[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]
Return to main CEDA-L Archive Page

Even more answers to JP

JP says:
>BTW - If the negative says "vote negative
>- we're cool," and the aff drops it, would you vote negative?  
>If yes, the
>result is a strong warrant for the silliness of your paradigm.  

I wish to answer this out of order, at the top, because I 
think it represents the core of why people are hesitant to
just let the debaters debate: they fear a "silly result."

To me, not being able to beat a "vote neg we're cool" 
argument is the rough equivalent of not being able to debate 
one's way out of a paper bag.  EVERY novice can beat it.
So when it is made and NOT beaten we have two choices:

1.  Vote for a team that can read a bunch of great cards but
    couldn't debate their way out of a paper bag.

-or-

2.  Vote for a silly argument and hand the careless team a
    loss.

I personally find option #1 very distasteful (more on that soon).

Why do others find option #2 distasteful?  I don't.  I think
it comes from a mistaken ego involvement with the decision.
When a bad argument wins, some judges feel shame/embarassment
(witness JP's remarks about the silliness of my paradigm,
the attempt to make silly arguments reflect on the judge).
Maybe other judges will hear and laugh at you in the hall :).

When I vote on a silly argument, I think "gee, what silly
debaters."  If JP (and others?) were to vote on a silly 
argument they would think "gee, what a silly judge I am."
Why the difference?  To me, a paradigm just governs the
PROCEDURES of the debate and the RFD.  Garbage in, garbage
out.  JP doesn't like that... he wants roses out every time,
no exceptions.  I fear that this leads to a paternal and
perhaps disrespectful attitude toward debaters' strategic
and tactical decisions ("well, I know you are making a 
tactically sound attempt here, but it's too silly").
Judges are the arbiters of better debating.  Are they the
arbiters of truth?  Hmmmmm...

This leads judges to try to control the content of a round
to a greater or lesser degree.  Silly arguments won't be
permitted to win.  Period.  This control is harmful, both
to education and competition, as well as being counter-
productive (top-down vs. bottom-up).  This control leaves
debaters on shaky ground about what may be a silly argument.
"Slavery bad" and Galileo may have once seemed silly.  
Narratives as warrants may still seem silly to some.  The
judging pool is fragmented, not just diverse.




Back to Option #1... voting for the team that failed to 
debate their way out of a paper bag....

I find this distasteful:

Reason 1: It makes arguments for one team (and not the other):
the argument that x is silly.  I think that if those 
arguments don't occur in the debate, inserting them afterwards
is very bad.  It draws into question one's own certainty,
makes one a participant in the round, and the real damning
risk is that the debaters may be ready to further support
the argument that you're dismissing!  In other words, often
the debaters are ready to handle the reason you're intervening
but they don't because they didn't hear it IN THE ROUND.


Reason 2: Time: time is the key pressure in debate.  Good
debaters have to devise ways to easily dismiss bad arguments
and explore good ones.  Adding your own arguments or subtracting 
those of debaters skews time spent.  Shall we protect debaters?  
Should they rely on this?


Reason 3: The drop: the drop in debate is what creates a 
separation of tactics from truth.  Teams make their inround
decisions based on how arguments shape up, what's beaten
and what's undercovered.  If the other team fails to probe
the main holes in your position, you're ready, right?  Go
for the win.  That also means you try to emphasize that issue
and deemphasize others that you may also be winning!  Fine 
by me... you got my ballot.  The alternative?  Never sever
down, because the judge may see some hole in your argument
that hasn't been made.  Never give up any chance to win,
because it's never safe to base a decision on tactics.
In other words, never try to develop a tactical feel for
debate.  Shall we just read more cards?   Bye, bye issue
selection....


Final thought on option 1: an analogy.
Do the refs insist that basketball players take smart shots?
What if one team just shot the ball full-court as soon as they
passed it in?  Would the refs intercede and say "stop this silly
play"?  What if they made a lot of these full-court 3-pointers
and started to win?  Would the refs say "you can't use that silly
strategy to win"?  No.

And most certainly no one would say "your ref paradigm is
bad."


=========================
The rest of this is just a jumble of line-by-line
with JP that gets pretty long.  Read at your own risk.
May be boring.

Zack

=========================

JP says:
>Predicability is simply not achievable in a world that requires inevitable
>judicial intervention.  I also question how valuable predicatablity is if
>it requires voting for silly data like eclipses are pretty.  Finally, as
>long as the judge attempts to consistently follow one rule of thumb or the
>other - the debaters can be certain how he or she will respond.


On consistency, I challenge (repeatedly) your own misguided
self-perception that you have this "rule of thumb" level of
consistency....  any formulation of your rule results in no
certainty for debaters.  Is your rule still:

"Assume that one team fails to press
the Clinton link evidence and I read the evidence after the debate, 
 and discover that the evidence goes the wrong way or says solar
eclipses are pretty.  There is no theory of argument or more importantly
any reasonable theory of decision making which would not require me to
judge the risk of the disad as being quite low if not 0."?  

That's what it used to be, two posts ago, right?

