The Second Second Life Debate in Review


Not the biggest crowd, but who cares? The debate was fantastic, and as soon as I figure out how to edit the video I will post it.
I really think this debate pushes the idea of virtual debating to the next level for a few reasons.
First, the debate occurred without much call or attending to the strange format. Several speakers did start their speech with “Can everyone hear me?” which wouldn’t happen in a normal competitive debate because of the presence of body language/feedback from embodied interlocutors makes it unnecessary. Second Life avatars have the same blank, blinking stare of a reanimated corpse no matter if someone is at the keyboard or not. It’s an uneasy environment in which to engage in something so embodied, so engaged, and so immediate. There’s a disconnect that debaters must overcome to feel comfortable arguing in this environment.
Again, just like the last Second Life debate, I really enjoyed the banter in the chat window occurring parallel to the actual verbal debate. I think it’s fascinating how the audience and other members have a commentary on the live debate going on in a form that doesn’t interrupt and doesn’t mess with the debate as its happening. It’s sort of like the commentary you would have in your head during a debate (when you split yourself into two people) or that old fashioned good time of passing the paper back and forth in the final round giving your thoughts on the debate that, of course, you should have been in.
Pedagogically it allows a teacher to do “simultaneous translation” of a debate in progress for new students. I think this is the most exciting and coolest idea related to the parallel chat feature. This will make Second Life workshops have an advantage, or at least something unique, over real life workshops. For a while I have thought of Second Life debate training as a stop-gap or a place holder, something you do because you can’t do the “better” thing.
Finally the technology of Second Life is just better. The new updates since last February really made the avatars smoother and more interesting. The sound was better and the lag was non-existent. I am really interested in doing some debate training in Second Life now due to this realization.
I also think there’s something here for those who suffer from communication apprehension. They are not their real selves, so self-disclosure and risk plummet when they have to give a presentation or do a debate in Second Life.
I think the next Second Life debate will push things forward by making these events more regular and expected in the SL community as well as the debate community. With the right publicity (like we had last time) I think we will be able to normalize virtual debate for many people. But what me must be careful of is not advocating this as a replacement for debating tournaments. We must be very clear that this augments the debate experience, and makes it accessible for those that cannot or do not want to travel to tournaments.

The Finale of the First On Campus Public Debate Series

Here is the video from our last of the first public debate series we held on campus this semester. It was a fully student organized, student led, and student run initiative. And it was a great success I think, except that I would have liked more people to come. But I always feel this way about any and every public debate event with which I am associated.

I like the abilities that debate training fosters in people. Student initiatives like this one are great forums for that initiative to come out. They are also good moments to practice persuasion in front of general audiences (read: non-tournament). They also force people who are strongly invested in individualism, forwarding their own ideas, finding flaws in others’ ideas, etc. to work together and find more strategic ways to interact with other intellectuals outside of a “I must demolish your ideas to make way for mine” perspective. It’s debate eroding its own creation to create new growth. Yes, public debate projects are forest fires in national parks.
A public debate series serves the students and community if it is attentive to actual controversy and brings it in a clearly adversarial format to the audience. This way, audience members can find clear and intellectual expression of feelings they may have about controversial issues. The current climate eschews such engagement in favor of diminutive models of discussion. This breeds a seething hate for political opponents instead of a strategic willingness to explore. Public debates take the edge off a bit, and can be enlightening to audiences on many levels. They can certainly steal argument structure for their own purposes, or look into an argument they believe to be persuasive after the debate ends. I wonder if they do either. How would you study this?
Perhaps we will do this again. I think it has the potential to continue indefinitely. Whoever takes charge of it next year has quite the nice foundation to build upon.

The International Public Policy Forum Debates


While my proper laptop is being repaired there’s not a lot of work I can do here in my office, so why not give some reflection and thought to my weekend? I was invited to judge at the International Public Policy Forum, a high school competition that is worldwide and focused primarily on competitive written debate.

I judged in the quarterfinals, between Suncoast High School and Singapore. The debate was very high quality. Reading the written arguments last week in my office impressed me. It made me think about the inclusion of the written in debate, and what a fairly bad job most debate formats do with this aspect of argumentation.

The written portion, as far as I could tell, consisted of each side writing a position paper for their side of the motion. Then these papers were swapped, and each side wrote a question and answer paper, then a rebuttal paper. It was really great to have these documents to refer between them when I was evaluating the debate.

The top eight schools in the world are flown to New York for oral arguments. This was really something to witness. The debate was different than other formats I’ve seen because the oral argumentation assumed that everyone had read the written debate. This allowed for more strategic attention on comparative arguments, so-called “deconstructive” arguments, and summary of position. The fact we all had the same text before us allowed for such focus. I really liked that aspect a lot. The students I judged were fantastic at referencing the written arguments as they synthesized the oral arguments as the debate progressed.

