps spin
Josh Clark
It’s also important for debaters to compare evidence quality (and just saying “their card is bad” does not count) but if they don’t do that I will do it myself.
Tristan Morales (define irony)
Evidence quality” this is fairly heavily linked frequently to specificity but can also be the best trump card relative to specificity of the other sides claims
Aaron Hardy
I’m also sympathetic to arguments related to relative impact evidence quality – there’s something to be said for reading more than 6 warrantless words.
Caitlin Bruce
Level of explanation, evidence quality, impact comparison, framing.
More than a shitload of evidence is the way you create interactions
between evidence and incorporate it into an overall frame for the
debate.
Quality matters, as does context. Something that says “Subsidies”
within a page of “eliminate” and another page till “necessary” does
not a good comparative solvency card make.
Brian Smith
“I prefer evidence quality to evidence quantity. Just because the same sentence appears in the Bulletin’s Frontrunner, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and Scotland on Sunday does not mean that it is worth your time to read more than one of those cards”
Connor Cleary (see tristan joke)
I think evidence quality is very important. 1 or 2 solid politics cards, for example, are better than 20 shitty ones. The number of cards you have on an issue is irrelevant to me.
Jason Murray
I also tend to emphasize well-explained, well-warranted logical arguments over evidence quality.
Kathryn Clark
” I take evidence quality seriously. Qualifications are important and I prefer well-reasoned, well-researched evidence over evidence that is “literally on fire” with outlandish claims. I also think I give much more weight to analytical arguments that are warranted and make sense than many judges.”
Even that damien guy
I place a premium on evidence quality.
Brad Hall
Evidence quality often strongly influences my decisions, but I try to let the debating guide my reading of evidence
Im getting bored of this- there are more, many more.
So I guess, who are you p reffing and why?
i think that’s kind of silly. No judge or debater is gonna be like “read ass-tastic ev. it goes a long way.” Rather, different judges have different thresholds for what constitutes good arguments. For example, there are clearly judges out there who if the 2AR is all defense on a DA and no answer to a CP solves the case w/a strong explanation of vote aff on presumption, there are plenty of judges (not saying this is good or bad. I personally think offense/defense in the abstract is WAY more persuasive than no risk) who will be like: Risk. vote neg. Dave Strauss’ judging philosophy basically boils down to if ur aff ur most likely f’ed. This applies to evidence comparison questions. It’s impossible for the community to adapt to certain args in the way either Rajesh or you are saying. It’s the same reason I wouldn’t bust out the eco-fem in front of JP. That’s not a reason why JP is a better or worse judge than other people. It just means the debaters have to adapt. Some judges think a strong explanation for why Marko sucks monkeybutt is enough to make it go away. Others think it’s impossible to 100% take out the risk of it. We lost on a pretty damn fast 3-0 in semis of the TOC cuz we went for the “the” PIC. That wasn’t an issue of the judges being good or bad. Rather, we did not persuade the judges that it was a good argument (which i agree with and don’t understand why i went for it). I know that if I’m going for a K in front of Burshteyn I can basically kick the alt and go for the K as a methodology DA while if I’m going for it in front of a lot of other people kicking the alt is nearly an automatic aff win if the 2AR says “this is a n/u DA. risk.” So ya. Asking either debaters or judges to snap into new paradigms ain’t happening.
Sigh. I will try this one more time:
Rajesh say “judges should amend JP’s”
I say “already done”
Layne says “no judge say read ass-tastic ev. it goes a long way.”
Actually that was the entire point of you/rajesh comments- that all judges think/feel this way.
“but judges have bias/community won’t change”.
You don’t have to wait for it to change. Nor am I trying to tell anyone how to change debate or “the debate community” for the better. I am trying to explain how to win debates. When you enter a debate round you decide what goes on in that room- including how the judge makes their decision. Biases are what judges use (for the most part) to resolve bad debates where issues like whether or not offense/defense should be used are not addressed by the debaters. Who are these judges who love blog ev and wont reject unqualed sources and explain how you framed these arguments- otherwise re-read whitmores comment.
Neither of you can refute the fundamentally darwinian nature of debate history as explained above. People find the debate environment to be X, and decide they can exploit it by doing Y. Those people succeed, and they are modeled. So right now you find yourself in an environment polluted by crappy evidence- are you going to evolve?
That all these judges write in their philosophy “read good ev” , and that according to you no one would ever write “read crappy ev”, and yet everyone reads it should tell us what? Judges are basically powerless in affecting what happens in front of them.
