The Harms of Pre-emptive Argumentation by Dan Alessandro

I. Introduction

 In recent years, there has been a strong trend towards strategies that center around “pre-emptive” arguments (also known as spikes) in the constructive speeches. Debaters run these arguments with the hope their opponent drops them, so that they can be extended to ensure an easy win. Pre-empts can be deployed on the theory, contention, and framework levels. Although some debaters have had success with these strategies, I argue that debaters should generally avoid employing them. Blocks should be read in response to arguments, not in anticipation of them.

II. Strategy

 The first concern many coaches and debaters alike have when deciding whether to run an argument is whether it will be “strategic” or likely to win rounds. It’s no secret that debate is a game of time tradeoffs; a good argument is often thought of as one that takes longer to respond to than to read. Debaters use this logic to justify loading up their cases with pre-empts. However, these pre-empts often actually result in a worse time tradeoff for the debater who reads them. I’ll explore some examples of the bad time tradeoffs that pre-empts allow for. On the theory layer, some affirmatives are full of short, weakly warranted theory interpretations. A few examples of these pre-empts are 1. “The negative must defend the converse of the resolution”, 2. “The affirmative gets RVIs”, and 3. “The negative may not read multiple theory shells”. A smart negative debater will concede as many of these interpretations as possible without seriously compromising their strategy. For each interpretation that the negative meets, the negative gains a time advantage equal to the number of seconds the aff spent reading the pre-empt. When responding to an AC with the 3 spikes above, for instance, if the neg doesn’t read theory, they’ve suddenly burned all the time the aff spent justifying spikes number 2 and 3. Suddenly, the AC has spent 40 seconds reading theory interps that have no relevance in the round. Those 40 seconds represent an opportunity cost of 40 seconds that could have been spent reading more contention-level offense, or reading additional arguments to warrant the aff framework. One could object that pre-empts are strategic because they force the opponent into a bad strategy. There are a few problems with this argument. First, a smart negative will have several cases and strategies that they’ve prepared, so merely excluding one of those cases doesn’t advantage the aff. Either the neg can simply pick a different strategy, or the pre-empt prevents them from having any viable strategies, in which case it is highly susceptible to theory. Second, the negative gets to make the decision whether to engage the pre-empts or merely adapt their strategy based on them. This means the debater responding to pre-empts always has the upper hand because they get to decide whether the pre-empts become relevant. The same logic of time tradeoffs applies to pre-emptive weighing arguments on the framework and contention layers. Rather than having arguments for why “deontological theories of morality fail,” a good utilitarian framework would have more offensive justifications for the standard. It’s possible that framework arguments will serve the dual functions of justifying a framework and rebutting an alternative framework. These arguments are strategic, but arguments that merely deny another framework shouldn’t be in a constructive speech. The ideal AC will have 6 minutes of arguments that have a very high chance of being useful in the 1ar regardless of what the 1N strategy is. The reason affirming is hard largely self-imposed. Debaters don’t spend enough time generating offense. Rather than reading pre-emptive blocks to negative positions, which have a 50-50 chance of being relevant in the 1AR, debaters should save those blocks for the 1AR where they have a 100% chance of being relevant. One other consideration is that neg debaters often leave a lot less prep time before the 2N than they do before the 1N. This means that reading new evidence or arguments that directly clash with the 1N will be more difficult to prepare for and respond to after the 1AR than after the AC. 

III. Education/Purpose of debate

Aside from strategic concerns, debaters shouldn’t read pre-emptive arguments because they are antithetical to the purpose of debate. Debate is an activity based on clash and comparison of arguments. The point of debate is to be able to think critically about how arguments interact and be able to generate arguments to rebut what your opponent says. Pre-emptive arguments detract from these important skills in a multitude. Rather than doing evidence comparison in the 1AR, pre-emptive debaters extend arguments about the quality of their evidence e.g. sample size, factors accounted for, etc, to take out their opponents’ evidence. In reality, true evidence comparison can’t occur before the neg has even spoken. A particularly harmful class of pre-empts is short and vague theory interpretations with drop the debater implications. The sole purpose of these arguments is to avoid debate and merely extend an argument past an opponent for a cheap win. This strategy is hugely uneducational because it entirely strips all other arguments of meaning. Even if debaters choose to ignore the rest of this article and read their 100 blippy theory spikes, at the very least they should make their interpretations extremely clear so that their opponent has a chance to respond to them or meet them. 

