10 Things: Bronx, Nov-Dec, etc. (Bob Overing)
No filler this time: just 10 things about Bronx and the upcoming topic, inspired Zach Lowe. To read my last 10 Things, click here.
Things from Bronx
#1 Food!!
Bronx puts out one of the biggest and best spreads for lunch and dinner I’ve ever seen! Kudos to the team of parents and students working all weekend. It’s a beautiful sight to see coming out of a late flight at the end of the evening and still have enough food leftover for the stragglers like me. There were also a lot of vegetarian and other non-meat options, which is really important.
#2 The wrong way to argue ‘shift’ in theory debates
Often in spec and similar theory debates, one side will claim that an interpretation enables shiftiness in the rebuttals. I’ll use perhaps the most common example: failure to specify an actor/agent means the aff can legitimately respond to an actor-specific disad with “no link” by reconstruing their advocacy. When I was debating, it was common to say these theory standards express mere “potential abuse.” That rhetoric has almost disappeared, but the argument may still be relevant depending on the warrant for “shift.”
That the aff could do something unfair is not itself unfairness. This should be obvious, but a lot of teams read a skimpy standard that contains just this argument. The better shift argument is that the 1AC’s ambiguity/vagueness with respect to the actor unfairly alters 1NC strategy. Underspecifying forces the 1NC to anticipate a possible shift and hedge against it. Often, this means a neg strategy that works in two possible worlds: one where the 1AR grants the disad link and one where it does not. The aff taxes neg strategy and potentially valuable ground. That’s what’s unfair, not the mere possibility of a 1AR shift.
#3 What about the Round Robin?
It’s a bummer that Bronx didn’t run its RR this year, which as Kumail assessed here, is traditionally one of the most competitive RRs in the country. There are only two major bid tournaments in the northeast in the fall semester, so having a solid RR is great for getting good rounds in early. I really hope they bring it back next year!
#4 Strange Rebuttal Tactics
I’ve seen two debates this year already where the 2NR concedes the aff framework to go for case turns, and then the 2AR attempts to kick the aff and go for turns to the NC anyway. This is not a strategy. When the 2NR says “I concede the aff framework and all their defense on the NC framework,” there is no NC anymore! It’s possible in a very bizarre set of circumstances that some framework arguments on the NC flow are relevant to the evaluation of aff offense, and it’s possible answers to the NC contention are relevant to the aff contention debate. But going for the NC is simply not an option. When the aff standard and defense to the neg framework is conceded, a judge’s credence in the NC framework should be zero. This is the same as kicking a disad in the 2NR by conceding the full weight of impact defense – there’s no option for the 2AR to go for a link turn. I don’t know if camps are teaching people incorrectly or maybe we’ve forgotten how to have basic NC-AC debates, but either way, this is strange.
#5 Parfit 84, Reductionism Arguments in General
One of the most common util justifications in LD debate has been getting on my nerves for a while. For one, debaters often mistag the cards to say something like “empirics prove” personal identity does not exist, which is really, really not what Parfit or other philosophers are saying. I think there are very few debaters know this literature well and can articulate the various views, how the split brain and related thought experiments are relevant, and their implications for normative ethics.
Second, I don’t think it’s really strategic to read the argument in light of the metagame developments we’ve seen over the past several seasons. In my opinion, Parfit’s reductionist view of personal identity doesn’t prove consequentialism. If other ethical theories are at odds with it, then it should increase our credence in consequentialism, but then it’s really just a spike to some NCs. How many teams read NCs? How many teams read NCs that rely on a different view of identity? I would wager it’s a very small percentage today. That means this card is taking up valuable real estate in the aff with little upside.
#6 Tournament Scheduling, Again
I don’t think it’s appropriate to start a full flight of LD at 8:30 PM on Day 1 of the tournament, especially at Bronx where a lot of folks aren’t staying in the neighborhood. Some tournaments tend to go long, but Bronx is the only octas bid tournament that schedules a round expected to end at 10:30 PM. To be fair, the Bronx schedule allots 45 minutes per flight (i.e. 10 PM), but scheduled round time is 42 minutes, so that’s nearly impossible to hit in practice.