“debaters won’t rapidly change”
if everyone is being an idiot, why wouldn’t you rapidly change to being smart?
i don’t think that’s what we’re saying. You’re saying don’t read crappy ev if you’re surrounded by it cuz then ull win/evolve into whatever comes after Pikachu cuz i never watched Pokemon. I don’t think that’s what Raj or me are saying. Raj says if we’re debating ass evidence and we’re like “this ev is ass. [insert warranted explanation here]” judges shouldn’t be like o well u don’t have ev. risk. vote neg. I’m saying both of you are missing the point that you can’t be like “this ev is ass” and evolve to change debate. Rather, you have to adapt to the change going on around you. I guarantee next year many judges as a result of the marburry thing/this whole blog will treat ethics challenges totally differently/will treat ev indicts that aren’t “bearden’s a hack. 2ac 6” differently. debaters have to adapt to that.
Scott: While I don’t think your post was “fraught with errors,” I just wanted to point out one thing that’s pretty important. I think a rough approximation of your argument is that good judges will listen to well-executed evidence comparison, it’s up to the debaters to man up and do their indicts effectively since they’re the cause of change in debate. So far, I’m unsure about the best approach to the issue of terrible evidence, but I think some of your takes on this don’t make sense/contradict other things you’ve said.
Regardless of the community’s stance on evidence, competitive debaters have pretty much one influence: whatever is most likely to win the round. Obviously there are some parameters for this that vary between debaters (i.e. stylistic preferences or moral stances on “Skarburry”-esque evidence), but this is unlikely to change. Layne phrased it well:
“Either ur judge is Scottish (lol) and u can debate out basically everything or your judge is an ideologue and you should adapt. Debate is a game of persuasion. “winning” a round only means you convince the judge you won.”
You seem to agree with this take on debate as well. In one of your posts on the original SP Debate blog in December, you say:
“No style is how I approached debate when I was competing. It was completely un-ideological: whatever I thought would win (stylistically, argument wise etc) I would do it. This arose out of competitive, not philosophical, concerns. If your goal in debate is to win, then no style is probably the approach for you. If you do debate for misguided quasi political reasons, I don’t know why you are reading this blog, but you can probably stop.”
So, the problem here is that your advice to man up and make the smart indicts cuts against this in some instances. Sure, it’s quite strategic with some judges who are receptive to smart evidence indicts, but it’s a dead-end for others. The fact that Rajesh often tried in vain to discredit Marko seems to support the notion that not all judges care about your indicts. However, you continue to advocate making these arguments even when they won’t get you anywhere because only debaters can drive the community to a better norm for evidence quality.
“Here is the problem- you want to play it safe, have your cake, and then eat your safe cake too. You are basically saying ” I see a big problem with debate, but I don’t want to do anything to risky to change it”. ”
Albeit cowardly, choosing to make other arguments at the expense of indicts is usually because those other arguments are more likely to win the debate in that instance. I think you contradict yourself in saying to do what will win debates like you did while simultaneously saying to man up and be less cowardly.
Rajesh: I read this blog and since I went for Heidegger zero times this year, I have a soul.
You are saying “we dont get far making args about bad ev”. Me and whit are saying “you arent doing it right, it requires more time investment” you are saying “unwilling to invest that time because i am afraid of judges not caring” I said “they care” you said ?????
I have judged you both a bunch. I don’t remember either ever
A. Reading quals when reading a card
B. Making an arg about it
Ellis,
I dont think this is a “style” issue as addressed in that post, but assuming it was, me/whitmores points still stand- no one is understanding that this issue is not just something you throw out and don’t explain/spend a lot of time on.
I agree with Scott and have a new article in the works that draws on Michael Lewis’s *Moneyball* to explain how “market inefficiencies” can be exploited in debate.
That said, I also think Layne and Anshu’s Sock Puppet have a point. I have seen a lot of decisions–either in rounds that I’m judging on a panel or in rounds that I’m uninvolved (and yes, I watch a lot of decisions… I don’t think people do this enough: it’s incredible how much you can learn about judges from watching them give decisions)–in which concerns about evidence *qualification* are mostly discarded in favor of the issue of evidence *quality*. There is an important distinction between *qualification* and *quality*: when many people talk about evidence *quality*, what they really mean is that they prefer evidence that is *conclusive*, *explicit*, and *over the top*… debaters tend to refer to these cards as “on fire” or “flaming” or other stupid descriptors. The issue of *qualification* is too often seen as secondary or separate from the issue of *quality*.
Tim Alderete’s judging philosophy explains this well, I think:
Too many judges take the opposite approach, *valuing* evidence that is hyperbolic and powerful more than evidence that is more modest but highly qualified.
