10 Things I Like and Don’t Like, featuring Harvard ’18 (Bob Overing)

I’m back! Harvard was my first tournament since Apple Valley, and I was excited to be in the thick of things again. Premier Debate alums and Premier Debate Team members performed well, and one of my students has reached quarterfinals or better three years in a row. Plus, we got to break a sweet new Scanlon aff that makes me feel like it’s 2011 again. Woot! Stay tuned for more rounds on our YouTube channel from Berkeley and Harvard, and don’t forget to subscribe!

Without further ado, my Zach Lowe-inspired 10 Things I Like and Don’t Like!

#1 Rising powers, affecting the metagame

Half of the quarterfinalist at Harvard were non-seniors, including Byram Hills LP (junior), Cambridge AG (junior), St. Andrew’s IB (junior, also co-championed the tournament), and Oak Hall KZ (sophomore)! I can’t wait to see what these debaters do at TOC and beyond.

The argument diversity among this bunch is really impressive too. I did a full metagame analysis after Blake and CPS for our Winter Camp and Team, and while I tried to remain objective, part of me lamented the lack of argument diversity early on the topic. I.e., everyone was running a stock/race aff, a reform counterplan, and the court clog disad. But among these four non-seniors, we had a deportation plan, three Kant affs, virtue ethics, Scanlon, a trivialism a priori, a Bataille death aff (with a Negarestani card, no less), Wilderson subjective vertigo, Wilderson with a wake work method, and a suicide bomber aff (Baudrillard? Not enough disclosure to tell). And that’s just on the aff! I’m admittedly not a huge fan of non-topical affs, but I am a fan of a healthy metagame, which means a variety of options and argument styles winning at big tournaments. There are problems with so-called “clash of civilizations” debates, but I expect these four will devise new and clever ways to deal with arguments across the spectrum.

There were certainly many other non-seniors in earlier elims, but I don’t know everyone’s class years, so I can’t say as to the numbers – comment below or on Facebook if you saw a particularly awesome underclassman!

#2 “Co-championing”

The final round is the two best debaters at that tournament, going head-to-head to find out who’s the best of the land. It’s an opportunity to for younger debaters to watch and learn. Only one person can go out on a win.

I don’t have the data, but it seems there’s been an uptick in “co-champions” from different schools over the past few seasons. I have no idea why, and I don’t like it. I want to know who would win! The People want to know! Come on! What if LeBron and Steph just decided to shake hands and call it a draw in the NBA Finals?

I even think that it would be fun if teammates debated each other in elims. Of course, a coach could just have one side throw the round, but don’t you want to know? Who would win, Harvard-Westlake’s Cameron Cohen or Nick Steele in semis of the 2016 TOC? Indian Springs’s Jeff Liu or Larry Liu in finals of the 2011 TOC? Dartmouth’s Jacobsohn/Lyon or Gail/Koulogeorge in semis of the 1983 NDT? (My dad claims this is famous I guess.)

More debate is good!

Thanks to my former student and current co-coach Oliver Sussman for raising this dislike (though note he co-championed the 2017 Lexington tournament…just saying).

#3 Theory spikes that refuse to go away

“The neg must weigh any aff theoretical abuse against the time skew.” Ugh.

“All aff theory arguments outweigh all neg theory arguments.” Double ugh.

“All neg theory arguments are counterinterpretations since the aff’s stances are implicit interpretations.” Seriously?

“The neg may not contest theoretical arguments in the aff.” Okay, now you’re just trying to make me mad.

I’ve already written several articles about aff spikes, and I feel like I could write a dozen more and nothing would change. Someone needs to come up with a meta-altering argument, and it’s not going to be spikes bad theory (we tried that like seven years ago) or a spikes kritik. It’s a bit of a catch-22 because the better debaters get at defeating these spikes, the better the spike runners get at defending them, and the same debaters who defeat them are in turn better positioned to defend them, so they’re more likely to run them.