IV. Strategies against pre-empts

 Regardless of the arguments I’ve put forth for the harms of pre-emptive arguments, the sad truth is that debaters will run them. These are a few of the best strategies that can be deployed against cases full of pre-empts. First, debaters should make an overview argument on their opponent’s case that says something along the lines of “Allow new 2NR/2AR responses to pre-empts that are cross-applied to my case.” There are a few warrants that can be given for this exception to the “no new in the 2” rule. First, the arguments are incomplete when read in the first speech because they have no impact. Even if the warrant of an argument is conceded, the function of the argument and reason it takes out some other argument on the flow isn’t made until the next speech. Second, these arguments are extremely blippy and hard to flow, so it’s unreasonable to hold debaters accountable for answering them unless judges have flowed every single argument. Second, a strategy that my teammate has recently deployed is a K of pre-emption. You can find this on the neg wiki of “Lexington PC” with the title “Crusade”. The thesis of this position is that when somebody tells you that you can’t make arguments before you’ve even opened your mouth, that harms dissent and open democratic discourse. Third, debaters should try to gain the positive time tradeoffs that I talked about in part II. If your opponent spends 1 minute justifying why their framework solves a philosophical problem better than contractarianism does, the appropriate response is to read a framework different than contractarianism. In this way, you can waste their speech time through argument selection, which is an excellent time tradeoff. Fourth, affs should have a few unpredictable strategies ready to restart the debate in the 1AR. These strategies could include generic theory arguments, kritiks, or 4 minutes of turns to the NC. An important point here is that the way pre-emptive debaters win is when their opponents respond to them in predictable ways. One only can pre-empt an argument if they know it’s coming, so if a 1AR can generate a lot of new offense that the NC didn’t predict, that makes for a difficult 2NR. Fifth, I recommend that all debaters have a “spikes bad” theory shell ready to go. This argument serves two strategic functions. First, it’s a compelling theory argument that the 1AR has to beat back before accessing their offense. Second, debaters reading lots of theory spikes often rely on theory in order to win. Thus, it’s important that the NC generates offense on the theory layer to dissuade the 1AR from going all in on theory. Additionally, “spikes bad” serves as a meta-theory shell in that it critiques the way the aff ran theory, which sets up the 2NR for some compelling weighing if the 1AR chooses to read theory. One important thing to note for any debaters who plan on pursuing this strategy is that it’s extremely important to define what a spike/pre-empt is in your initial interpretation. You should make your interpretation very precise and specific to what your opponent did in order to avoid frivolous “I meets.” Sixth and finally, when facing a daunting case filled with pre-empts, it’s important to see the big picture. Even if individual pre-emptive arguments make sense by themselves, these arguments often have unexpected implications when run in conjunction. On the framework level, debaters will often set up a litany of side-constraints that all moral theories must be consistent with. Remember that these side-constraints apply to both frameworks and make arguments for why their framework doesn’t meet the constraints. On the theory level, think about how theory spikes interact in unfair ways so you can craft unique theory interpretations with strong abuse stories that are hard to answer.

Evidence Ethics in LD Debate: A Proposal by Akhil Gandra and Arjun Tambe

Evidence ethics has been an issue subject to controversy since the dawn of policy debate. However, while policy has fairly concrete norms regarding evidence ethics disputes, LD does not, resulting in confusion between coaches, debaters, and tournament administrators alike. This article first addresses the current state of evidence ethics norms in LD and concludes by proposing a series of potential solutions to resolve the issue. We argue that debaters should disclose all the cases they have read (preferably full text) and be open to sharing resources, and that tournaments should have an established all-or-nothing procedure for resolving evidence ethics disputes.

I. Introduction

For the last several years, LD debates have evolved to become more reliant on both the quality and quantity of evidence read in round. Increasingly, debaters are cutting more cards and reading more carded blocks, and as a result, the issue of evidence ethics is one of large and growing importance. However, the community suffers from a lack of clarity when dealing with evidence ethics disputes, as is evident by the protests at the 2014 TOC. This lack of clarity stems from a much broader issue: the lack of norms in LD. While policy has accepted and adopted fairly clear norms, LD has not.When dealing with questions of evidence ethics, the status quo “norms” in LD debate are considerably problematic. When a debater mis-cuts a card, one commonly utilized response is theory. However, this creates confusion because most evidence ethics theory shells do not explicitly establish in the violation why a certain piece of evidence is mis-cut. For example, if debater A claims an author says x, but debater B reads a theory shell arguing that debater A’s evidence is mis-cut, then presumably debater B would have the burden of proof to establish a violation with carded evidence from the same author. Most debaters do not have carded violations ready for every potential piece of evidence that could be mis-cut, so it becomes difficult to establish a violation.In addition, there is confusion over what constitutions an evidence ethics violation and further confusion as to what the punishment should be. Should a debater lose the round? Should it be a double loss? Parts II and III of this article will attempt to elucidate these concerns. Also, many jurisdictional inconsistences between tournaments proliferate the problem. Some tournaments use NFL rules, some do not, and some make it unclear. Tournaments lack a clear basis for dealing with evidence ethics disputes, raising the question of who should deal with disputes: the tournament, the judge, or the debaters themselves? Finally, it is often difficult to identify misrepresented evidence without having read the article. Our proposal attempts to encourage debaters to do more research so they are able to expose misrepresented evidence when they see it.