This does not mean that debaters can’t exploit this, but I think Scott underestimates the number of judges who really do discount evidence *qualification* arguments while simultaneously bestowing the importance of having *quality* cards. I am not one of these judges, obviously, and I have had several discussions with Rajesh in particular about indicting bad evidence… I remember talking about capitalism critique cards in particular at least twice, and I encouraged y’all to make qualification arguments. It is unfortunate that you did not find more success with this approach, but suffice it to say that you would have been handsomely rewarded had you made those kinds of arguments in front of me. I *do* think “Bearden is an unqualified hack who bought his Ph.D. on the internet, is writing about vacuum energy, and thinks 2003 was the point of no return” is sufficient to discard the Bearden economy impact card entirely. Glenbrook South DT can confirm this: they said this against New Trier at the TOC and I subsequently assigned no impact to the aff’s economy impact despite Ross Gordon’s encouragement to “evaluate the warrants”.
This is a really good discussion… keep it going.
BTW: “Rajesh: I read this blog and since I went for Heidegger zero times this year, I have a soul.” I love Ellis Allen.
~Bill
“However, you continue to advocate making these arguments even when they won’t get you anywhere because only debaters can drive the community to a better norm for evidence quality.”
Ellis/Layne, how many rounds this year did you actually go for a substinative, well explained argument that the judge should disregard the affs/negs evidence becuase it is from a blog and actually explained why that is important. Seems to me that you have it backwards–you are disregarding making these args before there has been a lot of good, national rounds that they are truly highlighted, assuming that judges will not vote on them. I’m in your guys’ boat – winning is the #1 thing, but it seems to me that these indict args can win roudns while making debate better at the same time.
I think the biger problem with going for these args (in terms of winning) is not that judges won’t vote on them, its taht the negs ev is usually just as bad. Obviously, this means, duh, just research more and cut better ev – but, this would limit the negs options of what shit they could throw at the aff to see what sticks – going for a quals arg like this is pretty problematic for anyone who wants to go for politics becuase the aff can make the same arg. In practice debate I had with Tim, one of the 1ac cards he reads was from a blog, when pointed out, he said that if we didn’t read a card from a blog, that card would go away. While this is a stupid answer to the question of why should we even have to answer this, it’s pretty embarasing for the aff to go throuhg the 1nc and do the same.
BTW, I didn’t realize how absolutely terrible that Marko card is. It really should be cited “Anonymous” – “Marko” is just a message board username with no associated profile. Why we would be allowing/encouraging our students to read this garbage is beyond me… it’s not like there aren’t whole sections of every university library filled with books by Marxists/anarchists (not to mention several Marxist journals that are easily accessible like *The Monthly Review*). No student could get away with citing this Marko article for an academic research paper, so it bothers me that we are okay with it being cited in debates.
re: sp’s comment about judges and evidence quality
Honestly I don’t think it’s a very big problem. If you go through it, most of the 1AC evidence on the NDCA wiki has up-to-par or at least acceptable qualifications. If you research an aff, you’ll usually find decent cards for it and don’t have to stoop for low source quality. Often cards in the TF aren’t qualified and just online newspaper clippings, but that’s the norm in politics cards. Indicting these politics iLs makes sense when you have a much more qualified card (like Edwards saying no spillover).
Overall it’s not really that major of a “change” issue. When you have two cards of distinct qualifications (ie, beardon vs the ferguson 06 no war card) I think it’s pretty simple to articulate why objective field qualifications should be evaluated prior to warrants that just might sound good to debaters. If you know how to make arguments that set up this evaluative framework for ev comparison (including using arguments like zero risk), no judge is going to intervene to ignore this framework and give risk to the impact anyways. It only seems that judges evaluate like “there’s still a risk,” but that’s only because that’s a reasonable default framework and neither side made arguments good enough for an alternative framework.
I think the dispute over the validity of the Marko card raises the important question of how much importance we place on author qualifications in the first place. That teams get away with reading Bearden or Marko in the 1ac/1nc in the first place indicates to me that we as a community tend to set the value of evidence at 0(neutral) until the other team questions qualifications in rebuttal evidence comparison/cross-x. This is a mistake- Alex (miles) is right in saying that we’ve missed an educational opportunity when faced with these arguments to attempt to effectively articulate ‘zero risk’ in terms of evidence comparison. I agree that the community norm could shift if this was “highlighted in a lot of good, national rounds” and that’s why I think the warming debate this year was uniquely educational in that it forced teams to investigate peer-reviewed journals for evidence and qualified authors (thanks to that Davies card and others) and forcing warming bad debates to have major focus on evidence comparison. Batterman says “No student could get away with citing this Marko article for an academic research paper, so it bothers me that we are okay with it being cited in debates.” That’s the biggest issue to me, that teams get away with reading the card in the first place. I don’t think the discussion should be about whether or not particular judge’s would or would not be responsive to x or y card of questionable quality as sp frames it, but rather why x or y card even have a place in this activity.
Hello. Three rounds prompted me to change my judging philosophy. None settle any of these issues, but can at least illuminate them.
