The New York Sophist

The biggest issue facing the Tournament Debate Regime around the world is that they willfully exclude the educational perspective and also work to exclude educators from participating in the creation and administration of debate events.

The biggest shock during the pandemic is that debate tournaments continued, unimpeded through online means. There was no discussion and no questioning of whether or not the form of debate should alter in ways that take advantage of the online environment.

Instead, the tournament regime framed the situation as a loss, and worked out an extreme conservative solution which appears, at best, ridiculous. The speaking style of BP is inappropriate nearly anywhere in the world except an empty classroom on a weekend, but this is revealed even more plainly on Zoom.

An unavoidable principle of rhetoric is adaptation. One adapts to the context and the audience as an ethic. This ethic has at its aim to offer the perspective of the speaker in a way that allows for maximum access by those listening. But all of this is tossed by the tournament regime, whose entire goal has to be to determine who is going to win the context. There really must not be any other goal. Winning is good because it’s winning is the only operating principle that I can see from where I’m sitting.

A great way to understand this problem is through the process of how topics are chosen for tournaments. The values of novelty and shock are held above the values of reflection, reconsideration, and research.

I didn’t mean for there to be an alliteration there, but I’m happy it happened!

The people putting together debate topics and administering tournaments are competitively successful people. This is the root of their status in the debate world. They have to simultaneously be able to determine winners, create winners through coaching, and indicate they have a “special ability” in creating winning arguments. This last one is the root of topic framing problems.

The best way for a tournament regime member to prove this is to frame a ridiculous motion that 1) has never been set before and 2) involves a lot of complicated concepts that are marked as both intellectual and special.

The motives here are not educational, but professional. The motions are not designed to help others learn about argumentation and rhetoric, but help everyone realize why the motion setter has the position that they do. There’s no consideration for others and how to help others improve their understanding of how argument “works.” The attitude among the tournament regime is that education happens elsewhere (“they should know about this already” – by what standard?), that this prepares them for difficult “out rounds” (again, a reference to the motion setter’s glorious past victories and their specialized knowledge), and that we need reduction and clarity in order to declare a winner (quite literally the only thing that the tournament regime values in terms of the art of debating).

The pace and timing of the tournament also encourages this hard sports attitude to it rather than the values of education, which require time, conversation, reading, reflection, and production of texts in order to provide multiple points of assessment on whether someone is reaching understanding. All of this is dismissed in global debate; this is a test of your extant abilities and no more. And even that fails: The standards are non-existent for what those tests would be; one simply has to “be good” at debate to then have some ability to influence the content.

A more educational model of debating would not allow those who are competitively successful anywhere near the design of the event. The event should be designed around topics that are accessible, controversial, and allow for moments of reflection on the art of rhetoric, argumentation, and debate. Some of that will be lack of familiarity with various topic areas, of course. But that’s different than the tournament regime’s standard refrain: “They didn’t know about this?? Oh my God. . .”

The relationship between research, knowledge, and articulation is the value of participating in debate. This only happens through repetition, reflection, reiteration, and research (alliteration won’t leave me be today). These things are devalued in contemporary global debate because they do not serve the tournament regime’s goals: Determine winners clearly and efficiently over the course of 48 to 72 hours. It’s incredibly disappointing that the move to online debating due to the pandemic did not raise any reflective questions about the express or implicit goals of debate, the structure of the tournament as the monopoly method for participating in debate, or the innovations in speech and thought that could be included to make a more robust and interesting event.

Educators have the perspective of development, not the celebration of the developed. Debate programs struggle for support from Universities because they are obviously not related to the university project – the closest metaphor is sports. Sports programs at the university are celebrations of the “already good” people that can be recruited to play sports in the name of the university. This is the root of the tournament model, a form that is designed to quickly and efficiently determine who is best.

