Andrew Sullivans comment from the dish

8.56 pm. I’m sorry but space policy puts me in an instant coma. But they all sounded fine. I can’t imagine anything they are now saying will have any impact in even the tiniest way on anything in the actual world. The best answer was Santorum’s.

At a debate at the Glenbrooks a team got angry with me for having several, maybe 6 or so, cards in the 2AC speech document that I didn’t read, and to be fair it was at least 1 per block. The way I usually organize blocks is with debate synergy headers, and I just transfer the whole block over to the speech doc. Do you think this is a problem/if it is, what do you think is a good solution?

Another similar problem is that teams will like, answer an add on that was in a 2AC speech doc that I didn’t get to… is this something that needs to be addressed in CX/after 2AC should I tell them/just explain that in the 1AR. Seems a bit awkward when teams spend a minute of reading asteroids defense against a non-existent add on.”

Answer to 1- The other team should flow. Period. They should know what you read, this isn’t an issue just with paperless debate. When debating on paper people would bring up more than they got to or just read 1 card of a page with multiple cards etc. It’s the other teams responsibility to pay attention. Usually when I say something like this someone will say “but the other team could add a million things to the speech doc to confuse us/waste our time”. True, but someone debating off paper could bring a million extra sheets up to confuse you as well. They dont because it makes finding what they DO want to read harder. And if you have a good flow you can sift through things pretty quickly. If it’s really a problem start of CX by saying “mark what you read” and get a new speech doc. This should take under a minute. Judges have a problem with this when debaters want time like this to not come from cx/prep but instead to be “free” time, and rightly so. This should come from the team who didn’t give the speeches prep since they are the ones who need clarification. “But now they are wasting our prep…” Flow. You can win 99% of your debates by preparing in advance and flowing well WITHOUT ever reading the other teams evidence so quit complaining.

As for part 2 I think there are really 2 answers. From a strict “fairness” perspective I don’t think you are under any obligation to assist the other team when they make a mistake. Again, flow. But there is also the “don’t be a douche” standard, and from that perspective you saying “didn’t read that” would certainly help your debate karma. So chosing between the 2 is a personal choice, and I would probably decide based on the other team- if they were bad at debate or nice I would tell them. If it was a competitive round and they were jerks I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

This arises out of a few things, one of which is a post I made earlier about judges speaking up during debates. Another is this college thread about judges following along with evidence in a round.

If we take the premise of both threads to be true- judges can follow along with evidence during the debate, and can speak up during the debate, would rounds be better if debaters could interact with judges during them(after all, judges do now have the right to choose)?

I will start with a series of anecdotes.

1. In my first ever college debate I was judged by Dallas Perkins. I had been judged by him before, but only at the Harvard Round Robin where he did not speak during the debate, nor did he write a ballot explaining why he failed to vote neg on a combination of “free market solves” and the NMD good politics disad vs a sexual orientation employment discrimination case (the nerve of some people). I was the 1A, and to give you a little insight into our squads aff prep at this point we were running a case that basically banned nuclear power and we did not have any evidence that said nuclear power was bad. Moving on. So I read the 1AC which said “USFG” and the first CX question fired my way is “who does the plan”. I began to answer “for the purposes of your disads…” at which point Dallas chimed in “if you finish that sentence, I’ll vote against you right now”. I looked at my partner, who looked horrified, and said “congress”.

2. A coach of mine judged a debate where the following happened. The 2NR went exclusively for 1 K. The 2AR spent a minute on the perm, then stopped and said “if this is enough for us to win, put your pen down”. My coach put his pen down. Voted aff… But then he gave her a 26 for not using all her speech time, which infuriated me because I thought that move was awesome.

3. Over past summers I have started to comment a lot more during practice debates at camp. During speeches, cx, prep etc. Comments range from points about specific arguments to broader strategy issues. And while these comments don’t necessarily make the debates substantially better, tweaking a thing here or there can at least stop the train from going off the tracks.