First one, I’m judging, and Notre Dame is running an end strength affirmative. JP is coaching, so they have a terrorism impact. The neg runs a terrorism / security K. The Aff reads a card by Brooks, who is a bloodthirsty lunatic. He is ranting about how we need to kill the terrorists before they have a chance to kill us, and how liberals are getting in the way of that, and how the streets will run with blood – some really over the top rhetoric, even for a neo con. Literally has the word Blood in it 6 times. Cross ex is pretty devastating, about the interactions between the kritik and this method of rhetoric; Taylor (from West) reads sections aloud, asks questions about who the terrorists are, when we can stop, etc. A specific examination of the text of the evidence and extrapolations of its lines of logic and rhetoric. No chance for Aff recovery. Played to Judge biases? Sure, but even an Anti-K judge would have voted the same way.
Second one. I am judging a Cap debate, and Greenhill is reading cards that say Cap is inevitable because it is genetic, and that communists are genetically inferior. Really detailed, vitriolic, and extremely power worded evidence. There are other Cap Good arguments (thankfully) to evaluate, but I eventually think that the Kinkaid cap bad cards are better (hopefully one wasn’t Marko?). Greenhill really wants to stick by the Genetic stuff after the round, and I said that it probably hurt them more than helped them – that focusing on it made them look less credible, and tying other args to this arg undermined those args. Now, Kinkaid had definitely answered this evidence substantively, and pretty decently on the merits of the argument, and had made comparisons to their “Not inevitable” evidence, but in fairness, they didn’t have any “Capitalists are not the Master Race” cards, and they had phrased their arguments more as “We discredit this argument” than as “Making this argument discredits your position.” At the end, JP (the other one) asks if I applied the same “Discrediting” standard to the power worded Cap Bad cards. (Actually, he might have phrased it as “You’re just a goddamned Cap K Hack”, but I think it amounts to the same thing.) And I am pretty sure that I was even handed, but I am a bit more aware of that now.
Third one. We are debating that Head Royce “AIDs is a Bioweapon” case. We’ve done the research, and have the goods, cause their authors are total lunatics. Especially the guy who says that his “cure” will solve AIDs – something like Silver Nitrate (I forget the exact drug) We read a card from their guy, saying that Silver Nitrate solves depression, cancer, acne, fatigue, the common cold, AIDs, and hunger – if just the military would let it be used. We tag this as an indict – this guy is Nuts. Two judges vote against us on the new Cancer and Hunger advantages (no impact to acne I guess). I didn’t see the round, so I don’t know how we explained this all in the end, but I am still upset at Zeiring about that one.
From these – I think that more judges than you might think really want to hear these arguments, but you can put up with the frustration when it doesn’t work out. I think that more judges than you might think will assign zero risk to an argument based on these kinds of cards if you do the work to make the comparisons, unless you have an MSU judge. I think that most people’s comparisons of Qualifications could be improved by making substantive arguments about how the quals mattered in those cards. You could greatly improve them by Connecting their qualifications to what the cards say in your indictments. And by reading evidence aloud. Also your evidence is as important to the indicts of their evidence as theirs are. A lot of judges end up doing a lot of the “Qualification comparisons” anyway, when they are done poorly or not at all – there are times when it is necessary for us to decide. IDK if those helped or if they are just war stories…
If there is one thing debating with Anshu has taught me, it’s that you should never cease arguing with people who have the same goal as you. Just kidding, but not really.
But I’ll have to dissent from that wise advice for the moment. I agree with Scott for a large portion of his argument. But I do think there is much work to be done on BOTH sides of the judge/debater relationship.
Scott attributes this problem solely to the debaters, whereas I say the proverbial ball is in both of our courts. The majority of my post was an indict of saying “in the past debaters dived in and made change, why should now be any different?” (paraphrased). I said the mentality that just because something worked does not mean it is the best/most efficient way of going about doing this change. Rather, I think it would be better for both sides to start focusing on this issue more, as it would create a smoother, quicker transition. Scott’s arg boils down to “Plenty of judges already do this, debaters needa pick it up” —
Really? There is a big distinction between writing something in a judge philosophy and voting on an arg. There is an inherent judge bias toward cards over smart analytical args. This is undeniable and I will follow it to my grave. Think of the following example —
2AC Bio-D Add-On
Plan KT Georgia’s Bio-D *qual’d card*
Georgia KT Global Bio-D *unqual’d* this has some sick hyperbolic wording
Diner 94
1NR says their evidence is awful from a staff writer, qualifications matter on environmental issues since it’s complex science and the warrants are false because georgia doesn’t have any unique species. (somewhat abridged because I realized it is 2:30)
Or
2AC Prolif Add-On
Plan Stops prolif *qual’d*
Tensions rising from prolif would clearly cause a middle eastern war. Israel would feel the need to first-strike to maintain it’s asymmetrical advantage, and they would think the US would back them up. *no card*
tensions = nuke war *qual’d*
1NR says they have no evidence for their second arg you can’t assert internal links to impacts — prolif tensions would be resolved through third party negotiation *unqual’d card*
On a panel of a 100 people (large enough to prevent me from getting sat..) do you think more people would vote aff in the first instance or the second instance? Despite the aff being on the side of falsity in example one, and truth (please don’t hurt me waltz) with worse debating from the neg in ex. two, I can guarantee more judges will vote aff for Georgian Bio-D. Now think about a stack of badly qual’d cards 50 minutes into an elim decision versus smart analytical args. Claims without cites commonly start getting weeded out as time progresses. The disparity only gets worse.