Compare this to the classroom or department at the university where students are taught the practice of how to determine and justify what should be best. The rubric is under inquiry at the same time as the matter for consideration. Debate, at least the rhetorical model of it, operates under the same principles. It is not truth-seeking; it is not fact-seeking – it is seeking what counts as fact and truth and understanding why those rubrics exist. To get a degree in literature, for example, is not just to understand what works of literature are best, but the genealogy of the determination as to what counts as the best in the first place. In comparison, tournament regime participants tend to believe the rules of determining who won a debate fell from the sky.

This involves covering and re-covering “old” issues as a principle of education. This doesn’t make for exciting debate contests, but it makes for exciting conversation about argument innovation and argument that can produce moments where we aren’t sure whether something is best. That question begging moment forces a return to the conversation about the rubric, which develops it. Without the attitude toward development, such moments are dismissed as “losing” arguments, and the tournament rolls forward. After all, there’s no reward for innovation if one wants to be invited to convene and create future tournament events. It’s a conservative operation of copying what previous winners have done in order to be in the position to indicate, through obscure novel motions, that they have special insight into how debate works. This perverse system means that the more debate you are successful at, the less reflection you engage in, and the more certain you can be about things you have very little experience or exposure to – mainly critical controversies around the globe.

Without the presence of education-minded people, tournament debate will be exactly what we don’t need: A system of events that give participants a way to show off what they already know, and judge others for what they don’t know. Without a practice of reconsideration and humility, tournament debate is not educational in a way that serves the creation of participants in democratic governance.

My recent attendance at a High School tournament made me realize how often we associate the presence of simplicity or clarity in argumentation with good argumentation.

How many times have you seen a team win a debate, or even an argument, by using a strategy saying that their policy or principle makes things uncertain, unclear, slows things down, or makes people uncertain about what to do?

My guess would be very few times do teams win on such arguments. These arguments are so outside of normal political discourse that they might not be “legal moves” according to the norms of the debating community.

The argument that uncertainty or murkiness is a good thing is an argument that one would be much more likely to hear in an academic environment. Slowing people down in thinking, making people reconsider (as long as that reconsideration is not used to show a quicker, more crystal path to a beautiful solution to the problem presented in the debate), or making sure that people are paralyzed with information and aren’t sure what action to take are not necessarily arguments that are easy to get behind.

In our community, overdependence on The Economist and other news analysis that is generated to turn profit might be the reason we are unpersuaded by arguments that are often the conclusion of academic publications. That audience is used to, and expects, incrimental advancements in the understanding and addressing of issues in the field. In the world of for-profit journalism, clarity and simplicity rule the day as these are the things most likely to keep someone watching or reading the product that you are generating. More viewers and readers means more revenue.

Basing our topics and our competitions on the content of one publication that is not motivated by debate-ability or critical thought might be a serious disconnect. However, our addiction to The Economist is not going away anytime soon. Most debaters and most leaders in the community unproblematically agree that if it appears there then you should be prepared to debate it. And that’s the lay of the land at this moment.

So in this environment, can supporting uncertainty, murkiness, or loss of clear thinking and slowing down of the political process be goods that you could use to win debates?

I think so. The question is how these arguments are deployed. The best way to do it within the confines of the round is to ask yourself how certain you think the other side’s solution is going to deal with the problem. Compare that to how certain you think you are about the detrimental effects of their policy. In situations where they might be winning arguments that prove that their solution will work and your problem might not happen, you can raise the specter of the guess to show that if they are the least bit wrong, your problem will still happen and there’s no going back. The concepts of erasibility and reversability are good ones to argue for here.

On the level of principle, uncertainty might stand alone as a good principle in a world where most political discourse and scientific information is throttled into a funnel of absolute judgement even before we have had a chance to fully digest its meaning. This seems to be better on Opposition benches as you could oppose most motions with a principle of uncertainty, and deference, and waiting as a good way to address the situation. This might be better on topics dealing with complex systems such as the environment or the economy, and less effective on issues such as military intervention for humanitarian reasons. But there’s a way to apply it there too I’m sure. Something about not being sure how people will respond to the invasion force is used as a defensive argument, but there’s great ground to consider this as a positive good – staying out of it and thinking might be just as good, or at least avoid the problem of treating other peoples as if they are unable to handle their own affairs.