The time skew is real and quantified, but most of these solutions (including the more standard “aff gets RVIs”) overcompensate and/or assume a feature of the round that doesn’t necessarily exist. John Scoggin first made this point to me: if there’s no theory or topicality, then these spikes don’t do much to rectify the side imbalance. And granting aff plans or aff reasonability faces the same problem. It used to be that everyone defaulted aff on presumption debates, but presumption isn’t really relevant to the current metagame anymore (again, thanks John). If we think the side bias is something like 5%, and that it would be good to ensure micro reciprocity within rounds,[1] how do we figure out what would give affs a 5% advantage and no more?

#4 Success Academy

Success Academy qualified three debaters to TOC at Harvard, and I would say more about them, but I only got to see one of the three debate this weekend. Generally, it’s pretty cool to see new programs pop up and perform this well this quickly, but this “like” has nothing to do with that…

How awesome is the school name “Success Academy?” Wouldn’t you feel destined for greatness if you went to a school called Success? I mean, you have to succeed. It’s in the name! I think this even beats those schools that are called “XYZ School of Excellence.” If I ever establish a high school, I’m considering “High School for Students Who Always Win,” or maybe “Best Place on Earth Preparatory.” Thoughts?

#5 The bad good Samaritan paradox

Context: In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a story about a man who is beaten and left for dead on the side of the road where several men pass him by. The Samaritan man does not. He bandages the stranger, takes him on his donkey, and brings him to an inn. This, Jesus says, is what it means to love thy neighbor.

Actual Context: In 1958, philosopher A.N. Prior notes a puzzle in deontic logic with accepting that “OB(h & r) -> OBr” (where OB stands for some deontic language, like ‘it is obligatory that…’). For example, “It is obligatory that Jones help Smith who has been robbed” seems to imply “It is obligatory that Smith be robbed” because Jones helps Smith who has been robbed if and only if Jones helps Smith and Smith has been robbed. But of course, it is not obligatory that Smith be robbed.[2] This is the puzzle, which Prior calls “The good Samaritan paradox.”

Then in 2017, I stumbled across the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on deontic logic. I reproduced several of its paradoxes as a prioris of sorts, proving why should reject the resolution, an ought claim requiring deontic logic to evaluate it. My students Xavier Roberts-Gaal and Oliver Sussman found these fascinating. I don’t remember the whole development, but I suspect Oliver at some point (perhaps in conversation with me) discovered the more powerful deployment of the argument. And it goes like this:

Affirmatives on JF17 say we ought to remove restrictions on free speech. The good Samaritan paradox suggests that we ought to remove restrictions on free speech if and only if we ought to have restrictions on free speech, which negates the resolution.

Thus, the good Samaritan paradox a priori was born.[3] I think we read it in exactly one debate (Harvard semis), lost on theory, and didn’t really talk about the argument again. Fast forward to Yale 2017, and several teams are reading the a priori. Fast forward to Harvard 2018, and teams are still reading the a priori. I didn’t blog about it, I didn’t talk about it at camp, and I doubt Oliver did, so I’d very much like to know how this all happened.

If you told me as a high school senior in 2012 that I would play a role in inventing a well-trafficked a priori, I would have laughed in your face. Back then I read util in most debates, and if my opponent said anything else, I’d call it a NIB and read theory (Kant, Hobbes, you name it), which is part of what makes this all so funny to me.

Before you rush to the judgment that I’m now ‘enlightened’ about tricks, let me say I am not. Don’t read a prioris! They are unfair!!!

#6 Disclosure is a good, but not an unlimited one

As I noted in my Holiday Disclosure Post #3 last year, the questions raised by disclosure are more varied and nuanced than just “should one disclose?” and “if so, how much?” There are a host of related questions that we need to think critically about. For example: (1) what is the role of coaches in promoting their own students’ disclosure,[4] (2) what is the role of coaches in asking for disclosure from the other side, (3) how should debaters and/or coaches ask for disclosure, (4) should debaters and/or coaches threaten to run disclosure theory, (5) does disclosure theory need screenshot/verifiable evidence, (6) need there be an in-round violation (i.e. an undisclosed argument) for theory, (7) what is the role of tournament directors, (8) should tournaments have disclosure policies, (9) is theory an appropriate answer to non-disclosure, (10) should debaters even have to ask for disclosure, (11) should disclosure theory violations require asking for disclosure, (12) should judges take stances on disclosure, (13) how should judges decide disclosure theory debates, etc. etc. etc. See my old post for a nearly complete spectrum of possible disclosure practices.