Do you seriously think me getting to a South China Sea impact and saying conflicts lead to global war has an equal chance at winning as someone reading Nikkei Weekly 95 which has the same amount of warrants?
The simple answer is no. The complex answer is Judges currently focus on evidence quality, but not qualifications. Billy did a great job pointing out the distinction, but to make that more concrete — Trainer 2k7 is a money card, but it’s lacking quals. A peer-reviewed article from an economics professor who says that economic hardship begets tensions is a qualified card, but lacks conclusivity and is not quality. Judges give a perverted bias to the former situation over the latter.
Your main answer is that debaters are not doing it well. I will concede that; most of the time when we get called out on quals it ends with this dude is a staff writer, discount it plz kthx. But we have made a big deal about quals before, in a manner that I would consider adequate–ex. we dealt with that stupid Johnson cap kills V2L by saying V2L is subjective, and he can’t make an assessment about everyone’s value to life, clearly hes unqualified to attribute psychological aspects of life and has no global knowledge and can’t make sweeping claims. Still, we almost dropped a ballot because we “didn’t handle the evidence well.”
To say this blame falls squarely on our shoulders is not fair given the above examples. Judges, though not individually, are still as a whole are biased toward badly qualified cards over analytical args, and until staff writers and debater analyticals are subconsciously given equal footing, there is still change to be made in this community. A change that is on both side’s shoulders.
I am not asking for you to intervene to throw out unqual’d ev if it wasn’t debated out, but I am asking you (not just Scott, judges in general) to reconsider bias in elims when handed a stack of cards versus analytical args. I’m not asking you to coach your kids to only read peer-reviewed ev, I’m asking you to start better ev quality standards at camp. I’m asking you to ask yourself, “What would Layne Kirshon do?”
I agree w/Raj, to some extent. It’s true that arguments with evidence attached to it will almost always beat a well explained analytic. Example: neg reads “accelerated prolif in South East Asia would increase tensions between India and Pakistan and would allow terrorists to access stockpiles, especially considering the Taliban got within like 50 miles of Islamabad. Increases chances of nuclear terrorism and indo/pak war,” and it’s from a staff writer at the Associated Press. Why does John Vance (the hypothetical staff writer) who probably spends less teaming reading literature on the subject, have more qualifications that Rajesh saying “MAD assures no use of nuclear weapons ever. Even terrorist organizations are rational and have an agenda that they know nuclear weapon use would compromise because the international backlash against Al Qaeda would destroy any support for them. The fact that at the height of the Cold War neither the US nor Russia ever used a nuke proves no one would today”?
Evidence supports arguments, not the other way around. Evidence is also only as valuable as its qualification. Especially on politics debates, when people were like “political capital isn’t key to healthcare. Specter and Reconciliation and the fact that every democrat publicly supports healthcare and GOP can’t filibuster AND the fact that Obama has yet to have to compromise a piece of legislation because he “lost PC”” many times the 2NRs response was “our ev says PC key. Obama has to get bluedog dem support. that’s fox news” and that was enough considering the 1AR/2AR don’t have a card. In reality, the aff’s arg makes logically more sense and the Fox news card probably said something like “obama will have to muster support for healthcare legislation. people like [insert names of bluedogs] won’t go along without a fight.” But most judges will take the 1AR/2AR arg as somewhat of a risk takeout, but no more than like 10%. This happened in one of our debates at the TOC. We won on healthcare with terrible ev against a well-explained analytical argument
Also, what would I do (rajesh)
I like this blog, although it makes me really upset that our season was ended by the Marko evidence =(
Layne Kirshon is my idol.
Rajesh,
It seems like your last point (about qualified evidence vs. poweful rhetoric evidence) is largely inevitable. Hacks can write such powerful rhetorical evidence primarily because they are hacks, their ev is often not peer reviewed, and they can make sweeping statements without warrants without fear of backlash. Credible authors do the opposite: they make statements that are usually really well backed up, but they can’t make Traineresque claims because they would be laughed by their peers, not get published, etc.