No octas bid is particularly close to Bronx in its tardiness; some start single flight prelims or perhaps a final round on the last day late in the evening, but keeping over 200 people there after 10 PM makes Bronx an outlier. This practice should be extinct. The TOC should publish ‘best tournament practices’ to at least nudge tournaments in the right direction.
I get that it’s the city that never sleeps, but come on…
Forward-Looking Things
#7 ND18 as a Metagame Test
Apple Valley will be a great opportunity to test whether the changes I noted after Loyola, Greenhill, and Yale will hold. Moral philosophy and framework debate are up this year, which to some degree should be expected given the dominance of oppression/structural violence and kritiks over the past couple seasons.
The shift to more framework may not be so quick this time around for a few reasons I’ve blogged about before. These factors include greater access and awareness of policy debate (camps, wikis, etc.), more policy crossovers and policy coaches in LD, increased frequency and acceptance of non-topical affs, etc. Resistance to the new topic probably promotes K and theory debates; it also might lead to more framework debates given the difficulty of consequentialist argument, which would be a confounding variable for my hypothesis.
At a certain point, the wheel turns and the metagame adjusts. I think—and I’m not alone in this—that we’ve reached one of those turning points. There won’t be a watershed moment where all of a sudden everyone has to know how to answer Engstrom and Gauthier, but there will be an adjustment.
#8 Predicting ND18 Debates
I haven’t done as much prep on this topic as I’ve usually done by this point, but from what I have seen, I have no idea what to expect this weekend at Apple Valley. This is a dislike and a like. As a coach, I don’t like being in the dark before a tournament, but as a judge, I can’t wait to see what people come up with. One debater’s trash is another’s treasure? There were a few vocal proponents of the topic on Facebook amidst the hundreds, perhaps thousands, who dislike the topic; the pressure’s on them to show us why it’s good!
If I had to make a prediction, I expect to see a lot of plans because of the vagueness of debating whole rez. Without a plan, we don’t have an actor or a clear action, which makes consequentialist debates (util, oppression, etc.) really difficult to evaluate. I also don’t think there’s a straightforward big stick extinction scenario on this topic for the aff, but if we do see one, it will very likely be U.S.-based or involve a plan. This is good for fans of the midterms disad, bad for fans of non-American-centered debates.
I also expect to see a lot of frameworks that strongly favor democracy or privacy and as such, are largely unturnable. For example: a deliberative democracy -type aff that says more information in the public domain is good for democratic decision-making or a Kant/libertarian NC that says the right to privacy is absolute. We’ll have a lot of framework debates at the expense of solvency-oriented case debates, and the cases will have large frameworks with tiny contentions.
As for K debate, I don’t know what to expect beyond the generics (Baudrillard, Deleuze, afropessimism) that are trotted out on most of our topics these days. I hope someone comes up with something more topic-specific, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.
#9 Different Views of Fairness
In previous posts, I’ve sketched a view of fairness involving arbitrary advantages unrelated to debate skill. How one defines “debate skill” is pretty tricky, and Marshall Thompson has made some important arguments on this issue in the context of spikes. Hanging out at Bronx with a few other judges arguing debate theory (as we are wont to do), Jake Nebel said something to the effect of ‘debate theory is about finding the rules that make things go best, however that’s defined.’ This more consequentialist view of fairness is new to me but may not be particularly radical once it’s spelled out. I hope he does!
#10 Our New Associate Editor
We’re excited to announce Kenan Anderson will be joining us as an Associate Editor this season. He was an awesome debater at Apple Valley (2-time state champion, among many other accolades) and now is a freshman at NYU studying mathematics and economics. He is a coach for Bronx Science as well. Look out for his contributions to the site this season, and get in touch with him if you’d like to get involved with our online content.