Now, it seems that there is some notion of "relevance" added in
there, too.  I thought there was "no theory" yadda yadda yadda,
but now you're voting aff on risk of turns which you were "REQUIRED"
to judge as "quite low if not 0."

An end to the self-deception:
Now that relevance has crept into your "rule of thumb" that offers
"certainty" to debaters, we can all see that the "rule of thumb"
includes reference to further rules and processes that remain
hidden from debaters (and yourself?).  A rule that claims to
apply "only when relevant" without a definition of "relevance"
fails to qualify for rule-hood at all (perhaps you were trying
to avoid such burdens by calling it a "rule of thumb").  You
may be willing to accept your own lack of predictability.  I
doubt anyone loses any sleep over that.  But please don't try to
dress it up with "the debaters can be certain how he or she will
respond"; nice try to have your cake and eat it, too.


=======================
>Regarding judicial intervention, my single and continuing answer is that it
>is NU.  Since the judge has the job of evaluating arguments - it makes
>sense only to follow consistent standards in the evaluation and I am simply
>saying that accepting arguments with terrible or non-existent warrants
>should violate such a standard.

Answer 1:  the harm was and continues to be a LINEAR harm; now
that we have slapped the debate labels on them, do you see why 
your "single and continuing" answer of NU fails?

Answer 2: the harm may be deontological, which would trump uniqueness;
don't perform any avoidable wrong

Answer 3: your consistency is a myth, we already know you will 
accept an argument with a non-existent warrant when you deem that
part of the debate "irrelevant"



>Don't know of any decision making models in which it is a logical act to
>vote for bad arguments (answered or not).  If you can think of one, let me
>know.  The reason is that such a model almost by definition leads to bad
>decisions.  My warrant is: acceptance of stupid arguments=stupid decisions

Yes, this is your central error.  You believe that the measure of
decisions is how much you personally agree with the decision
and think it is intelligent.  Leave the ego out of it.  A decision
is just an evaluation of how the debate occurred.  Some debates 
are great/fun/smart and some are bad/boring/stupid.  The judge
doesn't change that.  So my equation is:

believing stupidity measures the quality of decisions=bad decisions

A vote for a given argument says that argument is winning within
a certain context, not that the argument is right/smart/etc.


>> Here's the hypothetical scenario:
>> 1AC reads a case with only a deontological impact.
>> 1NC reads Clinton with the pretty eclipse link and
>>   crushes the crap out of deontology.
>> 2AC concedes the deontology, and just runs impact
>>   turns to Clinton.
>> The rest of the debate: all about Clinton impacts, but 
>> the Aff (in your mind) wins the impact debate.
>> Do you a) vote Aff despite the bad link to the turns
>>     or b) vote neg because the DA goes away due to the
>>           poor link and you're left with nothing but
>>           presumption.
>
>That's easy - two reasons: 1) Never have to evaluate the Clinton link
>because it is not relevant. Remember, in the earlier example, I postulated
>that the disad evidence was not pressed but the link was debated and the
>disad had to be weighed against the case. 

Right, this is a new example, not the earlier one.  

So you are saying that sometimes you'll overlook a really bad link?  
You used to say:

"There is no theory of argument or more importantly
any reasonable theory of decision making which would not require me to
judge the risk of the disad as being quite low if not 0."

What happened to this rule of thumb debaters could rely on?  Perhaps
you really meant some other rule of thumb.  Perhaps you were just
imprecise (too bad debaters have to lose a round to find out about
any imprecision).

>2) With nothing left in the
>debate - the RISK of turns is enough to vote negative.  

I assume you meant "affirmative," right?  They're the team
with the turns.

And after the round, the 2N says:

"What happened, JP?  We were counting on your reliable rule of
thumb that would assess that link card as of zero risk!  You
totally let us down, dude.  We were just suckering the aff into
the impact debate because we knew you would save us."

The point is you allow something that you said you wouldn't
allow.  What next?  Change the rule?  Fine.  I'll find
a new hypothetical scenario for that rule.  I'm very good
at it.  Your only choice is to include vague language in
your rule of thumb like "relevance" and "appropriateness"
that makes it not really a rule at all.  


>> I'm guessing most judges would vote Aff. and allow the
>> bad link that they would ordinarily reject but that both
>> teams accepted.  And surely you see the danger of exceptions
>> to your policy... the lack of predictability is problematic
>> and your intervention does not seem so innocuous when you 
>> are applying your own (not the debaters') critical thinking
>> to all the cards/arguments as well as when to suspend the
>> rules, etc.  Where does it end, JP?  If in some cases you 
>> subordinate "truth" to tactical decisions by the debaters,
>> why not respect their tactical decisions in other cases?
>
>My earlier answer to the fallacy of the slippery slope stands:

There's no slope here.  Just a request for the bright-line.
There's nothing we're sliding down to disaster, etc.
So I ask again, "where's the bright line?"

I recommend you reread you rhetoric 101 textbook on this
fallacy.  You're missing key elements and it's not nice
to throw around those accusations lightly. :)


That's all folks,
thanks for reading.
Zack
Follow-Ups:
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
Return to main CEDA-L Archive Page