II. What is Evidence Ethics?

Broadly defined, a violation of evidence ethics would entail intentionally or unintentionally fabricating evidence, misrepresenting evidence, or clipping cards.  This portion of the article will articulate the different ways debaters can violate evidence ethics.The first and probably most egregious violation of evidence ethics is fabricating evidence. This occurs when a debater “makes up” evidence or intentionally changes the original text of an author’s work. To our knowledge, fabricating evidence does not occur often, if at all, but the practice is still a blatant violation of evidence ethics.A much more common violation is “mis-cutting” evidence. This occurs when a debater attempts to change the meaning of a piece of evidence by strategically underlining or minimizing key words or phrases in the text. For example, if an author says: “There a multiplicity of arguments for why presumed consent is both good and bad,” the evidence would be mis-cut if a debater read the evidence as if it said: “There a multiplicity of arguments for why presumed consent is both good and bad.” The author qualified her claim by limiting the scope of her argument, but the debater skewed the conclusion of the evidence. However, confusion exists regarding the bright-line for when evidence is mis-cut and when it is not. Because every author is not writing about the debate resolution, all cards do not represent the author’s exact position. For example, carding an article that highlights the issue of trafficking would be legitimate on the aff even if the article didn’t talk about presumed consent. Therefore, it can be unclear when a card is being misrepresented enough to warrant a violation. There is a simple solution to this problem. When a debater reads a card, she should represent the author as asserting everything read in that card. The author should not have to agree with or condone everything else a debater reads. The fact that an author potentially disagrees with other parts of a position may be a response to those parts of the case, but it is not an issue of evidence ethics or misrepresentation. In academia, scholars do not reiterate previously established positions, but use them to formulate unique positions of their own. This idea is also applicable to LD.The third violation of evidence ethics is “straw-person” cards. This occurs when an author concludes x and describes an objection to x before responding to the objection, but a debater claims the author concludes against x, carding only the paragraph describing the objection to x. It should be acceptable to read straw-person evidence if the debater acknowledges in their speech that the evidence they are reading is a straw-person. In this case, the evidence is no longer a misrepresentation because the debater would be providing an accurate representation of the author’s contention. Reading straw-person evidence without acknowledging the evidence as a straw-person is unethical because a debater is benefitting from identifying an author as supporting x position when the author does not conclude x.The next issue is arguably the most unclear: editing evidence with brackets and ellipses. Ellipses should not be used in evidence at all because they can hide and distort the argument an author is making. Brackets however, are a little less clear. In general, debaters should avoid using brackets because it is not always clear when brackets change the meaning of evidence. Here are a few examples:

1. “Presumed consent does help those in poverty” can be bracketed to say, “Presumed consent does [not] help those in poverty.”
2. “There are three reasons why presumed consent increases organ donation rates” can be bracketed to say, “There are three reasons why presumed consent increases organ donation rates [for three reasons].”
3. “Some authors have argued that presumed consent is good” can be bracketed to say, “Some [Many] authors have argued that presumed consent is good.”

