Holiday Disclosure Post #2 – Reply to Kymn (Bob Overing)
Cover Art: “Liberation” by M.C. Escher
This is a continuation of my reply to Chris Kymn on disclosure theory. Click here for Section 1.
§ 2 Unfair Advantages from Out-of-Round Behaviors
In light of the above discussion, Chris’s question, ‘Why should we care about events happening prior to the round?’ can be rephrased. The relevant question is whether out-of-round behaviors can grant in-round advantages that do not reflect superior intrinsic debate skills. And the answer is yes.
We should care about events happening prior to the round insofar as they affect the judge’s evaluation of the debaters’ relative intrinsic debate skill.
Here are some examples of out-of-round behaviors that grant non-skill-based in-round advantages:
- stealing opponents’ dropbox passwords and prepping out all their arguments
- giving opponents bad directions so they arrive to the room frazzled and out-of-breath
- annoying and harassing opponents while they try to prepare for the debate
- flipping for sides before a debate and then withholding one’s choice
- failing to comply with communal disclosure norms
Whether or not these are sufficient to create a voting issue, they are actionable with a theory argument because they meet the definition articulated in Section 1: They grant an unfair advantage, plain and simple.
It doesn’t matter that these behaviors may result in a performance that looks like superior intrinsic skill within the hour-long debate round. A debater with an opponent’s dropbox password looks like she possesses better research skills, but this characterization would not be fair and accurate. Dropbox security is not an intrinsic skill – it does not pass either of our tests. Thus, there is an available theory argument to address the unfair advantage.
I can concede Chris’s fundamental premise that “The ballot [asks] who did the better debating within a given round.” My theoretical framework, however, establishes that unfair advantages garnered outside of the round can affect the judge’s evaluation of who did the better debating within the round.
Chris dedicates only one paragraph to addressing this idea:
“Yes, there may be in-round effects from a failure to disclose. But “in-round effects” is not a good enough bright-line for abuse on theory. An opponent having more teammates to cut prep might boost his/her in-round performance, but clearly theory is not the appropriate response to the situation. Many things may affect the round, some adversely, but that does not entail that theory is always the correct remedy. The salient question is whether those in-round effects are attributable to in-round events, which theory can address” (“Answering potential objections,” para. 10)
Why can theory only address in-round events, not in-round effects? I have carefully developed a model of theory that explains why these unfair advantages can be addressed by theory arguments. Chris merely cites one potential counter-example and moves on. Let’s list his counter-example among others like it to feel the full force of the argument:
- “Violation 1 – you had coaches/teammates to prep out my case before the round. Unfair!”
- “Violation 2 – you went to debate camp and learned better refutation skills. Unfair!”
- “Violation 3 – you had a complete and nutritious breakfast this morning. Unfair!”
All of these are examples of bad potential theory arguments based on out-of-round behaviors. They are absurd. But as Chris himself (and Travis Chen) once pointed out to me, the existence of poor quality examples within a class of arguments does not invalidate the class. They may be bad, losing theory arguments but not incoherent. Further, even if they are incoherent, it may not be because they’re out-of-round.
Violation 1 is wrong not because it indicts an out-of-round behavior but because it does not indict an unfair advantage. Testing the opponent through high-quality objections with loads of evidence, often gathered by a team of researchers, seems to test an intrinsic debate skill. Most debaters have debate teams, so it is at least conceivable that managing one’s team and amassing research is part of mastering debate (Marshall’s test). Most other high school debate formats and certainly political debates involve teams as well (my test). This result fits with my intuitions about the example too. Is accusing the opponent of having lots of coaches and teammates a bad theory argument because the violation is out-of-round or because it is simply not unfair? It strikes me as not unfair in the relevant way.
To see this, imagine the norms of fairness and “good debating” change, so we do view the use of coaches as cheating. My understanding of some Parli formats is that contact with coaches is not allowed after the resolution is released to the debaters. In this format, a theory argument claiming illegal contact with coaches during the prep period would be viable. Responding to massive amounts of teammate- and coach-prepared objections is not part of mastering Parli debate, so it is not an intrinsic skill, and coach contact is unfair. If Chris is right, the theory argument should still be invalid in a Parli-like format because of its out-of-roundness. I see no reason to bar theory as a means of enforcing such strong norms (or even formal rules) within the debate round.
