The New York Sophist

It’s late and I should have gone home a while ago. I did plan on going straight home but it’s just too tempting to go talk and have a drink with my fantastic colleague and a brilliant graduate student (and former student of her’s).

We are talking about strategy, for the most part. How to approach difficult situations and how to act in the best sense, given a dicey situation. The University is full of such moments and such issues. And normally, I love thinking about strategy.

For most of my life one book has governed my approach to it. That book is Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. And if you have spoken to me for around ninety seconds, you know this book is very central to my way of thinking.

Musashi identifies strategy as central to the art of being a samurai. However, this is not his major point. He defines strategy as being “all things with no teacher.” Suddenly, strategy seems to be the ideal of the University. Well, the ideal of a University that used to be, and an ideal they never quite live up to. We might be too specialized for this to really be a thing we do anymore, but I like to hold out hope and be naive. You’ll get that if you talk to me for thirty seconds.

This fantastic conversation reminded me why I dig what I do. But also, through the course of it, I kept thinking about a book that is marginally related, but quite a split away from Musashi’s book: Shantideva‘s The Way of the Bodhisattva.  This book is about how to develop an enlightened sense of relation to others – and basically suggests that you connect to both your impermanence and the impermanence of others while at the same time recognizing the limitless potential of each moment of existence. Basically, realize that you are the Universe, and that you are inevitably going to end one day. How could you hold a grudge, or begrudge others if you realize that?  


I kept thinking about that book and about the approaches in that book for developing Bodhisattva consciousness – basically a kind heart. Musashi isn’t really into that, surprisingly enough. He is much more into being fluid and flexible and rolling with the moment so you can beat others in combat.  But he’s also suggesting the use of this idea for the creation of paintings, poetry, art and other works.

It was my colleague who then brought up Levinas as a response to a discussion about Camus and his question of why not suicide. Levinas, someone who I should pay more attention to, sort of showed me through her comments that these books are not as unrelated as I made them out to be in my mind.

Strategy: Have I had the wrong book this whole time? Probably not. I have had both books on my shelf for many years. After this night though, I have them much closer to one another.

To be strategic just might include struggling to understand why you consider yourself so distinct from the Universe. To deploy strategy might be to take actions that lead to better understanding of yourself no matter what happens.

This might make it impossible to lose a debate. But that is for another post.

“My enemies shall cease to be. My friends
and I myself shall one day cease to be. And
all is likewise destined for destruction.”

This quote from Shantideva is one of my favorites. If all things are related in their fundamental and inevitable end, why hold so tightly to them?

Perhaps the practice of debate helps to address this question. But remember: I am hopeful and naive. A better answer would be – Perhaps debate helps us ask this question in a better way.

Debate as a practice of realizing your fragility, your impossible existence and your inevitable demise. Debate as a struggle with the self as subject. This is a model of debate practice I can get behind.

Is it contradictory to Musashi’s teachings?

At first thought, no, not that much. Upon deeper reflection, not at all. But Musashi’s spirituality/theology is less developed than Shantideva’s – writing a long time before Musashi, and from within a religion that had not gone through the temporal, political, and cultural filters that allowed it to diffuse into Musashi’s flavor of Buddhism – Zen.

A defense of debating from non individualistic, fatalistic premises. Now that could never be a bad book from which to start teaching advocacy.

Irish Times clock on the new building at Townsend Street, Dublin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is our second time hosting the Irish Times debate champions in New York. We were very pleased that the NPDA and the Times chose us as the anchor point for the start of this tour.

The debate we had was quite good. The Irish debaters are more Irish Times format debaters and not BP/Worlds debaters, which made for an interesting BP/Worlds debate.

Since I was hosting the debaters at my house, there was plenty of time to discuss debate and the various issues surrounding it. The best part was the critiques of BP/Worlds format offered by the Irish debaters:

1. Worlds format has too fast a delivery to be meaningful.

2. Arguments that are automatically persuasive in Worlds format would never be persuasive, or hardly ever persuasive, outside of that particular audience.

3. The debate is too technical, and people make a large amount of arguments in each speech

This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Worlds is more like Policy debate than we realized.