Many of these arguments are familiar. They become more unfamiliar when we talk about them as something we would want to cause or directly create in our advocacy. They become a bit strange when we talk about how it’s good to create situations where people will hold back and think a bit, where people will ponder a decision, mull things over, and really grapple with whether or not they should do something. Endorsing uncertainty and hesitation of action is a rare principle in debates, but it could be a good way to have more nuanced debates, rather than hearing that far too simple “rational actor” model of the human psyche we love to go to as an explanation of why our side is the best.

If a thoughtful argument from another sphere can be adapted to our strange debate sphere and find competitive success, it might serve as a banner for those who worry about competitive equity above everything else in debating that opening up the door to things that don’t neatly fit into the comfort zone of debating. Taking my discussion here to the next level would be for teams to say they are uncertain about the motion, and that might be a reason to endorse or reject it. But that’s a bigger move than the one I am suggesting here.

My recent attendance at a High School tournament made me realize how often we associate the presence of simplicity or clarity in argumentation with good argumentation.

How many times have you seen a team win a debate, or even an argument, by using a strategy saying that their policy or principle makes things uncertain, unclear, slows things down, or makes people uncertain about what to do?

My guess would be very few times do teams win on such arguments. These arguments are so outside of normal political discourse that they might not be “legal moves” according to the norms of the debating community.

The argument that uncertainty or murkiness is a good thing is an argument that one would be much more likely to hear in an academic environment. Slowing people down in thinking, making people reconsider (as long as that reconsideration is not used to show a quicker, more crystal path to a beautiful solution to the problem presented in the debate), or making sure that people are paralyzed with information and aren’t sure what action to take are not necessarily arguments that are easy to get behind.

In our community, overdependence on The Economist and other news analysis that is generated to turn profit might be the reason we are unpersuaded by arguments that are often the conclusion of academic publications. That audience is used to, and expects, incrimental advancements in the understanding and addressing of issues in the field. In the world of for-profit journalism, clarity and simplicity rule the day as these are the things most likely to keep someone watching or reading the product that you are generating. More viewers and readers means more revenue.

Basing our topics and our competitions on the content of one publication that is not motivated by debate-ability or critical thought might be a serious disconnect. However, our addiction to The Economist is not going away anytime soon. Most debaters and most leaders in the community unproblematically agree that if it appears there then you should be prepared to debate it. And that’s the lay of the land at this moment.

So in this environment, can supporting uncertainty, murkiness, or loss of clear thinking and slowing down of the political process be goods that you could use to win debates?

I think so. The question is how these arguments are deployed. The best way to do it within the confines of the round is to ask yourself how certain you think the other side’s solution is going to deal with the problem. Compare that to how certain you think you are about the detrimental effects of their policy. In situations where they might be winning arguments that prove that their solution will work and your problem might not happen, you can raise the specter of the guess to show that if they are the least bit wrong, your problem will still happen and there’s no going back. The concepts of erasibility and reversability are good ones to argue for here.

On the level of principle, uncertainty might stand alone as a good principle in a world where most political discourse and scientific information is throttled into a funnel of absolute judgement even before we have had a chance to fully digest its meaning. This seems to be better on Opposition benches as you could oppose most motions with a principle of uncertainty, and deference, and waiting as a good way to address the situation. This might be better on topics dealing with complex systems such as the environment or the economy, and less effective on issues such as military intervention for humanitarian reasons. But there’s a way to apply it there too I’m sure. Something about not being sure how people will respond to the invasion force is used as a defensive argument, but there’s great ground to consider this as a positive good – staying out of it and thinking might be just as good, or at least avoid the problem of treating other peoples as if they are unable to handle their own affairs.