All that is a reason why debaters need to tell judges why to prefer warranted, quality evidence over rhetorical evidence or vice versa. I think the reason judges may seem biased towards certain ev is because it sounds better, is easier to evaluate, etc, especially when the debaters in the round don’t tell them to be skeptical of said evidence because it’s from a hack. Clearly, judges will be biased towards certain types of evidence (rhetorically powerful or well warranted) because they’re individuals; I think it should be the debaters job to tell them which type of ev to prefer in the round and WHY.
re: layne “Why shouldn’t a debater’s analytic be given at least as much weight a newspaper card?”
Because a debater isn’t qualified to make that judgment. That argument about MAD sounds reasonable because a lot of qualified authors make it, but if a team chooses not to read a card there’s no reason they should get serious credit to the analytic. Demanding evidence isn’t a cult, and saying that news evidence is “terrible” and your analytics are “well-explained” is self-serving.
This is the difference between good warrants and true warrants. Good arguments just sound persuasive to someone outside the field who doesn’t know the difference, like a debater or a debate judge. Giving more weight to persuasive sounding analytics is an issue that has been discussed before, and it always seems narcissistic to me for debaters to trump up their knowledge as “at least as good” as a newspaper writer. Staff writers don’t write op–eds as articles, they quote experts. Debaters and debate judges don’t have an adequate frame of reference to distinguish a warrant that is actually true from one that sounds reasonable, only an expert in the field does. There have even been studies on how the opinion of economists is actually quite different and more accurate on economic issues than the general impression of the average person. This is why qualifications trump warrants, even if those qualifications are “online columnist” – it’s still better than “debater in this round.” The research debaters do is for a competitive purpose where the search is for an argument that can sound good and be rhetorically powerful, that’s not the same type of reading that is done by a real–world researcher with no vested interest other than an interest to know what’s true on the subject. The research a debater does shouldn’t let that debater delude himself into thinking he’s truly informed and knows the truth on the matter. Debaters in a round have a clear conflict of interest – they make self-serving arguments to win regardless of whether they think these arguments are true – that is like an “oil good, renewables bad” card from an op-ed by an oil lobby journal. It’s probably a good starting assumption that debate should be the search for truth. The reason those analytics sound so well-explained isn’t because they’re true, but because debaters are good at spin.
@gulakov
However much I love reading your post on here and on cross-x, I fundamentally disagree with this post. 3 reasons
1) To assume you need evidence to gain credentials for an obviously true statement is asinine. “That argument about MAD sounds reasonable because a lot of qualified authors make it, but if a team chooses not to read a card there’s no reason they should get serious credit to the analytic.” That’s like standing up and saying the holocaust happened but I don’t have a card on it so it didn’t. MAD is empirically true and shouldn’t need evidence backing to be true. Maybe it shouldn’t be given the 100% as would you gain from reading evidence, but it shouldn’t be thrown out.
2) “The reason those analytics sound so well-explained isn’t because they’re true, but because debaters are good at spin.” – Again, just not true. I’m pretty sure if Rajesh or Will Rafey, very well known for being excellent spinners, got up in their 2AR’s and stated something that was just a flat out lie, no judges would give them credibility for it. Using the example above, being able to spin a good story as to why there won’t be nuclear war because 50 years of it not occurring between two rival nations hating each other is not only true but also well warranted.
3) “Debaters in a round have a clear conflict of interest – they make self-serving arguments to win regardless of whether they think these arguments are true”. – If we were to exclude all arguments because of self-serving reasons, all cards would have to be excluded. Scientist are payed to find certain results, meaning they have a self-serving reason to put out a card. Kagan loves America, Herod hates Capitalism, and Nyquist hates the Russians. Does this mean we should exclude these authors (given they were bad example but you understand the point). We shouldn’t, yes debaters are going to be biased when making arguments, but that doesn’t make them any less true.
I’ve had a lot of experience with this running the affirmative I had on the Alternative Energy topic, I’d no link out of politics by saying Obama’s political capitol isn’t wasted when the FAA president pases a bill. Given I didn’t have evidence for it, it was a claim that was based in common sense and 99% of the time a card wasn’t necessary. Yes given I WANT to make that argument, that doesn’t make it any less true.
1+2 – I think this proves my point. I’ve not done that much research on this but have already seen evidence quoting experts saying that the popular view among the public regarding MAD is false and that MAD had nothing to do with Soviet-American nuclear non-use. The fact that you are readily persuaded by Layne’s sock puppet and so confident to say “MAD is empirically true and shouldn’t need evidence backing to be true” shows how ready debaters are to believe their own spin.
3 – This isn’t what a conflict of interest means. The part about scientists is just patently false – most scientific journals even require authors to declare their conflicts of interest when publishing articles. Scientists are paid to find results, period; any scientist paid to find *certain* results is discredited. Likewise, debaters have a vested interest in having a certain conclusion appear true. “Kagan loves America” doesn’t imply USFG paid him to reach that specific conclusion; this isn’t the same as a conflict of interest.