I suppose any style of debate, modified for competition would lean toward these issues. As the audience becomes cut off from the general public, the audience demands more specialty from the speakers. Ironically, this marking is under the rubric of “more persuasive” argumentation.

How far down does the rabbit hole go?

Here is the public debate we had with the Irish, in Worlds format. I hope you enjoy it!

Irish Times clock on the new building at Townsend Street, Dublin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is our second time hosting the Irish Times debate champions in New York. We were very pleased that the NPDA and the Times chose us as the anchor point for the start of this tour.

The debate we had was quite good. The Irish debaters are more Irish Times format debaters and not BP/Worlds debaters, which made for an interesting BP/Worlds debate.

Since I was hosting the debaters at my house, there was plenty of time to discuss debate and the various issues surrounding it. The best part was the critiques of BP/Worlds format offered by the Irish debaters:

1. Worlds format has too fast a delivery to be meaningful.

2. Arguments that are automatically persuasive in Worlds format would never be persuasive, or hardly ever persuasive, outside of that particular audience.

3. The debate is too technical, and people make a large amount of arguments in each speech

This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Worlds is more like Policy debate than we realized.

I suppose any style of debate, modified for competition would lean toward these issues. As the audience becomes cut off from the general public, the audience demands more specialty from the speakers. Ironically, this marking is under the rubric of “more persuasive” argumentation.

How far down does the rabbit hole go?

Here is the public debate we had with the Irish, in Worlds format. I hope you enjoy it!

It’s the middle of the government whip speech in a semifinal debate. A POI is raised about something that the Member conceded. The whip disagrees in his answer to this POI and the questioner turns and points to the back of the room – points at the video camera recording the debate. The whip says, “Sure check the video later, you’ll see you are wrong.”

But why not check the camera during the debate?

Every year, and seemingly every tournament, the presence of the digital world becomes more pronounced. Twitter is almost a mainstay at most IVs – to have a tournament with no updates at all from twitter is nearly unthinkable. And WUDC – as well as EUDC and other major championships now stream live debates for the audience at home. Many people use their phones or cameras that make high quality direct-to-web video to film rounds or parts of rounds. Debate is having an increased presence worldwide due to this technology. You can call up many rounds and most from top IVs and Worlds and watch them whenever you want. It’s a great teaching tool and as many of you know I am a very big advocate of filming as many rounds as we can.

Many people are resistant to being filmed and having rounds placed online. But what if it was included as a part of the competitive aspect of debate? How long before that gesture in the round I saw becomes an official request for instant replay? How would a technology like this change or effect the way you feel about being filmed in debates? How would it change the way you debate?

I think this is somewhat inevitable. Digital video quality is going up and cost of bandwidth is going down. Soon the cost will be so low and the quality will be so high that more debate tournaments will happen online than they will in physical spaces. I imagine, like most technology, that the presence of it will slowly transform from a nice extra to a mandated component of the competition. The first step, happening sooner that we all think, will be the ability of judges to roll back to particular speeches and use them during adjudications. This might be too much freedom for the judges, so the rules will probably be augmented to give each team one formal request for the judges to review a part of a speech or a particular speech from their side or the opponents’ speeches during the adjudication. Or perhaps if the judges want to see a speech or a part of a speech, they must get consent from all the debaters involved in the round. Perhaps a simple majority will suffice to allow the judges to review the debate and let the replay matter in the decision.

But this will just be mere commonplace in just a few years. What will this look like in 10 years?

Tournaments will be hosted and happen on websites or particular domains. Partners might be together or might work apart using ventrillo or video equivalent to communicate between one another. The interface will allow camera shots from or of any other debaters in the round.

When it’s your turn to speak, you have been putting together a package using video editing software on your end. When you refer to another speaker’s arguments, you show a clip. If you are whipping, you might choose to have placed together many clips of the other bench speaking to prove how they use (over use, or perhaps misunderstand) a word that they base their principle on. Perhaps even YouTube clips or other types of digital media could be incorporated into the speech as you give it. POIs are indicated on your screen, and you click to change cameras to those who you want to take. The software produces a final cut of the debate, only what you allow the main camera to see when you are speaking, with the exception of POIs. The final debate is archived, after the adjudication is appended to the video.