Example A is clearly an instance in which brackets are unacceptable. They are used to change the meaning of the card in a drastic way. Example B is the opposite. Here, brackets do not change the meaning of the evidence, so a debater should not lose in this instance. Example C, however, is the most blurred. While we believe that brackets change the meaning of the evidence in this instance, not everyone agrees that their use should warrant a loss. A plethora of other examples (not shown) can demonstrate how the line between misrepresenting and clarifying an author’s argument via brackets can be unclear at best. The most effective alternative is to avoid using brackets whenever possible, except for perhaps grammatical corrections, such as changes in tense or punctuation.(Here we disagree. Akhil believes in the position above and Arjun does not think brackets should be used in cards.)“Clipping cards” is an evidence ethics violation, but one that is more verbal than textual. This occurs when a debater does not read the full underlining of the cards that were given to her opponent, but does not indicate this to her opponent during the speech. The practice is unethical for two reasons: first, because one’s opponent will assume one reads more than what was actually read, which might harm their overall strategy. Second, the judge may ask to see the evidence after the round to help make their decision, and will give a debater credit for something she did not read. One objection is that debaters should flow speeches, not speech documents, so whether a debater read everything in the speech document given to her opponent is irrelevant. However, the objection does not account for the judge being able to call for evidence—a judge cannot flow every word a debater says and, if needed, should be able to call for exactly what was read after the round. In addition, debaters should be able to accurately read each other’s evidence to formulate higher quality responses. If we accept letting opponents see the evidence you have read, then we should conclude that clipping cards is unethical because it allows debaters to get credit for something they didn’t read. Since flashing speech documents has become more common in LD, it is now possible for debaters to see when their opponents are clipping cards. The possibility of clipping is one of many reasons that flashing speech documents or passing pages should be the rule. If opponents do not have access to the documents but the judges can call for evidence after the round, there is virtually no check on clipping.Clipping cards should warrant a loss. There is no line-drawing problem for clipping cards as there may be for other evidence disputes. Even if a debater did not want to read the entirety of a card, she would just have to notify her opponent during her speech by saying which word they stopped at in the card. Moreover, since clipping a card has the potential to skew the outcome of the round, it should become an enforceable norm that clipping cards is unethical.Finally, indicating the date a piece of evidence was written should become a norm. Many debaters already do this, reading both the author’s last name and the year the evidence was published (or the last name and “no date” if no date can be found), but some debaters only read the author’s last name. The year a piece of evidence was written can affect its quality, even to the point of changing its meaning. An egregious example of this could be a piece of evidence predicting Republicans will win “the election”: this evidence would mean very different things if it were written in 2000 than if it were written in 2014. Most instances of reading evidence with no date aren’t as severe as this example, but when evidence is written certainly does impact the quality of that evidence, so we think it best for debaters to read the date for their evidence. However, we don’t think this should warrant a loss: it should just be a norm.

III. Our Proposals

First, we think debaters should disclose the full text of their positions on the NDCA wiki. Many articles have already been written on the importance of disclosure, so we won’t repeat those arguments here. However, we think disclosure can help address the issue of miscutting or fabricating evidence since debaters can verify whether a piece of evidence read by their opponent has been cut ethically by reading the article the evidence is cut from. Full text disclosure would also elevate the quality of disclosure. Providing the first and last three words of an article can make it difficult to reconstruct a debater’s case since not everyone has access to all the databases articles may have been accessed from. Full text disclosure expands access to debaters’ evidence.On a similar note, debaters should be willing to share resources with others. One easy solution entails posting one’s email address on their wiki so that other debaters can contact them to ask for articles they do not have access.Finally, we propose that tournaments should have explicit procedures for adjudicating evidence disputes.The NDCA recently adopted guidelines for clipping cards for its national championship tournament in LD as well as to policy. The guidelines lay out the process by which debaters can make an evidence challenge when they suspect their opponent of clipping cards. The guidelines provide a formal procedure for resolving an accusation of evidence ethics outside of the round; i.e. without having to resolve an in-round theory debate about evidence ethics. However, the guidelines only relate to card clipping and not other evidence disputes, so while we believe that the NDCA policy serves as a good starting point towards developing comprehensive guidelines for evidence ethics in LD, it is not conclusive. (For the NDCA guidelines, see here and here.)Tournaments should reference an explicit and openly available set of rules to determine whether an ethics violation exists so that debaters know when they have grounds for staking the round on an evidence challenge. Clipping cards, fabricating evidence, and mis-cutting/misrepresenting evidence should be grounds for an evidence challenge; if a debater is determined to have clipped cards, fabricated evidence, or misrepresented evidence, then they should lose the round. Other disputes over evidence, such as whether evidence is a straw-person, should be resolved via the arguments made in the round: however, we think that judges should hold themselves to a high standard when resolving these debates: i.e. “fairness isn’t a voter” shouldn’t be a reason a judge accepts a piece of straw-person evidence as legitimate.There are three benefits to this approach: first, evidence violations are of a different significance than other theory arguments. Fabricating evidence is equivalent to academic dishonesty. While questions over whether plans are legitimate, for example, are open to question and without absolute answer, questions of evidence ethics are not: academic dishonesty is unequivocally bad. For this reason, a debater’s ability to debate theory arguments should not determine disputes over evidence ethics. Debaters should not get away with academic dishonesty because they are good at theory debate; evidence ethics standards should be externally enforced by the tournament.Second, this approach helps avoid disputes about rounds. Creating an established procedure for resolving evidence disputes obviates the need to change the outcome of a round after the fact.Third, this would reduce dishonesty. Debaters might be dishonest or hold themselves to a low bar of ethics because they know they can beat a theory argument calling them out on a questionable evidence ethics practice. If there’s an established process that is highly accurate in establishing evidence violations, there is a greater deterrent against evidence ethics violations.