Now, I’m not yet on board with judges in a tournament setting interjecting of their own choice, I think that has some obvious problems with it. But what if a judge had a blanket policy that they would respond to questions the debaters ask them- either at any point or at only certain points in the debate? I think this is pretty defensible.

First, in limited forms it already occurs. People ask judges how much speech or prep time they have left. These are things that theoretically debaters could keep track of themselves, and knowledge of them confers a strategic benefit. Going a step farther, judges are consulted about their flow. Debaters will ask what the last argument a judge wrote down was if someone keeps talking after the timer goes off. People will ask if a judge flowed something as a “Voting issue”. People will ask “did they go for X” when there is a lack of clarity over whether or not something was kicked. These are all pretty important questions and the answers can be round changing.

So if judges do frequently answer these, why can’t you ask the judge if they think card X read by the other team is good/better than yours/qualified? Why can’t you ask them if they understood the K link argument in the 1NC, or if they knew the 2NC made a floating pic?

I contend that you can. If the judge can answer the above questions (and while it is possible a judge could refuse to answer the questions about prep/what was flowed etc I know no one who would) then they should answer the other questions as well. As long as the judge still requires a point to be made in a speech aboout whatever was in question, it seems totally legit to me.

I will now list the objections I can see to this and give a brief response.

“not fair”

Seems fair as long as each side has equal access to ask questions

“intervention”

Not if the judge only speaks when asked by the debaters.

“judge bias”

Speaking doesn’t uniquely create bias, and as the DP anecdote demonstrates it can help you deal with judge bias.

“Hurts debates”

I don’t really see how this would be. I think it eliminates silly debates that take time away from more pressing issues.

Example

Aff- Chalko

Neg “judge, if I go to this card and just make a thumbs down motion, is that sufficient?”

me: ya

That debate has been improved immensely. I think that maybe the objection could be made that this will hurt bad/dumb arguments, and that is probably true. But as someone who ran a lot of dumb arguments, I never read anything that couldn’t of sustained a short judge cross-x. Even aspec passes the test (the answers to aspec should be obvious/not require judge consultation)

I really can’t think of any other objection that I would say is not a subset of the above, but if anyone can think of some or has a different opinion fire up the comments.

If we conduct 1,000 studies and publish the results, and 95% of them are likely to be correct, that means we will have 50 studies that are probably incorrect. These studies make up the oddball news items like “drinking soda makes you live longer” and other weird things you see that have “statistical” support.(Credit to Sklansky on this one)

Those 50 also probably make up a disproportionately large percentage of statistics used in debate. The reason is obvious- they are crazy and debaters gravitate towards crazy arguments. As people are taught more and more to rely on peer reviewed quality sources it should be remembered that just because something has some math behind it doesn’t necessarily mean its “true”.

In that vein here is an interesting link

At long last, regressions were run and… no result. No relationship between price shocks and conflict, even in the most generous scenarios. I shrugged and thought, “Well, so much for that.” My committee said, “Huh, what about that child soldiering project we told you not to do?” And off I went on my career as micro-conflict man.

In the meantime, lots of papers that did see an impact of economic shocks on conflict or instability did get published. The conventional wisdom grew: Rising incomes made the state more attractive to rebels as a prize, and falling incomes made it easier to recruit rebels. No matter that these two ideas ran in apparently opposite directions.

Meanwhile, I met other academics that had run the same regression as me. Famous ones you have probably heard of. Their reaction was the same as mine: “Oh, I found that result,” several said, “but I’m worried there’s nothing there because my data have problems, and the specification wasn’t quite right. So I left it out of the paper. I’ve been meaning to get back to that.”

Let’s follow a simple decision rule: run your regressions with inevitably imperfect data and models. If you get the theoretically predicted result (any of them), publish. If not, wait and look into your data and empirical strategy more.

The result? As in the natural sciences, most published research findings are probably false.