Years and years of debate videos can be searched by speech or by debater. We can watch over the years as our practice changes, for the better or for the worse. Most importantly, there would be gradual evidence to map changes in practice as opposed to the anecdotal stories we get now. And people could return to the video to construct counter-narratives to the dominant belief of the circuit on where these practices came from.

Is this something good? Could we enjoy this type of competition? I hope we can either preserve our current practices with heavy subsidy, for the cost won’t be attractive to most institutions or debaters or dissuade these changes from happening. The appearance of technology usually comes with a compelling demand to use it.

Pedagogically these videos are wonderful. But will their presence lead to the formal inclusion of video as a part of the competition?

It’s the middle of the government whip speech in a semifinal debate. A POI is raised about something that the Member conceded. The whip disagrees in his answer to this POI and the questioner turns and points to the back of the room – points at the video camera recording the debate. The whip says, “Sure check the video later, you’ll see you are wrong.”

But why not check the camera during the debate?

Every year, and seemingly every tournament, the presence of the digital world becomes more pronounced. Twitter is almost a mainstay at most IVs – to have a tournament with no updates at all from twitter is nearly unthinkable. And WUDC – as well as EUDC and other major championships now stream live debates for the audience at home. Many people use their phones or cameras that make high quality direct-to-web video to film rounds or parts of rounds. Debate is having an increased presence worldwide due to this technology. You can call up many rounds and most from top IVs and Worlds and watch them whenever you want. It’s a great teaching tool and as many of you know I am a very big advocate of filming as many rounds as we can.

Many people are resistant to being filmed and having rounds placed online. But what if it was included as a part of the competitive aspect of debate? How long before that gesture in the round I saw becomes an official request for instant replay? How would a technology like this change or effect the way you feel about being filmed in debates? How would it change the way you debate?

I think this is somewhat inevitable. Digital video quality is going up and cost of bandwidth is going down. Soon the cost will be so low and the quality will be so high that more debate tournaments will happen online than they will in physical spaces. I imagine, like most technology, that the presence of it will slowly transform from a nice extra to a mandated component of the competition. The first step, happening sooner that we all think, will be the ability of judges to roll back to particular speeches and use them during adjudications. This might be too much freedom for the judges, so the rules will probably be augmented to give each team one formal request for the judges to review a part of a speech or a particular speech from their side or the opponents’ speeches during the adjudication. Or perhaps if the judges want to see a speech or a part of a speech, they must get consent from all the debaters involved in the round. Perhaps a simple majority will suffice to allow the judges to review the debate and let the replay matter in the decision.

But this will just be mere commonplace in just a few years. What will this look like in 10 years?

Tournaments will be hosted and happen on websites or particular domains. Partners might be together or might work apart using ventrillo or video equivalent to communicate between one another. The interface will allow camera shots from or of any other debaters in the round.

When it’s your turn to speak, you have been putting together a package using video editing software on your end. When you refer to another speaker’s arguments, you show a clip. If you are whipping, you might choose to have placed together many clips of the other bench speaking to prove how they use (over use, or perhaps misunderstand) a word that they base their principle on. Perhaps even YouTube clips or other types of digital media could be incorporated into the speech as you give it. POIs are indicated on your screen, and you click to change cameras to those who you want to take. The software produces a final cut of the debate, only what you allow the main camera to see when you are speaking, with the exception of POIs. The final debate is archived, after the adjudication is appended to the video.

Years and years of debate videos can be searched by speech or by debater. We can watch over the years as our practice changes, for the better or for the worse. Most importantly, there would be gradual evidence to map changes in practice as opposed to the anecdotal stories we get now. And people could return to the video to construct counter-narratives to the dominant belief of the circuit on where these practices came from.

Is this something good? Could we enjoy this type of competition? I hope we can either preserve our current practices with heavy subsidy, for the cost won’t be attractive to most institutions or debaters or dissuade these changes from happening. The appearance of technology usually comes with a compelling demand to use it.

Pedagogically these videos are wonderful. But will their presence lead to the formal inclusion of video as a part of the competition?