The politics link example is a non-sequitur – the neg didn’t have a card saying “FAA drains Obama’s capital” so in that instance it was analytic spin vs analytic spin.
Caveat about extreme/strawperson examples of obviously–unqualified sources (University Newswire, etc) that don’t even cite experts and have no relevant qualifications in the subject: in that instance, I think one can argue they ought to be treated as “as good as analytics” so again it’s analytics vs analytics. Other than in politics debates, debate evidence is generally more qualified than that, however.
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1) You think there aren’t also a number of experts who say MAD had a lot to do with, to use your fairly awkward term, Soviet-American nuclear non-use? We won a bunch of rounds 2 years ago making analysis about MAD as a reason to prefer our terrorism advantage without having cards to support it, and I think that’s a good thing. Obviously if you start reading evidence from qualified experts saying MAD doesn’t work, there are good reasons those experts should trump a debater’s analytics, but that doesn’t mean a team should not initially get credit for the persuasive argument which demonstrates education about deterrence theory.
2)Spin is good. If a debater can take these analytics and make them sound good enough for a judge to believe it, then they are doing their job and deserve to be rewarded. Spin is a large part of what makes the outcome of a round different from if each team just handed the judge a pile of evidence and said “decide.” It helps debaters develop necessary thinking and persuasion skills. You might have an argument if the arguments being deployed were blatantly false, but the nature of “spin” is that there is some prior basis for the argument, and the nature of the type of arguments being debated is usually that there is no single clearly true and generally accepted fact; otherwise there would be no debate. And spin is better for debate than the alternative – I think most of us would have preferred those SPS arguments be a product of bad supporting evidence and spin than an article written by a debate coach, which was probably deemed necessary since there was no evidence which supported that conclusion without spin.
3) Experts have the same “conflict of interest” as debaters – they want to win. You don’t think, to go back to the discussion of MAD, that when Waltz and Sagan discuss proliferation and deterrence, they have incentives to win? Experts have incentives to develop unique arguments to establish name recognition, and to “win” and prove their own theories and disprove the theories of other experts, and to sell their books and get paid to write more in the future. Krugman has an incentive to say unique things, because if he repeated what everyone else said, he wouldn’t have won a Nobel Prize, which necessitates challenging generally accepted conclusions. The USFG may not have paid Kagan to reach his conclusions, but his readers give him a financial and political incentive to reach those conclusions. Your analogy is also poor since debaters aren’t paid by the oil industry so while they have an incentive to win, they don’t have an incentive to make certain arguments or reach certain conclusions; there are always multiple ways to win, and they choose the easiest, which is generally the more logical and well supported argument.
Also, judges realize debaters want to win, which is why their analytics require more warrants and analysis than some experts. If an expert said numerous tests show MAD doesn’t work, you would find it less necessary to have that piece of evidence show you the results of the tests and explain how they reached that conclusion than you would if a debater made that same claim. For a debater’s analytic argument on that subject to be persuasive, it would require somewhat extensive and well warranted analysis; we certainly would not just accept a claim without warrants.
Part of this probably depends on the purpose of debate. If you view it as solely a search for truth, then a debaters analytic should perhaps be given little weight (although as Antonucci explained elsewhere, sometimes the things which are obvious and the most true have no supporting evidence because they are just generally accepted facts). I think viewing debate in that manner is difficult because it removes some of the competitive aspect, the benefits to critical thinking skills, and the educational benefits of being forced to defend arguments from both sides. Like I said earlier, we want to avoid a situation where the outcome would be the same if we handed the judge a stack of cards before the round and said “decide.”
There’s also the question of which is a more valuable form of education: the ability to say “MAD is true because X, Y, and Z said so” or the ability to say “MAD is true because…” and explain the theory and provide empirical examples. I tend to think the latter, and I know the professor who taught my IR class would also rather have me understand the theory than be able to drop the names of a few experts without knowing why they came to those conclusions. This is certainly not an argument against reliance on qualified sources, but its probably a reason why logic and warrants should trump, or at least compete with, unqualified or unwarranted but qualified sources.
@gulakov
gulakov i think you’re fundamentally wrong. If an article saying mid east war goes nuclear is written by a prof of strategic studies @ some university clearly qualification means that even if it’s less warranted it should precede analytics. I’m saying that judges will 99% of the time evaluate a card with qualifications that don’t determine the knowledge the writer has of the subject, with warrants that are vaguely explained, as 5x better than a highly explained and contextual analytical argument. Once again, evidence supports arguments. NOT the other way around. That’s a practice that should change. example explained in above post.