IV. Concluding Remarks

Evidence ethics are an issue of vital importance, and as LD debate increasingly mirrors policy, its norms should as well. Absolute honesty in debate rounds may never be achieved, but we think this article provides a reasonable starting point for communal change. We hope the proposals outlined in this article help initiate the discussion of evidence ethics in relation to tournament policy. While we have not comprehensively outline the details of our proposals, we hope that tournament administrators will start working together to set norms and tournament procedures to address the issue of evidence ethics in LD.

Call for Responses to "Protecting All of the Children in the Auditorium"

We recently published a guest article by Jonathan Alston, Anthony Berryhill, and Aaron Timmons on Briefly. We know that many readers disagree with some of the claims made in that article. We would like to publish some critical responses to the article.Some of the conclusions made in the article are uncontroversial. For example, the authors argue that debate websites should not tolerate bullying of students. But there are also claims that we know are controversial, and we invite readers to submit articles that present alternative perspectives about them. Some topics that may be appropriate for critical responses include but are not limited to

1. the authors' specific policy recommendations for websites, tournaments, and teams;
2. guidelines and boundaries for appropriate public criticism of coaches;
3. alternative personal experiences, feelings, and perspectives on the historical examples discussed in the article; and
4. a defense of the student protest at the 2014 TOC.

We are not interested in publishing ad hominem attacks on the authors. We hope to publish responses that contribute constructively to the discussion, conform to our commenting policy, and exemplify good standards of argument and writing, according to our editorial judgment.Our publication of an article, as always, does not indicate that Victory Briefs agrees with it. But it does express our opinion that the article is worth discussing.

Intuitions and Intervention

[W]e have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. —George Orwell

Many debaters and judges believe that intuitions should carry little to no evidential weight in a debate round. In this post, I discuss some of the most common arguments for this view.Before I do that, let me clarify what I mean by "intuition." This term is often used in very different ways. In this post, I use "intuition" to mean any claim that is taken by its proponent to be justified without further argument. This does not mean that further arguments cannot be used to support intuitions, but merely that those arguments are (taken to be) unnecessary. They are strategic assets, not requirements.¹The following are the most common arguments I have heard against the use of intuitions in debate.

Intuitions are just unwarranted claims. Judges should vote on arguments, not on assertions.

There are two senses of "warranted." One sense, which is most common in debate, has to do with the activity of giving a reason for something, and with the specific reason that is given. In this sense, a claim is warranted just in case one has given an argument for it. Another sense, which is more common in philosophy, has to do with the normative status of a belief or claim---i.e., whether it is sufficiently justified, or whether one ought to believe it. A claim can be warranted in the second sense without being warranted in the first sense.In debate, we generally care more about the first sense in which a claim can be "warranted." We know a lot of things that we cannot explain how we know, and so cannot give a warrant in the first sense. In a debate, though, the judge cares only about that which is said and explained. So the judge should care more about whether a claim is warranted in the first sense than whether it is warranted in the second, which has little to do with what is said in the debate round.It does not follow, though, that a judge should only accept claims that are warranted in the first sense. And there is a simple reason for thinking that judges cannot help but do otherwise, on pain of infinite regress. Arguments have to start somewhere.² This is true in debate as much as it is elsewhere in life. But the time constraints in debate make it especially clear.I won't pretend that this argument is uncontroversial. It has generated a substantial philosophical literature. I invite readers to comment with defenses of their favored responses and applications to debate. The conclusion that I draw, though, is that the question isn't whether debaters can appeal to intuitions in debate rounds, but which kinds of claims judges should take to be intuitively justified.What is the proper starting point for debate? I don't think there is a unique and universal answer to this question. But common sense---what almost everyone intuitively takes and perhaps knows to be true and often obviously so---strikes me as a safe option. If, outside of a competitive context, everyone in the room would admit to knowing p regardless of their stance on the resolution (that is, if they were suitably impartial about the main question of the debate), that strongly recommends p as a good candidate to be taken as true without further argument.³ We all know that feeling when a debater asks a CX question with a blazingly obvious answer: there is, and ought to be, some strategic pressure to answer correctly, rather than to feign ignorance; that strategic pressure comes from a judge's willingness to accept claims that she and other suitably impartial judges find obvious. Things become more difficult when the participants would disagree even in an impartial and non-competitive context, or when the judge is highly confident in, but does not know, p. I shall simply punt on these more difficult questions for now.Figuring out the proper starting point for debate is very different from figuring out how far debate can move us from there. My view does not imply that a debater can or should never count as winning a counterintuitive claim. Perhaps philosophical argument and empirical evidence, together with norms for judging debate (e.g., taking conceded claims as true) can take us rationally from obvious premises to crazy conclusions.