Many of these arguments are familiar. They become more unfamiliar when we talk about them as something we would want to cause or directly create in our advocacy. They become a bit strange when we talk about how it’s good to create situations where people will hold back and think a bit, where people will ponder a decision, mull things over, and really grapple with whether or not they should do something. Endorsing uncertainty and hesitation of action is a rare principle in debates, but it could be a good way to have more nuanced debates, rather than hearing that far too simple “rational actor” model of the human psyche we love to go to as an explanation of why our side is the best.

If a thoughtful argument from another sphere can be adapted to our strange debate sphere and find competitive success, it might serve as a banner for those who worry about competitive equity above everything else in debating that opening up the door to things that don’t neatly fit into the comfort zone of debating. Taking my discussion here to the next level would be for teams to say they are uncertain about the motion, and that might be a reason to endorse or reject it. But that’s a bigger move than the one I am suggesting here.

Giving a talk today via Skype to a policy debate team about Worlds style debating. The question that I am using to orient my comments is one that might be a bit Lacanian: What’s left out? Or, since it’s a format that was created in Britain perhaps the better lecture title might be “Mind the Gap.”

Using this as the principle of constructing how this format works and why it might be valuable to practice seems a better approach than a lot of the head-on, scorched Earth style discussions that many people expect/lament/enjoy/instigate. My feeling is that exposure to one format when one is from another only increases the chances that one might understand the grammar of one’s home format a bit better, becoming a better debater in both formats (over time of course).

What I think happens is the same as in learning a foreign language – you become better able to understand how your own language works when learning a foreign tongue via the weird structural approach that we use in language teaching. This is why many schools report better test results on grammar and reading comprehension when they require Latin in the curriculum.

But it goes a bit deeper. Gadamer in Truth and Method relied on the classics department as his model of a humanities program that doesn’t always go begging to the social sciences for justification on the level of method. The reason why is that these grammars are invented, and one can always interrogate and question the order of the order. Translations in context or out of context or within addendums and modifications to the grammar rules are always in play. This type of fluid understanding is one of the few means to keep truth alive and useful – by keeping it in play, keeping it fluid, keeping it breathing. Dare I say: Keeping it alive.

Debate formats should be like this. Even if you disagree, time is against you. Culture is against you. Show me a policy debate round and I will use the same example to prove that it is not policy debate. Worlds is also changing/changed. These flows and pulses will happen. Do we want to be swept up by the waves or do we want to ride them? Better still, let’s learn how to surf. Enjoy your symptom, as Zizek would say.

Mind the gap when exiting or entering the format.

Giving a talk today via Skype to a policy debate team about Worlds style debating. The question that I am using to orient my comments is one that might be a bit Lacanian: What’s left out? Or, since it’s a format that was created in Britain perhaps the better lecture title might be “Mind the Gap.”

Using this as the principle of constructing how this format works and why it might be valuable to practice seems a better approach than a lot of the head-on, scorched Earth style discussions that many people expect/lament/enjoy/instigate. My feeling is that exposure to one format when one is from another only increases the chances that one might understand the grammar of one’s home format a bit better, becoming a better debater in both formats (over time of course).

What I think happens is the same as in learning a foreign language – you become better able to understand how your own language works when learning a foreign tongue via the weird structural approach that we use in language teaching. This is why many schools report better test results on grammar and reading comprehension when they require Latin in the curriculum.

But it goes a bit deeper. Gadamer in Truth and Method relied on the classics department as his model of a humanities program that doesn’t always go begging to the social sciences for justification on the level of method. The reason why is that these grammars are invented, and one can always interrogate and question the order of the order. Translations in context or out of context or within addendums and modifications to the grammar rules are always in play. This type of fluid understanding is one of the few means to keep truth alive and useful – by keeping it in play, keeping it fluid, keeping it breathing. Dare I say: Keeping it alive.

Debate formats should be like this. Even if you disagree, time is against you. Culture is against you. Show me a policy debate round and I will use the same example to prove that it is not policy debate. Worlds is also changing/changed. These flows and pulses will happen. Do we want to be swept up by the waves or do we want to ride them? Better still, let’s learn how to surf. Enjoy your symptom, as Zizek would say.

Mind the gap when exiting or entering the format.