Matheson,+Calum

 Updated August 29, 2015. Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I do not prefer one style of debate over another. All of them can be done well; all of them can be done badly. You might learn a bit about the topic or a few tangential things (concepts in political theory, communication, philosophy, whatever), but most of what you get will be distorted by the competitive dynamics of debate, the conventional bad readings we’ve somehow collectively agreed on, or simply the requirement that you research a whole lot of different things. I don’t think debate teaches very good decisionmaking skills either. Honestly, I learned more about opportunity cost, persuasion, and decisionmaking from roleplaying in Dungeons & Dragons than I did from roleplaying in debate. (And before you call me a nerd, aren’t you on the debate team? Yeah, that’s what I thought.) Ditto for social justice and democratic policy “skills”—debate is not a particularly good means of teaching those either. So what does it do well? Debate has the potential to teach the formal properties of argument, public speaking skills, information processing, and strategy. None of these things are strongly related to the content of debates—any serially repeated, structured dispute with clash between two sides should be able to teach these things (although there might be other benefits to discussing specific things). In other words, debate’s comparative advantage is about teaching argument form, not specific argument contents. I think that extends to arguments about the identity of the individual debaters to some extent—perhaps identity always informs arguments, but ultimately the judge decides based on those arguments. That’s all we really have. What this means: I tend to vote for teams that impact turn critical arguments more than I do for teams that go for framework as a rules-based argument. I think you should do whatever you want to do. You should also be expected to defend against any argument of any kind. Extremes can be good: if you can’t beat “poverty good” or “human life bad,” you are not a good advocate of your cause, and you shouldn’t win. Beat “bad” arguments by explaining why they are “bad,” not by saying that we shouldn’t discuss them at all. Debate is most exciting when there’s innovation. Learning to win with a “bad” argument (wipeout, rights Malthus, the politics disad) is an extremely useful skill. I mean, if your arguments are all awesome, it doesn’t really take a lot of skill to win, right? Arguments should evolve, people should resurrect old theory ideas, things should change, and debate should be fun. Ossification is death. This means I’m not very persuaded by “portable skills,” “this debate spills over,” etc. except as it pertains to argument skills. Therefore, if you’re going to go for framework, I think that arguments about how the style of debate you don’t like promotes or hinders argument skills are your best option. Framework should be a substantive argument about strategy and the value of debate, not a primarily rules-based thing since fairness, topic education, and most other arguments in this vein are just internal links to something else. You still need an impact, and I think there are legitimate arguments to make against this, so it’s not a guarantee. I would always prefer that you engage your opponents’ arguments anyway—the “I-don’t-like-it-so-I-shouldn’t-learn-it” school of thought is not a commitment to good education. Call it what you want—policing, cowardice, ressentiment --it’s anti-intellectualism, and it’s pathetic. Read a book. They have them on the Internet now sometimes. Policy things: I wish I judged more policy vs. policy debates, mostly because I get bored doing the same thing all the time. I used to do this a lot. College debaters should know that I’m doing a significant amount of research on this topic, and it’s almost all policy research. Here’s how I think about a few issues that might come up, although I’d prefer to vote based on arguments you’ve made in a debate rather than on my own predispositions. --The aff doesn’t decide what the words in the plan text mean. Neither does the neg. The meaning of a word should be the result of a debate where each team supports its own interpretation. This prevents otherwise insupportable aff interpretations (“‘Iraq’ means ‘Iran,’ right? It’s practically the same word”) and allows the neg to make a wide variety of counterplans competitive, although with the disadvantage that the aff (presumably) chose the words in the plan carefully and can thus defend them. Seems fair to me. --There is (like, objectively) such a thing as zero risk. Below a certain threshold, a signal is drowned by noise. Jonathan Schell, God rest his soul, was just wrong, because at a very low magnitude, even the sign of change becomes uncertain, and therefore there’s an unquantifiable chance of offense, not just a great deal of defense. --Impact comparison is the most important metric for determining a debate for me. There’s a powerful, mostly unquestioned, part of the debate script in which we all pretend that the terminal impacts we read are actually accessible by their internal links, that all nuclear wars are basically the same, that human extinction isn’t nearly impossible to access, and that “superpowers get drawn in” is a meaningful statement. Exploit this for yourself, of course, but I appreciate efforts to reveal the inanities of the other team’s impacts too. --The Politics DA is the height of policy debate irony. To be intrinsic, it relies on a particular interpretation of the role of the judge, what parts of the political process the aff must defend (i.e., not the plan but the conditions that make the plan possible), a particular educational value that means it should be considered even if it’s not strictly necessary, and lastly, a literally “pre-fiat” link. It also links to basically everything. It is, in other words, a critique. (Yes, “critique,” with a “C.” We didn’t drop 3.4 million tons of ordnance on Europe just to use a German word where an English one suffices). Critical things: --I am not particularly persuaded by arguments based only on the identities of people participating in the debate. I don’t mean that I’m not persuaded by arguments about identity—I mean that “you are X, and therefore you must believe Y (or your arguments are Z)” is a much worse argument than “you have made argument X, which supports Y bad structure” or “argument X is a product of structure Y,” which is not the same thing as assuming that the visible (to you) elements of your opponent’s identities must by necessity entirely determine their discourse. Not many teams do this anymore, but I’m mentioning it because I occasionally witness situations where people feel forced to disclose some aspect of their identity and are hurt in the process. Of course privilege is real and an important topic for debaters to discuss. I generally think that everyone would be better off if those privileges were not linked to specific identities but were more accessible. Go right ahead and make individuals accountable for performing some bad identity if that’s your thing, but the quality of criticism would be higher if you do that with specificity and contingency in mind. If you’re familiar with the 2014-2015 college scene, a partial list of teams that I think did this well is Towson TW, Oklahoma AC, Oklahoma AY, and Liberty CE. --I think that the most effective applications of Franco-German K Theory Stuff to policy affs focus on the evaluation of scholarship rather than the results of the plan. Plenty of potential critiques this year implicate the plan were it to be done (e.g., the tired old Security K), but those arguments are best as if-then statements. The focus of the debate should still be on the effect of the judge voting aff or neg, and what that vote signifies, in which case the effect of the plan isn’t relevant because epistemology is logically prior rather than debate theory prior to that determination. A clearer but less nuanced way of saying this: if your alt and framework are about scholarship, then your links should be too. If they’re about the plan, then explain how they interact with your own framework arguments. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">Final general things: <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--I tend to decide debates quickly. That doesn’t mean you did a bad job or that I don’t care. That’s just how it tends to work. I pay attention carefully to speeches (usually that’s true even if it looks like it isn’t) and do a lot of thinking during the debate about what the potential outcomes for individual arguments could be. That’s how I stay engaged. As a result, many times the outcome of a debate matches something I’ve already been considering by the time the 2AR ends. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--I don’t read a lot of evidence. I will if it’s necessary, but that’s uncommon. Evidence supports the arguments you make—if you don’t make or explain an argument and your evidence does, you still didn’t make the argument. <span style="background-color: #fefefe; font-family: open_sans,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: middle;">--Thomas Ligotti.