Violation 2 is also bad because it’s not unfair not because it’s out-of-round. Overcoming opponents’ dedication (time and money) to improving their skills is part of what constitutes debate mastery, and we see the same behavior across many debate formats.
And the same can be said of Violation 3. Overcoming opponents performing at their best (proper diet and exercise included) is part of debate mastery, and this skill is required in many formats.
Thus, all of these bad out-of-round violations can be explained as failing to state an unfair advantage. And even if they do hint at some underlying unfairness, they would lose 100% of the time on the standards level – these violations are predictable and educational behaviors, so we should encourage them even if they are coherent theory arguments off the bat.
Chris does tackle some of the more plausible examples of out-of-round theory, such as theory indicting the opponent for winning an elim coin toss and then withholding the choice of sides. His suggestion is that for these, we have alternative means of recourse in appealing to tournament directors and tabrooms. How often has that worked out? First, even if that were adequate recourse, in-round theory allows an additional option. For instance, if my opponent spoke over the time limits, I would make a theory argument in addition to filing whatever complaint I could with tournament officials. The two are not mutually-exclusive.
Second, in-round theory is a far superior option. (A) Theory debate is governed by clear rules (e.g. speech times), where tournament grievance procedures are often non-existent or under-specified. (B) Theory debate requires persuading unbiased and unmotivated judges, rather than appealing to directors who may decide based on politics or for other personal reasons. (C) Theory debate is more public than a closed-door battle between directors and coaches. (D) Theory debate is empirically effective at rectifying unfair advantages. For instance, the pro-disclosure side is winning out across LD rounds where very few tournaments impose disclosure as a rule. (E) Theory debate can be adaptive to circumstances where tournament rules cannot. Cheaters are perpetually crafty, and theory has the flexibility to punish them when rules fail.
All of these are independent reasons for adopting a model that allows theory as a way to deal with out-of-round behavior causing in-round unfairness. Chris can take a highly methodological approach and suggest that there is some ‘truth’ to what constitutes a valid/coherent theory argument. But when deciding between two plausible accounts, the fact that one is vastly inferior on pragmatic grounds should count as a strong reason against it.
Since non-debate analogies seem to be persuasive among some debate theorists, I suggest that out-of-round behavior causing in-round unfairness is like the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sporting events. The use of banned substances occurs outside the sporting event, but it creates an unfair advantage in the game. To a spectator, opponent, or referee, it might look like the athlete possesses superior athleticism; however, out-performing someone who’s using PEDs is not an intrinsic skill. No one would suggest that the best baseball player had failed to master the game because he could not beat someone using PEDs. And across major sports, this is the norm.
The primary difference is that most sporting events have explicit rules against the use of PEDs, whereas debate tournaments generally lack formal rules about out-of-round practices. But fortunately, we can generate these rules in-round! This is one of the most beautiful and fun things about Lincoln-Douglas debate. We aren’t hamstrung by whatever sparse direction is provided by the tournament rules or NSDA (thank goodness). We don’t have to wait for tournaments to start enforcing even the dominant norms. If a baseball team could initiate an in-game drug test on a suspiciously beefy hitter, you can bet they’d do it! We have that power, and it’s called theory. (If my five reasons above aren’t convincing, maybe some pretty prose will be.)
I have demonstrated that out-of-round theory is coherent and permissible, and it’s a superior option to more formal appeals. Potential counter-examples are either cases of bad theory arguments or they fail to state an unfair advantage. Now all that is left is to show that disclosure theory isolates an unfair advantage.
§ 3 Non-Disclosure as Unfair Advantage
What does non-disclosure require opponents to do? Unlike good evidence, it doesn’t require opponents to think of more clever objections. Unlike spreading faster, it doesn’t require opponents to improve their efficiency. Unlike a blistering cross examination, it doesn’t require opponents to keep their cool in a heated debate.
Non-disclosure requires debaters to run around the tournament collecting flows and “intel” from their opponent’s previous opponents and judges. It requires wasting precious time before important rounds by trying to find Team X in a chaotic cafeteria. It requires guessing what the opponent will run based on hearsay and speculation. None of this is an intrinsic debate skill, and all of it gives the non-discloser a huge advantage.