Moral intuitions are not acceptable in debate because debaters have to provide moral frameworks or theories to justify their moral claims.

As I have already explained, I see appeals to intuition (as I have defined it) as, to some extent, inevitable in debate. So this objection must be revised in one of two ways.The first revision says that intuitions with first-order moral content (i.e., claims about what we ought to do, or about what's right or wrong) are inadmissible, but that non-moral intuitions about philosophical questions, including metaethical ones (e.g., about how we know what's right or wrong or the semantics for moral language), are fair game. This view simply pushes the appeal to intuitions to a higher level of abstraction. My problems with this move are (a) that it is ad hoc, absent some explanation about what is uniquely problematic about moral intuitions in debate, and (b) that it presupposes a controversial (and, to me, implausible) picture about moral justification---namely, that one can derive moral conclusions from non-moral premises. I think these problems give sufficient reason to make us wary of making this view a rule for debate or even a starting point for a judging paradigm.The second revision (which I think is more promising than the first) essentially redefines, or at least clarifies, the intuitions that the view dislikes. Many people use "intuition" to refer to a gut reaction about questions of a specific kind---namely, about questions at fairly low levels of generality. This view might classify the following things as undesirable intuitions: that it is wrong to torture children for fun, that the extinction of all life is bad, that no population of lives that are barely worth living could be better than a sufficiently large population of people with an extremely high quality of life, and that systematic, harmful discrimination on the basis of race is unjust. My problems with this view parallel my problems with the one above: (a) it is ad hoc, absent some explanation about what is uniquely problematic about intuitions that are below some threshold of generality, and (b) it presupposes a controversial (and, to me, implausible) picture about moral justification---namely, that it always flows from the general to the particular.⁴I'm not saying that these problems are knockdown objections to thinking that moral principles are known by inference from non-moral evidence or that knowledge of moral principles flows from general theories to particular cases. These are extremely complicated questions. But I think our starting point should be to accept moral intuitions at any level of generality as admissible evidence, and not to prefer claims simply in virtue of their level of generality or subject matter, unless a debater argues to the contrary.Part of my reason for thinking that is that I am inclined to think that this proposed starting point is correct as an epistemological matter. But even if I thought otherwise, I would countenance strong reasons to use this methodology as a starting point. The alternative would make LD framework debates look vastly different from actual debates in moral philosophy. Many philosophers would consider the best arguments for and against their own theories to be appeals to intuition, as I have defined it.⁵ Other things being equal, debaters and judges should defer to philosophers about philosophical methodology. It would be hubris to assume that the accumulated wisdom of the high-school debate community trumps the insights of the practitioners of the very subject they are debating. We would need a strong debate-specific argument to think otherwise. That is where we turn next.

Appeals to intuition invite judge intervention. Judges should not intervene, and so should not accept appeals to intuition.