I think disclosure is good (FYI, if you’re new to this blog). I do not think disclosure is an unlimited good. I’ll explain.

If one thought disclosure was an unlimited good (i.e., a good that trumps everything else and should be maximized), such a person would think that judges should always vote against debaters with suboptimal disclosure, even if it’s not an argument in the round, even if it’s not in a judge’s paradigm, and give those debaters zero speaker points. Such a person would think that tournament directors should mandate optimal disclosure, and even if they neglected to include it in the tournament invitation, still inspect each debater’s wiki for optimal disclosure, and disqualify and ban debaters from ever returning if they had suboptimal disclosure. You get the idea.

I don’t believe in these practices. I don’t think anyone does. College policy debate probably has the best disclosure of any competitive debate circuit, and it doesn’t come close to treating disclosure as an unlimited good.[5]

So the question is, where do we draw the line? It may be time to have some more nuanced conversations about these issues. My views are roughly as follows: Debaters should continue to move to full text or open source, especially when their cases are heavily analytic. Coaches should continue to encourage their students to disclose properly and facilitate good pre-round disclosure interactions with opposing teams. Judges should continue to accept disclosure theory despite lingering out-of-round or verifiability concerns. Tournament directors should continue to include disclosure rules and should enforce those rules only when and exactly as they’ve committed to do so.

Some of this needs to be spelled out, and I may say more in a future post, but for now, hopefully this can be a nexus for further discussion.

#7 R.I.P. wikispaces.com

Apparently, wikispaces.com – the site that hosts the judgephilosophies wiki and the LD circuitdebater wiki – is shutting down later this year. I wonder if anyone has plans to move that content elsewhere and would like to know if they do.

Perhaps tabroom could import judgephilosophies data, but since it’s not theirs, maybe they wouldn’t want to. Half those judges probably aren’t even judging anymore, so maybe it’s not a big deal to ditch judgephilosophies. As for the circuitdebater wiki, I suspect many teams have offloaded versions of those files (debaters love files), and better disclosure now obviates a lot of the need. That said, it would be good to have a running version since so few teams are open source.

#8 Stanford did ordinal prefs!

I will continue to praise tournaments for use of ordinal prefs, which is a clear and obvious improvement over categories (see John Scoggin’s post here). I believe we at the Loyola tournament were the first to commit to ordinal prefs every year, since our tournament’s inception, and I haven’t heard any complaints. Other tournaments are now coming around, especially on the west coast. I wasn’t at Stanford, and I haven’t seen their pref data, but I bet it looks a lot better than previous years.

Thanks to Varun Paranjpe for bringing this to my attention.

#9 Harvard “hospitality” and procedural mishaps

This stuff might seem petty and read like a rambling Yelp review, but it’s important to talk about what our tournaments are getting right and wrong. Schools traveling from across the country and paying thousands of dollars to debate deserve to be treated well and should consider factors beyond the bid level when deciding what tournaments to attend.

Last year, I complained about the lack of Wi-Fi during the Harvard tournament. I still believe those arguments (especially the classism issue), and perhaps I hold them even more strongly having dealt with this a second time. Not having consistent Wi-Fi at your tournament site should disqualify you from running an octas bid. Period. This year, the Wi-Fi was slightly better, so I could get online about 40% of the time. I could look at judge philosophies, opponent wikis, and cut cards… all less than half as effectively as at a normal tournament.

The judges lounge rarely had enough food and was completely out of dinner when I went down a little after 6PM. I’m not sure there ever was any dinner on Day 2, which went until late in the evening, but maybe I just missed it again. Perhaps they e-mail blasted that there was dinner, but I missed the e-mail because, well, the Wi-Fi. I would have left to go get food, but it was cold and snowy, and I’m from California and don’t do weather (I’m sure that makes my story really sympathetic). Luckily, I was staying with friends who made nice home-cooked meals at the end of the day. They may have saved me from the brink of starvation.

For some reason the snack stand for students was selling warm water bottles for $3. And then the price dropped to $2. I guess costly water is better than no water though.

