A Defense of [Brackets] by Salim Damerdji
Edited by Karen Xia and Vandita Pendse
The newest norm touted as a win for norm-creation is the brackets bad shell. According to the argument, brackets change the judge’s perception of evidence, so it’s academically dishonest not to clarify whether evidence is bracketed and for what purpose. It’s not uncommon, at least on the West coast, to hear every card in an AC prefaced with “evidence bracketed for grammar and efficiency.”
In my view, it’d be a real shame if this norm persisted. Debaters shouldn’t have to clarify when they use brackets. Ideally, every card would have brackets and judges would default assume so.
It’s important to keep in mind how little offense the shell claims. Judges still don’t know which words are bracketed, so it hardly clarifies the student’s words from the author’s. Judges still don’t see the unbracketed text, so judges can’t check consistency with authorial intent. The only thing this shell claims to change is whether a judge knows that one of hundreds of words to be spewed read is the student’s – though the judge still doesn’t know which word.
Is that small gain worth the cost? I think the shell creates an unworkably high bar for academic honesty. On such a view, even lining down evidence would be suspect because it alters the author’s original text. Tags would also be suspect since most judges frame their interpretation of a card based on the tag that they were given. These practices aren’t inherently academically honest, and neither are brackets. Yes, all of them could be used to misconstrue evidence, but generally, they’re not, so it’s hard to claim that someone’s “cheating.”
Additionally, the abuse story is circular – it already presumes that judges assume every word in a card is the author’s word. If we rejected this norm, judges would know brackets are legitimate, so they wouldn’t assume every word was the author’s. Brackets aren’t deceitful because reasonable judges should have an expectation they’re being used.
Moreover, the shell merely pushes the issue back a step. The problem with brackets is that they might misconstrue evidence, but even with a warning, evidence still might be misconstrued with brackets. If nearly every card has brackets, prefacing each card becomes so commonplace that it fails to signify anything special to look out for to ward against misconstrued evidence.
Ask yourself this: when has a round ever been determined by whether a judge knows that one word, though they don’t know which one, is bracketed in? If you’ve never seen this, and I certainly haven’t, you should probably agree that this is perhaps the most frivolous shell ever to receive the absurdly disproportionate legitimacy it’s been given.
In terms of in-round strategy, debaters should add an extra plank to their counter-interpretations to get terminal defense on the shell’s only piece of offense: Debaters must not misconstrue their evidence.
In response, a brackets bad debater might say the counter-interpretation fails to create a norm since it’s unclear when bracketing evidence constitutes misrepresenting evidence. However, I don’t think this is exactly the argument they want to make. Miscut evidence bad is undoubtedly a norm, even if we may disagree about where to draw the line.
Instead, brackets bad debaters mean to say that bracket warnings prevent grey area violations that the more general “miscut evi bad” norm might be unable to punish. But this argument is straightforwardly false too. The logic could equally imply debaters shouldn’t preface cards with brackets else they may use brackets to push the boundaries of what constitutes “bracketing for efficiency and clarity.”
I genuinely don’t understand how this shell solves anything, but there are real drawbacks to consider. Like any frivolous shell, it adds another barrier to entry for younger debaters trying to learn LD. And if the shell doesn’t solve anything, then we shouldn’t force debaters to waste time prefacing each card with a brackets warning. This disincentive only serves to suck up real, concrete speech time that many acknowledge is already too short.
I also think the shell seriously undervalues the benefits of bracketing. Besides creating the disincentive just mentioned, the brackets shell also discourages bracketing by creating a stigma surrounding the use of brackets since it identifies brackets as a uniquely dubious way of making evidence efficient. We don’t have empirics, but from what I’ve seen, debaters who read brackets bad typically bracket much less themselves.
But we shouldn’t disincentivize brackets. By using brackets, debaters can reduce the number of repeated phrases in a card and make prolix writing more concise. Added efficiency multiplies the amount of evidence that can be read, enhancing the debate overall. To make the card maximally efficient definitely takes time. I’d like to believe that academic dishonesty is largely accidental, and in that case, it would help to have debaters read over their evidence a few more times to better represent the author’s argument.
All in all, this shell does nothing besides discourage a good practice. In a year where there’s been a notably high frequency of unscrupulous practices like clipping and miscutting evidence, it’s fairly clear that brackets bad is just a distraction for anyone seriously concerned with academic honesty.
12 Comments
I believe brackets should be disincentivized, not as a matter of academic dishonesty, fairness, or education, but as a matter of absurdity. From my experience, it’s possible to line down evidence very efficiently without bracketing in words and phrases. People should just get better at choosing which words, out of the one’s the author gives (however prolix) to highlight while preserving coherent sentences. If people are that picky about an author’s wording, they should make the argument analytically.
I also believe people are too picky about brackets for grammar/punctuation issues. I’ve seen evidence where people have bracketed in commas; I’ve also seen people bracket in periods when they’ve underlined only half of a sentence. My response to both of those people: why? People do the same for when they want to change, say, “reducing” to “reduce”, but I just underline “reduc” and pronounce it as “reduce.” No benefit to bracketing.