To be thorough, I’ll apply the tests from Section 1 for determining whether non-disclosure tests intrinsic skills. Applying Marshall’s test, we would not say that a debater failed to perfect her debate skills because she’s too timid to ask Judge A what Debater B read in Round 3. Or because she failed to run around the high school looking for those previous opponents. Or because she lacks the connections to easily get flows and cites. Applying my test, we see that no similar debate format encourages effective ‘networking’ as a crucial component of the activity.
As such, the obstacles created by non-disclosure do not test intrinsic debate skills, so non-disclosure constitutes an unfair advantage.
Conclusion
If everything I’ve written here is wrong, there are still a number of ways to get disclosure theory off the ground. First, one could defend some weird norms view of theory that replaces Chris’s and mine. Second, one could defend a deflationary view of judge jurisdiction like the one John and I wrote about last year and that I applied in my original disclosure post. I’m not sure Chris ever responded to that first argument, which would militate against any narrowing of judge jurisdiction. Third, if all else fails, disclosure theory can always be read as a kritik!
Bob Overing | Co-Director
Bob is a co-director of Premier, coach for Walt Whitman HS, and current Yale Law School student. As a senior in high school, he was ranked #1, earned 11 bids and took 2nd at TOC. In college, he cleared at CEDA and qualified to the NDT. His students have earned 80 career bids, reached TOC finals, and won many championships.
7 Comments
Bob,
I am enjoying your posts. I wanted to give you some additional considerations. First, it is hard to understand non-disclosure in a world where the norm has shifted to everyone discloses or gets punished. Second, I think your analysis of Violation #1 is circular to the judging premise and acknowledging this type of abuse I think is important to the future of the debate activity.
Non-Disclosure World
I come from an era of debate when disclosure did not occur (yes that old), personally, I think it is harder for participants that have never experienced the effect of non-disclosure as a universal norm to really understand how debate worked back in the day. Non-disclosure by an affirmative wasn’t so much used as a tool to create an advantage, but a way of balancing prep time considerations, the effect of unlimited negative ground and use of generics. One effect, which I believe is sorely lacking today, is forcing the debater to actually delve into the scholarship and argument being made during the round and trying to then figure out how to respond. Doing that while under pressure from time constraints develops a skill that I think is lacking today… namely thinking on your feet at lightning speeds. Having judged several hundred debates over the past few years, I can see a marked difference between students who know what they are talking about and students who are just regurgitating the front line given to them by an assistant coach/college friend. I have judged rounds where students read answers to arguments that were never made during the debate because it was either in the wiki or in a speech doc. This is giving the activity to much of a wrote feeling rather than a spontaneous response that is intuitive, accurate, particularized and relevant. That is not to say that students today cannot think on their feet, but I think the scales are tipping the other direction. I realize that negatives routinely disclose prior neg rebuttals nowadays, but I see that as pretty much worthless as a negative strategy can change at any time and a claim of non-disclosure does not really create the same effect in a theory discussion when the neg strategy changed.
Violation 1 – Coach Preparing Before Round
Next, I fail to see how you escape your own circular logic regarding the Violation #1 about the coach/team prepping the debater for the round. You concede the premise that a judge should decide a round specifically based upon the debaters performance during a debate. The question becomes if the debater is regurgitating the analytic and front lines from someone else not in the round, how is that their performance. My biggest beef with disclosure and all of its proponents is this very type of abuse. Instead of negative constructive speeches using any preparation time, they stand up ready to go the minute CX is concluded, now an even greater burden is placed on the affirmative with their limited prep time to adequately respond to the negative over-prepped position. It seems like every single tournament gets bogged down nowadays because everyone is milking the time between rounds to prep their arguments to the other teams disclosed advocacy. Frankly, I consider this a form of pre-round prepping a form of cheating but I recognize that I am in the minority on this belief. If we really want to acknowledge debate skills through balloting that rewards debaters performance, then as a community we should try to put a stop to this pre-round prep being supported by everyone but the actual participants. In imagining your world of theory to enforce this violation, if there was no disclosure to begin with the out of round abuse claim could not exist, or at the very least could not exist absent some form of agreed upon proof/evidence of violation. But if the standard is the performance of the debater, then this violation would be tantamount to academic plagiarism (using someone else’s arguments as your own). If this type of violation was viewed with this lens then pre-round prep and pre-round disclosure would be stopped because no one would want to appear like they were getting help on their speech from someone else. You may be tempted to point out that all debaters use cited evidence, camp files, team files, canned analytics, etc. All true, if we forced the debaters to disclose their pre-round prep for the debate, it would help the judge determine who did the better debating using established debate skills versus who puppet their coach’s answers the best.