The tournament staff members (excepting the Harvard students) are not very nice. They are really tough about having food outside the cafeteria. If I recall correctly, last year they threatened a student with disqualification for eating in a hallway. But it might not be the worst thing to leave food around and get the tournament barred from coming back to that middle school; at least then we might have Wi-Fi (sarcasm).

They were also weirdly protective of the library, which connected to several rooms with rounds. They even stationed a guard to prevent wandering debaters and coaches from entering without a valid reason. Conversations went like this: “Hold up, where are you going?” “To a debate round.” “Which room?” “113.” “When does it start?” “Five minutes ago.” “Are you a debater?” “No, I’m the coach. I want to watch my student.” “Okay, you can pass.” Bizarre.

The tournament is run pretty much on time, which is nice and surprising given that JV and Varsity used the same rooms. But it did require copious threats and forfeiting some students for being a little late, like seven minutes late. I’m somewhat biased because I often find myself prepping at the last minute and slowing down rounds, which I should be better about, but forfeiting an elite debater for being seven minutes late is a little harsh, right? Last year, a debater I was judging had a technological problem that slowed down the round, and the tournament threatened to nullify my students’ judge prefs if I didn’t finish by the suggested end time. This was the last round of the day too, so it wasn’t like another round needed to get off. And they should punish me, not my debaters. Fine me, make me judge novices, sure, but leave the kids out of it.

On Day 2 during Flight A of triples, we were kicked out of a room we were prepping in because they were closing all the unused classrooms. We were only allowed in the hallways or cafeteria, which had few outlets, loud music, and leftover food and gunk on the tables. I’ve run tournaments. I get the need to put the rooms back in order at the end of the day, and you want to leave as early as you can. If we’re lingering after the last round, kick us out, but ninety minutes before the scheduled finish? Let debaters prep in peace!

I was added to the judge pool pretty last minute, perhaps even after all the prefs were in, so the tournament provided a supplemental pref sheet. I’m not sure they tried very hard to circulate it though, since I only judged two flights. It’s possible that I just wasn’t preffed very highly, but last year I judged nineteen flights, so I feel like a mistake was made to the debaters’ detriment.

The flow of coffee in the judges lounge was pretty consistent though, so they got that right.

#10 “I meet your theory interpretation that debaters must disclose on the NDCA wiki: My cases are disclosed on the public forum wiki!”

This one speaks for itself.

End Notes

[1] That is, “everyone affirms and negates an equal amount of times” is an insufficient answer to side bias. I think this is an open question, but it makes sense that we would want to ensure micro/in-round reciprocity for educational reasons.

[2] Another example that works similarly but through a conditional is the following: Suppose it is true that “If you commit murder, you ought to do so gently” and you do, in fact, commit murder. This means you ought to murder since “ought to murder gently” entails that you ought to murder. But of course, you ought not murder.

[3] To my knowledge, and having searched the past five seasons’ wikis, I don’t think anyone else has read the good Samaritan paradox in LD (at least as long as I’ve been on the circuit). I’m happy to be proven wrong and retract our claim to invention.

[4] Earlier this year, I was accused of hypocrisy for failing to ensure my students disclosed properly. For the record: I strongly encourage my students to disclose, I encourage more disclosure rather than less, and I offer to help my students disclose if they can’t for some reason. I also encourage my students to run disclosure theory on opponents who do not properly disclose. I do not, however, mandate a certain level of disclosure or the running of disclosure theory as conditions of my coaching.

On the charge of hypocrisy, just because I have certain views on the educational value or fairness of certain arguments does not mean my students, who are generally free to pursue whatever arguments they like, will always agree with me or embody my debate opinions. I have coached debaters who read non-topical affs, plans, dense moral philosophy, tricks, plans bad theory, etc. Do I really need a disclaimer on every post I make that says “FYI, my views do not reflect those of my students, nor their future strategy choices?”

Relatedly, see #5 in this list.

[5] In fact, several college policy teams in the past few years have declined to disclose all or parts of their arguments because of their personal nature, and many teams/coaches/judges accept that excuse. (I’m not using excuse pejoratively here. No connotation intended).