1. Flow. I don’t really care to get into a discussion of why people don’t flow anymore, there are many hypothesai about it; nor will I tell you that you should flow. I instead will make 2 points about dealing with the world of no flows

Subpoint A. Efficiency, like speed, is a tool that can be misused/abused. For example, “subpoints”. When I was a junior in highschool it was hip in college debate to say “Subpoint A, B, C” etc when listing things in speeches. A few of us who were at the NDT that year then migrated that practice to national circuit highschool debate. I don’t mean this is where the idea of subpointing was created, it had certainly been done before. What I mean is that EVERYTHING was subpointed. It was a tactic used way too much. In the years after my graduating class moved on to teach at institutes it started being taught that this was silly and inefficient- which is true. However, somehow this movement got a little carried away and basically all verbal structuring mid speech other than “next” became off limits. The extreme focus on efficiency had people teaching that every single word not necessary to make an argument should be eliminated. The problem is that many things that aren’t needed to MAKE an argument are necessary to order arguments for the judge/opponent. These words may be “needless” in the sense that if a perfect debate machine were following along it would not need things like signposting, but as flowing skills move away from perfect toward say, Roys, these little breaks become more and more necessary.

The combination of no signposting and no flowing is that no one has any idea what is going on. This is a problem larger than the issues of paperless debate- I am sometimes sympathetic to debaters who don’t have a good flow because as a judge I also don’t have a good flow. I don’t know when one argument started and another stopped. This often isn’t an issue of clarity per se- as we usually think of clarity as can you understand the words coming out of someones mouth. But it is a problem of comprehension. Its compounded when someone moves between many 2AC arguments quickly in a later speech- often I get lost trying to find the argument they are answering (most often because they are not answering things in order, but also often because they use a different tag/label then the ones I have attached to arguments that weren’t numbered by the 2AC) and then I am constantly trying to “catch” up which detracts from my ability to understand/follow the speech as it is being given.

Where am I going with this? It is in your competitive interest as a debater when the other people in the round aren’t flowing/signposting to forget about efficiency and bust out some old bad habits such as “they say”. Now again, they say is a tool in the tool box- I am not saying you should use this all the time. But if you are giving a 2AR in a messy debate, and you recognize that, and you sacrifice efficiency in order to clean things up for the judge your points will skyrocket. Now you may be thinking “but, if I become inefficient how will I cover?”. In a messy debate things are rarely decided by drops, unless there is a drop that is super clear and is a voting issue, and you should be able to handle those in time. The way messy debates are won is by a person CLEANING IT UP.

Subpoint B: Pay attention for your partner. Make sure they don’t drop things, answer arguments in the speech doc that weren’t read etc. In general, lack of good flows makes it MORE important to have a backup person paying attention than less. There are lots of times after debates where it is clear one partner did a good job flowing and the other didn’t. The problem is when the person flowing isn’t giving the important speech. It has been dogma for a long time that each side only has 1 captain. Well if that captain is asleep at the helm you need to speak up. Every time I see someone in a postround be like “oh yea, I knew we were dropping conditionality but I didn’t say anything” I consider assigning them zero speaker points. Your partner isn’t flowing- they are a moron, granted. But when they drop something at least they can plead ignorance, what is your defense of not chiming in?

2. Plan. Before giving a speech, you need to think about what you are attempting to accomplish in that speech, how much time accomplishing those things will take, and then form some kind of plan. You need to actually think in terms of time and how to allocate it. I think most people know this at some level because they talk about “time skew” when reading their conditionality blocks. However, I can’t remember the last time I asked someone a question about their planned time allocation and they could answer it with some explanation of their plan- its just not something that seems to be done anymore. It needs to be done. The more complex a debate becomes the more important it is to plan your speech time. When there are 2 off and 5 case arguments you can waste some time and recover. When there are 8 off and 15 case arguments, each second counts. If you spend 20 extra seconds on T that is the difference between getting to politics with 15 seconds and 45 seconds which is huge.