This, I think, is the strongest objection to my view. If I were to change my mind about this issue, I expect it would be in response to an improved version of this objection. So I'm all ears for a defense of this objection in discussion!Intervention is, to some degree, inevitable. Proponents of this objection are aiming not for tabula rasa (which even the most anti-interventionists agree to be impossible), but rather for least intervention.⁶ Similarly, reliance on intuition in debate is, to some degree, inevitable. Proponents of this objection are aiming not for the elimination of intuitions in debate (which, I think, the most anti-intuitionists agree to be impossible), but rather for minimizing their role in resolving debates. One way to do this is for judges to refuse to resolve disputes that come down to conflicts in intuition, unless absolutely necessary (i.e., because all voting issues in a given debate come down to conflicts in intuition).Suppose that one debater (call her Liz) makes an argument that relies on some highly abstract metaethical principle p. Another debater (call him Ahmed) responds by giving a persuasive counterexample. Ahmed argues from the intuitive verdict about the example to the falsity of the metaethical principle. Suppose next that Liz responds as follows: "Ahmed's judgment about the example is just an intuition. It might seem plausible to you. But extend p, which implies that Ahmed's judgment is false. Ahmed hasn't given an alternative metaethical principle to support his intuition."How should the judge evaluate this dispute? Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is some other way to decide the round without resolving the dispute either way, but that both Liz and Ahmed agree that this is the highest layer, and the most important issue in the debate.The judge who thinks that justification must flow from general to particular should side with Liz. That view makes philosophical debates in LD look like the bizarro world of academic philosophy. I shall set it aside.My own view is that the judge should side with Ahmed, assuming that she agrees with his intuitive, commonsensical judgment about the case. It is actually more interventionist to resolve the debate on some other issue, given the debaters' consensus that it is the highest layer. (It's another thing entirely if the judge doesn't have an opinion or understand the questions well enough to assert that either side is right. Calling some issue a wash because one doesn't know enough to decide an issue is very different from calling it a wash because both sides answered each other's arguments, which is what we should expect rather than discourage in competitive debate.) Let me consider two responses to this view:Frist, one might object that my view gives judges free reign to intervene against or in favor of claims simply because they agree with them. That's not so. Suppose Liz's speech is given as before, but that Ahmed makes no objection. The judge should accept Liz's argument, even though she disagrees with it (or, if she has never thought about the issue before, would disagree with it if confronted with the example). The judge's evaluation of competing claims is relevant only when the debaters disagree. That, I think, is the truth behind the ideal of least intervention.Third, one might argue that the judge should not insert her own opinion about the example because neither debater has given a conceded argument for her claim about it. If Ahmed had relied not only on intuition but had also given an argument for this claim, then, holding Liz's response fixed---to deny the conclusion of this argument by extending p---Ahmed would have won the issue. This view might be defended on the grounds that it promotes valuable argumentation skills by incentivizing argument over the reliance on a claim's intuitive support.This neutral-absent-a-conceded-argument paradigm is in some ways attractive, but it is unnecessary and unfairly manipulatable. It is unnecessary because there are, on the view I have defended, powerful strategic incentives to make arguments rather than rely only on a claim's intuitiveness, even when the claim seems obvious. First, making arguments increases the probability that those arguments will be conceded, which (in general) grants access to the claim without the judge's agreement with the conclusion. Second, the judge is not guaranteed to share one's intuitions. Making additional arguments is a good hedging strategy, in debate as it is elsewhere in life.The paradigm is unfairly manipulative because it gives a debater too much traction against a claim simply for expressing disagreement. As soon as Ahmed gives an argument for his intuitive judgment, Liz can neutralize it by asserting the negation of the argument's premises. The judge is then forced to neutrality unless Ahmed gives new arguments for these premises. Once again, Liz can just assert the negations of the premises of these new arguments. The winner would be whoever speaks last, or perhaps the faster debater. Good debating is not about mechanically adding "not" to everything your opponent says, but that is exactly what the neutral-absent-a-conceded-argument paradigm encourages.

Strategic Implications

Let me conclude by mentioning some implications of my view for strategy in LD. If some judge shares my view on these theoretical questions, how should debaters adapt? What does debate look like under this interpretation?First, once we shed our fear of intuition, debaters can make more use of counterexamples when responding to frameworks. These arguments are underutilized today because there is little strategic incentive to give a counterexample when the judge will refuse to evaluate it on the grounds that it relies on an intuitive judgment. But, like the philosophers who devise these thought experiments, debaters will be more likely to win by running them in tandem with theories that explain the verdicts.Second, there would be a greater incentive to adopt mid-level moral principles that fall short of comprehensive theories as standards or value criteria. Consider, for example, Peter Singer's argument for why affluent people should donate much of their income to charities that reduce the harms of global poverty. Although Singer is a utilitarian, he doesn't assume utilitarianism in his influential paper "Famine, Affluence, and Morality."⁷ That is probably for strategic reasons: since utilitarians would likely agree with his conclusion after a little empirical work, why not try to convince non-utilitarians by appealing to principles that even they could accept. Singer argues by presenting a thought experiment in which you can save a small child drowning in a pond at little cost to yourself. Most of us would agree that you ought to save the child. Singer then infers a principle that explains this datum---namely, that if you can save someone from great suffering at a cost that is not of comparable moral significance, then you ought to do so. That mid-level principle is at a level of generality in between the common verdict about Singer's example and the comprehensive theory of utilitarianism.