But my favorite part of the format hands-down was the judge questions. There is a specific amount of time that the judging panel can ask questions of the debaters. Either a specific debater, a side, or an open question can be asked. I had a lot of fun with that, and really enjoyed seeing the students engage my questions so directly and with such well thought out answers. Maybe this means I need to work harder at asking hard questions? I felt as if they were ready for most anything I asked.

The later rounds were equally interesting. I really enjoyed watching judges with more experience than me in this format asking questions and using that part of the contest really expertly.

The final round had a fantastic panel of judges, pictured here. On the far left is Scott Wunn, Executive Director of the National Forensic League. To his right is NYU President John Sexton, then William Brewer, Senior Partner of Bickel & Brewer, and then General Wesley Clark, former NATO commander and Presidential candidate. I wonder what it would be like to debate in front of this group. Their questions were, as you can imagine, pretty solid.

I am really looking forward to going back next year, and I have been thinking of an assignment based on this very innovative and challenging debate format that I could use in my public speaking class next semester. I’ll post it when I’m done designing it.

And now my netbook is dying. I sure hope they fix my laptop soon. Being at work without the proper tools for work really sucks.

Denver Has Been Over But I am a Bad Blogger

Yes I kept my promise and had no more liveblogging, or any other sort of blogging at all since the first day.

Sorry about that.

As a reward, a casual, unedited and very un-serious entry to bring the Denver chapter to a close for now.

In short, I can sum it up like so: Judged all the way to finals. Loved the final. It was the same motion we’d set at the Ithaca tournament on giving terror suspects trials in civilian courts.

I encountered my old friend GDS on day 2 or 3 or perhaps both. I thought that went away after a while? Hypothesis shot down.

Got to facilitate the coaches’ dinner meeting and was really happy that I achieved my lifelong geeky dream of chairing a meeting where a motion passed by acclimation. Double cool for being a meeting of a non-organization with no standing rules or anything like that. Very fun.

And one of my teams made it to quarterfinals, which was good.

Here are my post-USU questions:

1. What is the point of a national debating circuit? Why have it?

2. What does this machine debate produce and consume? What do we give up and what do we get?

3. Is there a place where we can find persuasive arguments without language games? Asked another way, can something even attempt to be persuasion without the context of rules, procedures, and tricks?

4. How do we best maintain a “community” that is based on some stark anti-communitarian principles?

USU Denver, Day 1: Blogsperiment

This is my first attempt at liveblogging, which I take to mean a form of blogging with little editing and little attention to refinement, with the trade off bringing more attention to the moment, the impressions and the time in which the thoughts come to you. 11:15AM – Why do judge briefings fail to ever mention the idea that the most persuasive team should win? Too many concerns about the technical rules and the issues facing the judges as enforcers of rules for a closed competition instead of the judges as interested audiences that are evaluating what is persuasive, how arguments are interacting, and how proof is established (or how it hasn’t been). Questions about max of speaker points, or whether or not the closing government can have their own model seem to me to be facing the wrong direction, or encouraging the wrong sort of activity. The briefinig should be to encourage judges that they can do this, not to discipline judges into a particular “arbiter of the rules” model. I’m going to try to check myself today in my appeals to technical reasons while judging and see how I do. I hope to turn attention to quality arguments in situations not toward “so and so team broke the rules.”

1:15 – Amazing Mediterranean lunch in the sun. Delicious, even though they only let me take one falafel. Everyone is awaiting the draw. I watched a Vermont debater eat honey while being threatened to post debate videos that I have not yet posted.

4:15 – First Round was rather tepid. We all had different rankings, and I don’t feel I did the best job in adhering to my new adjudication standards. However, the judges who are not familiar with BP are really fantastic. Further evidence that the release from technical requirements is not only liberating and fun but good for making decisions based on persuasive reasoning rather than rules. Good starting motion though: This House believes that the US should make aid to Israel dependent on freezing settlements.

6PM – Second round I judged with two great judges. Great round, high quality. The motion: THB the US military should create separate divisions for openly gay members of the military. Good opening prop from two guys from Alaska I’ve never met. They ran it hardcore, total separation with gay commanders. Solid. I dug that debate the most so far.

7-ish: Wow I am total fail at this. Just had a great conversation with Rose from Pan-Pacific about her tournament in Hawaii next February. Sounds awesome. Debate on the beach. Amazing. Time for another debate.

9:30 – Rough debate. I tried my best in my tired stupor and my desire for a whiskey to muddle through some helpful pointers for the teams, all of whom seemed pretty new to the format. I think I was allright. I really hope I was, I seemed a bit confused.

10:16PM – Sitting at the bar with friends having a whiskey, updating the blog. Teams doing well. Tournament amazing. Happy to be in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. And feeling incredibly happy to be a part of this developing circuit.

So I don’t really like this. What do you think? Perhaps going back to more cogent and reviewed posts. I don’t like this.