Now, you don’t need to write out a map of all the time in your speech every time. But you can quickly do the following

A. Time your blocks so you can estimate how long things will take you

B. Look at the 1NC and think about what they are likely to chose to extend, and then figure out how much of your time you should spend on those issues

C. Then allocate your remaining time to other issues

So this process would work like this

We are debating Z, they always go for politics and privatize, but those are only 2 of the 7 off in the 1NC. I want to spend 3 minutes of 2AC time on those 2 issues, 45 seconds of which will be theory and an add on we can go for even if they kick the cp. That leaves 5 minutes to deal with 5 off and whatever was put on the case.

Now you are giving your speech- where do you place these 3 minutes? You could put them at the top to make sure you get all 3 minutes on these issues, or you can put them at the bottom to stop the other team from getting 5 minutes of free prep. A lot of factors go into this decision- are you disciplined enough to get there with 3 minutes if you put them on the bottom, does the other team have a lot of blocks so it doesn’t matter if they are on the bottom, do they have the ability to go for the other things in the 1NC and are thus likely to pay attention to it all regardless of what order things are in?

Doing this is cumbersome at first, but once you practice it it becomes 2nd nature, which brings me to

3. Crawl before you can walk. There are certain debate fundamentals. Before you can move onto advanced techniques you need to understand the fundamentals. Before you can give a 2NC on a 1 off K, you should be able to give a 2NC on a K where the 2AC only gave 5 arguments because there were many off. You should be able to give a B+ 1AR before you stop flowing the block etc. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. So here are some fundamentals you can practice to lay the ground work for skill development. These are things you should prepare to debate, have practice debates on, and do at tournaments.

A. Impact turn hegemony both ways- this is the best way to get good at debate fast. Hegemony is an issue where you don’t need to do any research- you can find all the top notch cards you need by mining camp files, so you can’t blame lack of evidence for your missteps. Its an issue that has been in debate forever, so you can predict what the other team is going to say and be ready for it. A hegemony impact is read in like 90 percent of debates, so preparing this well is one of the best ways to get ready to lay the smack down. What does it take to get ready for this? About 10 hours.

-6 hours- reading camp files, finding the best 40-50 pieces of evidence for a 6-10 card frontline, extensions, 4-5 add on impacts, and answers to common responses the other team will make

-1 hour assembling everything

-2 hours highlighting everything really well

-1 hour writing extension blocks

So at 2 hours a day you can do this in a week after school. At the end you should have a 40-50 page file that is totally ready to go for one side of the debate. Rinse and repeat.

One thing that is important here is that the PROCESS of going through all this will teach you a ton about how to find good cards, how to prioritize arguments, and perhaps most importantly you will know a lot more about the issues involved in the hegemony debate itself.

You could go father and produce a million page hegemony file, but most of the time those 50 pages are going to be way more than you need.

Now, debate that 30 or 40 times over the course of the year and you will see huge improvements. Impact turning things means there is guaranteed clash- neither side can run from the important issues. Forcing yourself to have tough debates like this will make your skill improve far more than going to a tournament with a process cp and shady aff. In fact, people who don’t already have this kind of skill set will never go far with a process CP because once they hit a good team who is prepared/engages their arguments beyond a superficial level they don’t have the skillset to respond and fold like a beach style chair.

Issues like hegemony that you can turn are growth, trade, and warming though they come up less often.

B. Rework other peoples blocks. It doesn’t matter where you get them from or if they are even for an issue you will debate. Get a hold of someone elses blocks and critique them/redo them. You will quickly see what inefficiencies and stupidities are at work. Sometimes just looking at your own work becomes useless- if you knew what the problems where you wouldn’t have made the mistakes in the first place so you aren’t likely to fix them no matter how many times you redo something. Exchanging them with someone else gets you a fresh perspective on your own work, but the part that really makes you learn is correcting someone else. Until you go through hundreds of pages of someone elses work you often won’t realize how annoying things like no structure/lack of organization are. It also gets you to start thinking like a judge which will help you package and prepare your own arguments.