If the participants choose to disclose, I think it demonstrates a form of confidence in their advocacy. I do not however think participants should be forced to disclose their advocacy so the other participants can then prepare responses out of the round. Preparing a response is exactly what prep time is supposed to be used to do. Now, they use that prep time to write insanely long overviews (which is another pet peeve of mine). With that said, if someone asks for a disclosure, gets it and then fails to disclose themselves I see that as clearly abusive. I had this very situation in a round I judged last year and had the negative extended the theory in the final rebuttal I would have signed my ballot on disclosure abuse specifically because of this actual abuse.
Keep up the great posts.
Scott
Scott,
Thanks for the kind words.
Your first concern is the most obvious detriment to disclosure in my mind, and I suspect that it is the motivation for much of the remaining anti-disclosure sentiment. Over-coached students read blocks because they’re told to, not because they make any sense. My hope would be that students realize the need to think on their feet and think independently to win at the highest levels.
I have two questions for you about this first point. One, even if disclosure does contribute to students mindlessly reading inapplicable blocks in some cases, do you think that could ever outweigh all of disclosure’s many benefits? And two, are you observing this phenomenon mostly in LD, in policy or in both? Based on your answer to that question, do you think disclosure is better justified in one activity than the other? My upcoming post will address some inter-activity comparisons.
Wow, those are strong feelings about coaching and pre-round prep! So first off, I agree that this violation *could* be viable in a world where the expectations are such that all or most argumentation is the debaters’ own. I disagree that such an abuse claim “could aexist” — it would simply be very difficult to prove. It’s unlikely that a cheating debater would admit to having coaches preparing arguments. Given this fact, it’s likely that such an anti-coaching world would have Parli-like constraints in place so that debaters would need to enter a prep room alone without coach contact some time before the debate. If a debater didn’t enter the room on time or contacted coaches from within the room, such a violation would be more verifiable. I wrote a large paragraph about verifiability in my initial post ‘Is disclosure theory different?’ While it creates some difficulties, I don’t believe them to be insurmountable for enforcing the norms we want. Does that answer your concern?
Lastly, you say “Preparing a response is exactly what prep time is supposed to be used to do.” I believe that disclosure has fantastic educational benefits in allowing debaters to prep in great depth, far beyond what would be possible in prep time. They can research specific counterplans, disad links, craft unique kritiks, etc. Even on the surface, debates with disclosure often look far better than debates without — increased clash and engagement instead of negative generics. Yes, the role of prep time has shifted, but why is that so bad?
Thanks for the comment!
Bob
Hi Bob,
I agree that disclosure theory is great. But I’m unclear as to how, in section 3, you’ve met the burden you set out for yourself. Let me state a worry, then a reply on your behalf, and then a speculative question about that reply.
You have to show both that (a) non-disclosure confers an in-round advantage of the non-disclosing debater relative to the disclosing debater, and (b) that advantage does not reflect an intrinsic debate skill. How have you shown (a)? In section 3, you write, “None of this is an intrinsic debate skill, and all of it gives the non-discloser a huge advantage” and that “the obstacles created by non-disclosure do not test intrinsic debate skills, so non-disclosure constitutes an unfair advantage.” You’ve talked about the first half of those clauses (non-disclosure rewarding silly things), but not much about the advantage of the non-disclosing debater relative to the disclosing debater.
Tell me if this is what you have in mind. The non-disclosing debater has the advantage that they don’t have to run around the cafeteria, collecting flows, guessing what the disclosing debater will run. They get to spend more time improving their strategy. But why? Presumably it’s because they can just check the wiki (or ask someone who has checked the wiki). And that’s certainly unfair.