Your points are well-received, Scott. However, a few contemporary phenomena may well have tilted the judging pool toward greater conservatism, in ways that debaters struggle to change.
1. Mutually preferred judging. If you, as a judge, deviate from the received template and vote for theoretical arguments or say “politics is stupid” you run the distinct risk of drifting to the bottom of your constituent’s pref sheets. If you announce it in your MPJ, you’re probably going to end up judging the 2-5 and the novice breakout quarters.
I don’t care. I’m not a proud man, and I’m happy to judge the 2-5 round. However, others aren’t, and MPJ tends to push judges away from acts of courage.
MPJ also hardened schisms between policy and kritik debate, which, IMO, lent follow-up credence to hardened positions on theory. If I’ve already decided to exclude one side of the spectrum, why not just settle all theory questions in my head as well?
2. The cult of efficiency. When you debated (in HS, at least), there was more of an understanding that even efficienct 2AC/2NCs had to at least articulate the argument, including its warrant, even if it was a hoary debate chestnut. I think that debate’s trended far more to 2ACs and 2NCs that allude briefly to the existence of argument. Example:
“condo’s good – neg flex – need all options to test aff best AND reciprocal – perms are condo too AND side bias – aff first last speech plus persuasive 2AR AND best policy option – that outweighs fairness because real world ed’s core debate value AND counterinterp – two condo counterplans and a K, checks snowball AND logic – choosing a bad squo’s counterintuitive.”
Give that block to a debater, and you know what they’ll do? Highlight it.
Judges will generally accept those sorts of brief allusions to arguments, under the assumption that they don’t need to have a boring song and dance about condo when they already know what everyone will say.
Even if judges want more, it’s awfully difficult to exclude those allusions without sounding like Doofy McTardles: “I jehst don’t understahnd what that thar perms arg is ‘less you really SPLAIN it to me. Now, if you said “look here, juhdge” and such…”
The substitution of tags for arguments on well-rehearsed points of debate, however, badly retards innovation. If you’re going to paragraph on some new intrinsicness perm in the 2AC, you’re already far behind where you would have been with “perm – both” or even “logical perm – do plan and consult – test germaneness of consult on this issue specifically.” If you make the args everyone knows, you don’t have to say nearly as much.
Also, many judges believe that hyper-efficiency, to the point of excising warrants ON WELL-REHEARSED ISSUES, is actually a superior aesthetic. I’ve sat on panels in which a decision was (in part) “wow, you just got overwhelmed on tech.” I voted the same way, but I didn’t think that it was really a technical round at all. There was no dropped argument per se – there just wasn’t a link to the K, and the tech was mostly a distraction to me. Still, if one team sounds blazing and hyper-efficient and the other team is turtling along explaining their dope new evidence standards, Team Tag-it-up will in fact often win – EVEN IF they don’t drop any args.
I don’t mean to imply that debate’s frozen in stone, or to detract too terribly from your points. I do, however, want to emphasize that features of judging practice do push debaters toward repetition. Even if every judge will accept a new argument in principle, varying “thresholds of explanation” can still badly punish innovators.
re: josh
You say “there’s lots of experts on my side, I’ve read them and can recite what they say in round, why shouldn’t I get as much credit?” – by that logic, why read cards at all? There’s no benefit to your proposal to give weight to analytics that my idea – “just read a short card on MAD” – doesn’t capture. If there are really so many experts, such a card should be easy to find.
Spin is good; spin supported by qualified ev should be prefered. Writing Marburry–like articles isn’t my alternative.
This isn’t the use of the term “conflict of interest” I intended. Most real experts say what they actually believe is true and money incentives to write more don’t force them into a particular conclusion on an issue. Debaters make arguments to win, regardless of whether they think it’s true. Debaters are forced to make arguments that reach a certain conclusion by side constraints.
You’re totalizing my argument, I’ll try to make it more clear. Debate shouldn’t be handing in a stack of cards; debaters should read evidence first, then there should be comparison of warrants, qualifications, and spin. The two forms of education aren’t exclusive, in constructives you might say “MAD is true – author” and in rebuttals you’d have to compare the warrants to win. All I’m excluding is allowing debaters to have their more-persuasive–sounding (to a lay person in that field of expertise, aka a debate judge) warrants (unbacked by evidence) evaluated on the same level as less-persuasive warrants of experts that actually know what they’re talking about.
re: layne
I’ve made a caveat for “a card with qualifications that don’t determine the knowledge the writer has of the subject” – It should be argued that it should be treated as an analytic, since the author has no relevant qualification. Establishing this “framework” for evidence comparison clearly enough will get judges to weigh it as analytic vs analytic. True, judges have default frameworks for evidence evaluation just like they have preconceived frameworks for the K, but nearly all judges also say “I’m open to evaluate through different frameworks if you establish them.”