Interested? Head over to podcast.the3nr.com and download the new episode. If you haven’t done so already, you can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Who could object to that? Thou shalt not bear false witness. Tell the truth, and shame the Devil. Transparency, management-speak for honesty, is put forward as the answer to most of today’s ills. But the truth of the matter—honestly—is that this would lead to disaster, for lying is at the heart of civilisation.

The Glenbrooks is pleased to present, in conjunction with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics as well as the National Forensic League, a Space Policy Forum open to all and free of charge. The forum will be held on Friday, November 18th at 7pm in the Ravinia Room at the Hyatt Deerfield. This panel is a must-see for any policy debater or coach who is interested in expert advice on this year’s topic. Current members of the panel include:

• Dr. Stanley G. Rosen, former Director of Strategic Development and Integration for Boeing Satellite Systems, now a consultant to the Tofler Associates. Dr. Rosen was also the coach of the U.S. Air Force Academy’s debate team in the 1970’s.
• AIAA Public Policy, Space Portfolio Manager, Ross G. Bell. Ross will discuss the nature of space policy as it relates to the appropriations committees and other public policy implications.
• Chelsey Robinson, Southern Illinois University. Chelsea will be speaking to the role of the life sciences in space exploration/development, both as a reality and as a consideration for debaters debating colonization and long-range exploration cases.

Additional forum members will be announced on the Glenbrooks Joy of Tournament web site. Please arrive a few minutes before 7pm to ensure that seating is available. The formal presentation will conclude with a Q/A opportunity for students and coaches to ask specific questions of the experts.

If you’ll be at the Glenbrooks, this is a must-see event.

1. What do you mean by using “sophisticated theory arguments” “buttressed by definitional support” to portray the perms as illegitimate? If you were to utilize this in a debate, would you define words from the resolution, and say how the perm violates them – the perm doesn’t have to be topical though, right? Assuming this, would you frame it more like this: perm do both (say, on privatization) violates “united states” in the resolution, we’re not saying that the perm has to be topical, we’re merely saying that if the aff is allowed to violate its, the neg loses all ground for actor cps including international actors and then proceed to defend theory standards?

2. When you say that you should come up with “reasons the cp alters traditional solvency calculations”, how should we articulate this to the judge?

For example, would the following scenario work?

1ac – US colonize

1nc – china cp

2ac – only US has resources necessary and only US infrastructure can deploy those resources effectively, china sucks at space stuff

2nc – AT: solvency deficit -
1. china is better than the US – blah warrants

2. even if they’re not better, they’re at least equal – there’s no clear differential between the 2 space programs that is supported by evidence

3. disregard their solvency deficits – their conception of china as inferior/bad is based on a realist epistemology which obscures actual chinese intentions (read pan or security link)

3. How exactly do you articulate that the da impact outweighs the solvency deficit? Would it be like the following?

1ac – sps

1nc – econ, privatization cp

2ac – solvency deficit for sps in general, solvency deficit for heg

2nc – the da impact economic collapse outweighs the solvency deficit -

1. economic collapse turns solvency – no sps possible if we don’t have money, so extinction from economic collapse happens first

2. even if fiat solves that, economic collapse kills the timeframe of deploying sps – normal means of gathering money for the plan after economic collapse would be slow, so extinction would happen before the plan could solve the advantages

3. even if the timeframe for funding is fast enough, economic collapse creates political and social instability which destroys the effectiveness of the institutions they use to implement their plan, i.e. private charter or nasa – they can’t solve

4. even if they can solve, economic collapse turns heg – a bad economy kills our global credibility

5. even if their heg evidence is space specific, economic collapse outweighs heg – our impact will happen faster than they can solve heg – sps would take a while to demonstrate, deploy, and increase hegemony but the funding for the plan is instant (instantaneous fiat)

A bunch of questions were just like “duh reasonability is sweet”.

What is the point of structure? Shouldn’t your tags make things clear enough?

Blah blah blah the neg reads 1 off how do I fill the 2AC

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its transportation infrastructure investment in the United States.

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its legal protection of economic migrants in the United States.

Thoughts?