But suppose the non-discloser doesn’t check the wiki. And suppose it’s (somehow) common knowledge that the non-discloser doesn’t—perhaps can’t, for some known reason—check the wiki. And suppose it’s baked into the counterinterpretation that you don’t have to disclose if you don’t/can’t check the wiki, that everyone knows that, etc. There seems to be no advantage to the non-discloser. They have to go through the same silly hoops as the discloser. But I would still want to say that, in this hypothetical case, the non-discloser should (or, at least, can) lose to disclosure theory, because neither debater should have been expected to go through those hoops. Both debaters having to go through those hoops seems to me nearly as bad as only one debater having to go through them. Would you want to say that, too, or would you say that disclosure theory should lose in this hypothetical case because the non-discloser isn’t unfairly advantaged?
Jake
Hi Jake,
I appreciate the reply, and I wish you a happy new year. I’m sorry to hear about Derek Parfit yesterday — I know he had a strong impact on you and your scholarship.
To address the worry you propose, we should distinguish between two cases: (1) the non-discloser chooses not to check the wiki, and (2) the non-discloser can’t check the wiki. I’m inclined to agree with you and say “neither debater should have been expected to go through those hoops.” But in (1), the non-discloser does expect to go through the hoops because she knows her own decision to forgo checking the wiki. These obstacles are predictable to the non-discloser and not the discloser, which seems like an unfair advantage. Further, we could say that the non-discloser had the *option* to abuse the information asymmetry but chose not to. The existence of that option is still an unfair advantage. (These are the same reasons I have long believed that reading one NIB for the entire NC is unfair, even though it does not grant the usual 2-1 reciprocity advantage realized by reading a NIB and turning the case).
Whether both debaters having to jump through hoops is nearly as a bad as only one having to do so seems to turn on a number of empirical facts — how effective are debaters at ‘old school’ scouting, what is the opportunity cost, etc.
As for case (2), the predictability explanation above, but not the option explanation, would work. I want to separate out this case since while it could be tricky, it seems more thought experiment than reality.
Let me know what you think.
Bob
Thanks Bob, for the reply and for your condolences.
Unpredictability: Disclosers know in the status quo that at least some of their opponents won’t disclose, and that they’ll have to jump through the silly hoops at some point. So they expect to go through the hoops, and just don’t know exactly when that’ll happen. They have to check before each debate whether their opponent discloses. Learning that their next opponent is one of those non-disclosers doesn’t seem to make it any less predictable for them whether they’ll have to go through the silly hoops. But maybe I’m missing your point here.
Options: I completely agree that options are advantages, and that asymmetries in options can create unfair advantages even when the options are not actualized. But I’m not sure how that works on Chris’s conception of unfairness. On Chris’s view, unfairness consists in its being easier for one debater to win substance, which means that one debater could win substance without necessarily doing the better debating. But how does the mere existence of an option that the other debater lacks undermine the correlation between winning substance and the better debating, if the option is known not to be actualized? Given what is known to all the participants, it doesn’t seem any easier for the non-discloser to win substance.
(Of course, in any actual case, it might not be known whether the non-disclosure checked the wiki. And so there might be uncertainty as to whether there’s an unfair advantage. But it’d be surprising to me if the argument came down to that, and I’m not sure how Chris’s view of fairness would treat such cases.)
Unpredictability: Disclosure is so widespread now that I don’t think disclosers know at least some of their opponents won’t disclose at a given tournament. Meanwhile, non-disclosers always know they will need to jump through the hoops. It might seem silly to hash out all the logistical details, but to me, this makes the unfair burdens clear: Debater leaves the main area, gets to the room, unpacks and sets up, then finds out the opponent doesn’t disclose, re-packs, walks back to the main area to ask around about opponent cases, but by now half of the debaters have left to go to rounds and 10 minutes of prep is wasted.
Options: Let me put it another way. The non-discloser has the option to check the wiki (gaining an advantage on substance) or add a plank to the counter-interp that she didn’t check the wiki (gaining an advantage on theory). This makes it easier to win since the non-discloser can choose the better of the two options.
[…] these discussions are too theoretical. Among the articles I referenced, only Bob’s 2014 survey tries to actually assess the state of disclosure in LD. Questions like “does […]