This isn’t to disagree with most of the points in the article, just your belief that every card should have brackets.
I’m gonna defend Salim here. Brackets are definitely useful. For one thing, I can say from my experience, that finding the perfect words or creating a coherent sentence can be hard. It may be laziness, but simply adding a [and] or even a [the] is just easier. Its also rare that such laziness can mis-interpret the words. I think long phrases or even multiple words in brackets is really suspicious, but adding a “the”…probably no harm.
Plus, the existence of brackets itself is to acknowledge that you added words. A violation of evidence ethics would be adding words that weren’t the authors, but brackets were created to acknowledge that you added words aren’t the authors.
In addition, it creates better topic education and forces engagement. How? For example, if an author says “he” (using the pronoun to refer to a general actor) it seems better for me to create brackets and write [he/she] or [someone] to prevent a link into a gender k. Or for the Sept/Oct topic, replacing “black markets” with “[illegal] markets” to prevent a link.
But if all of this isn’t a big deal, then i purpose i much easier way to solve all this:
Flash the judge the AC and NC etc. That would be an easy way to “check” abuse from clipping, brackets, citations. There is no dispute over wether someone clipped or if the evidence is mis-interpreted. It also allows the judge to see all the evidence that is disputed over in the round, so they don’t have to call for it.
More importantly than all of that, flashing the judge creates better flowing. Judges beg debaters to go slow on the tag, and its usually the only they can type or write. Flashing would allow judges to possibly get down the warrants and impacts as well. For judges who type (which is most), they could simply copy and paste analytics and tags into their excel or flow sheet.
Point is, this shell is stupid and Salim is right. If you wanna adopt a norm, flash the judge.
” A violation of evidence ethics would be adding words that weren’t the authors, but brackets were created to acknowledge that you added words aren’t the authors.”
Perhaps this isn’t what you meant, but I read this as “its unethical to add words that arent the authors, brackets show you add words that arent the authors”
I dont think changing gendered language –> better topic education/engagement, but I will admit that I’m not sure of what a better solution is beyond bracketing. Although, I think in addition to bracketing, it should include striking through the original pronoun, just so it’s clear what pronoun you are changing. Also, there is education to be had in debates on the gendered language K and there is stuff to learn, but that’s neither here nor there.
No, i am not to suggest that it is unethical, this is what i am saying:
Changing the words without brackets is unethical, but its unethical not because your changing the words. It unethical because you change the words AND then claim them to be the author’s original. But brackets create a transparency in the modification of the text that acknowledges that you have inserted your own words inside it and that your not claiming the author said something they didn’t.
I’m not sure why brackets are really necessary in evidence. It seems that in policy, there is extremely little bracketing, maybe 1 in 100 cards (at most), and those are usually only to address issues where the language of the card is gendered, etc. Look at Georgetown’s or Northwestern’s speech docs: almost none of the evidence is bracketed. I don’t understand why brackets make cards that much better.
Weird, I’ve had the exact opposite takeaway – most policy cards seem absurdly inefficient. Anyhow, I don’t really see why this is relevant; policy norms aren’t sacrosanct.
So changing words in someone else’s writing is cool? Where do we draw the line?
I think this article makes the correct first statement, debaters shouldn’t have to say “this evidenced is bracketed…” but not because bracketing evidence is good and judges should assume evidence has brackets. quite the opposite, they shouldnt’ have to say it because we should assume evidence has no brackets.
There isn’t a high bar for academic integrity at all. cards should be the full paragraph, original text, unaltered/edited. can debaters still underline evidence improperly under this standard? yes, but if the evidence is full text, it’s easy to identify misrepresentation.
It’s not a barrier to anyone in LD. If you never bracket evidence, you never encounter this problem. And if you’re taught that it’s acceptable to manipulate writing with brackets, then you’ll learn a lesson.
Tomasi’s example about highlighting for grammar is spot-on. Although I think there are times where changing the tense of an evidence may slightly impact the meaning of the evidence, at least under my/Tomasi’s model, you have access to the full, unaltered text to confirm if misrepresentation is occurring.
The point of underlining evidence is to make prolix writing more precise. There is not a single advantage to bracketing that knowing how to properly underline evidence also has. I’m not sure how you can say “clipping bad” but “bracketing good.”
Your words, but changed to clipping :
“Judges still don’t know which words are [clipped] so it hardly clarifies the student’s words from the author’s. Judges still don’t see the [clipped] text, so judges can’t check consistency with authorial intent. The only thing this shell claims to change is whether a judge knows [a student skipped a few words in a card]- though the judge still doesn’t know which word.”
*”There is a not a single advantage to bracketing that knowing how to properly underline evidence doesn’t also have.”
Sounds like there’s a bit of a misunderstanding; I fully agree it’s wrong to delete original text. I don’t think I can recall seeing any bracketed evidence where original text was deleted, but presumably some people have and I definitely should have clarified. I’m curious if this changes your mind at all. To me, it seems like lining down evidence – especially in the way you and Tomasi recommend – has the same impact as bracketing – both can be misused, but neither are always bad.
You definitely seem confident that bracketing doesn’t help make cards more efficient, which is weird if you’ve never used brackets yourself. From my experience, there are a lot of different situations where lining down evidence isn’t a sufficient replacement. I’ll give some examples while responding to Tomasi.
I will concede that there are instances in which brackets can be used in a way that does not alter the meaning of evidence, and that my issue with brackets lies in the norm that it creates. I don’t think you advocated deletion of text, or anything like that, and I understand the frustration with the “brackets bad” shell. I did not mean to imply that you were advocating unethical practices.
I, too, believe that this argument is somewhat unnecessary because either a) brackets are inserted in a way that alters the meaning of text and its just an evidence ethics question or b) brackets that are added don’t change the meaning of the text at all, and the theory debate is just a matter of norm setting.
That being said, I just don’t think it’s right to alter the text of authors by adding words like [and] or [the]. I am having a hard time conceptualizing how you can truly “reduce the number of repeated phrases in a card and make prolix writing more concise” without altering the original text in a meaningful way. In my mind, the “acceptable” uses of brackets have very little impact on how dense or tedious a piece of evidence is.
So, yes, both lining and bracketing can be misused. If, in both cases, the original text remains unaltered allowing one to verify that the card is being represented properly then the main difference between the two is “you” (debater, etc) adding words in brackets, and I just fear the norm that might set.
The article already responded to your norm-creation argument. It also seems like we disagree about theory paradigms (norm-creation vs in-round abuse). Drop the jargon, hear out your common sense, and I think you’ll find your last comment is literally a reductio ad absurdum of norm-creation. In plain English:
“You did not do anything bad, but there might be someone in the future who might do what you did, except they could do it in a bad way. And so we’re going to punish you for that future person’s potential abusiveness even though you also condemn the bad version of your practice. That’s why I dropped you.”
You say that changing the evidence’s meaning is unethical, but you already defended lining down evidence to change the tense. There’s definitely a grey area here, but I think we can provisionally set the line at intentional deceit. For instance, it doesn’t seem wrong for debaters to omit some technical nuance of a philosopher’s view unless that omission plays a key role in the debater’s strategy.
Regardless, examples will clear up this discussion. It’s a bit hard to talk about efficiency vs unethical evidence in a vacuum.
No, I don’t think the article responds to my norm creation argument. The article attempts to justify that bracketing evidence is good, so “brackets bad theory” justifies a norm preventing a good thing, but this relies on your initial claim “bracketing good” being true.
You misunderstand, and oversimplify, my argument. When I said that sometimes brackets can be used in a way that does not alter the meaning of the evidence, I am not saying “you didn’t do anything wrong.” My argument is that the use of brackets, whether or not they alter the meaning of evidence, is bad – so you have done something wrong. Perhaps it’s not as egregious as actually changing the meaning of evidence, but I do not think that high schoolers should be allowed to essentially rewrite certain parts of evidence via brackets. You claim “reduce the number of repeated phrases in a card and make prolix writing more concise.”
How? What are you adding in these brackets that is so necessary, and that brackets “enhance the debate overall.” What are these examples you keep referencing? I would love to see them because either a) you’re adding in meaningless words like “and,” in which case the so-called benefits you claim seem meaningless at best or b) you are actually altering the original text in a meaningful way, which is not okay.
I did not defend lining down to change the tense, I merely said that it is possible to do without brackets, and at the very least it still maintains the integrity of the original text in the sense that additional words, etc are not added by a third party. You have far more faith in people than I do. While I don’t think a majority of debaters would intentionally be deceitful, I do believe that at some point, some debater(s) would use brackets in a effective [destructive] way. It only takes one, and if we lower the bar of what’s academically acceptable, we draw closer and closer to this happening.
The bar for academic integrity is not too high. You do not get to add words to the text of cards.
You still haven’t explained how you can defend bracketing good while claiming, flat out, that things like clipping are bad. Your argument for brackets having no impact on the round could just as easily justify clipping being okay/having no impact on the round, as I explained in my first post. The argument you make for bracketing good stands on weak logical ground.
There is no advantage to bracketing that isn’t solved by effective lining down of cards. Saying that cards can be lined down improperly is NOT a justification for brackets, and I cannot comprehend how bracketing can make evidence more efficient without altering the original text. Even if your bracketing is consistent with the authors intention, it is not your right to essentially rewrite evidence in your own words via brackets.
Learn to properly highlight evidence, get faster, cut better cards. These are all appropriate ways to enhance efficiency. Bracketing is not.
I am very interested in the examples you have in mind because I cannot envision an example where the brackets arent either a) wholly unnecessary or b) unethical.