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1. My use of the term follows Chalmers, David J., ‘Intuitions in Philosophy: A Minimal Defense’, Philosophical Studies, 2014. Others use "intuition" to refer to the deliverances of some special rational faculty, or to judgments or intellectual "seemings" with a particular phenomenal character, or to judgments about particular cases as opposed to abstract principles or axioms.↩
2. For a more thorough version of this argument, see Bealer, George, ‘The Incoherence of Empiricism’, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 66 (1992), 99–138.↩
3. Here my views are heavily influenced by Timothy Williamson's picture of knowledge in Knowledge and Its Limits (Oxford University Press, 2002) and philosophical evidence in The Philosophy of Philosophy (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2007).↩
4. On these questions, I recommend Kelly, Thomas, ‘Moorean Facts and Belief Revision, or Can the Skeptic Win?’, Philosophical perspectives, 19 (2005), 179–209, and the section on Moore's moral methodology in Soames, Scott, Philosophical Analysis, Volume I: The Dawn of Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2005).↩
5. See Harman, Elizabeth, ‘Is It Reasonable to “Rely on Intuitions” in Ethics?’ http://www.princeton.edu/~eharman/HarmanIntuitions.pdf.↩
6. See McGee, Brian, ‘Judgment after Tabula Rasa: Defending “Least Intervention”’, Contemporary Argumentation & Debate, 19 (1998), 40–57.↩
7. Singer, Peter, ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1972, 229–43.↩

Swing and a Miss (Part 1): Silly Things Debaters Believe about Theory for No Reason by Leah Shapiro and Christian Tarsney

 Sometimes, somewhere in debateland, a coach or judge or camp instructor isn’t thinking very clearly, and says something false. And sometimes, despite that thing’s falsity, everybody else starts believing and repeating it because hey, a person said it, which is the normal criterion for a given thing being belief-worthy. Still, believing true things can be fun too--it’s at least worth a shot. So without further ado, here are four silly things that lots of debate people believe about theory, for no reason at all. 1. “Theory can’t be abusive.”Whoever came up with the idea that theory can’t be abusive (“omg meta-theory’s not a thing”) was either joking or badly confused. And now the whole anti-meta-theory brigade is too. The thing people like to say is something like: “Theory is how we determine what’s abusive, so obviously a theory argument can’t be abusive.” This is like saying: “Courts are how we determine what’s illegal, so obviously a court proceeding can’t be illegal.” It’s just a complete and total non sequitur. Just about any abusive practice at the post-theory level has obvious analogues at the theory level. For instance: eight fifteen-second theory arguments each of which claims to prove a priori that the aff was “infinitely abusive.” Or an argument in an offensive theory shell that says any counterinterp has to meet each of the four standards in the shell to be admissible. If multiple NIBs or a prioris are abusive at the substance level, then for the exact same reasons they’re abusive at the theory level.The examples we just gave are extreme, for the sake of driving home the point, but the same reasoning applies to more modest cases. For instance, running jointly exhaustive shells every round (can’t run a plan, must run a plan) is probably unfair since there is no conceivable way the aff can avoid a theory debate. Running five shells in the NC against a reasonable stock AC is arguably unfair if you don’t grant an RVI. Yes, somebody will point out that the aff in this situation can just run theory too, but if you think the aff can run five new shells and answer five shells in the 1AR, then we think your timer might be broken. Certain theory shells might just be intrinsically unfair (if the judge can’t verify the violation, e.g. speed theory, then the violation is arbitrary and subjective).An argument that sometimes gets made in round is that higher-order theory arguments (theory arguments in which the violation comes from a theory argument made by the opponent) create irresolvable clashes between different orders of abuse. This would be bad, if it weren’t for a magical thing called “weighing.” There are sometimes arguments to be made for lexically prioritizing the offense from a second-order shell over the first-order shell it indicts, but even failing that, there’s no reason why ordinary, quantitative weighing should be any more difficult between shells at different levels than between shells at the same level. (And of course, even if this weighing were impossible, it wouldn’t show that theory can’t be abusive.) 2. “Risk of offense” arguments trigger ballot implications on theory.Frequently, debaters will say that a mere “risk of a violation” or a “risk of offense” on theory is enough to drop the debater (in particular, under a “competing interpretations” paradigm). “There’s no terminal defense on theory under competing interps!” But this sense not make. Look at any other situation where we punish people for violating a rule. We don’t imprison or execute people for the mere “risk” that they committed a crime. And we don’t pass new criminal statutes merely because there’s a “risk” that the behavior they criminalize might be bad enough to warrant criminal punishment. Why? Because justifying punishment requires some standard of evidence! To permissibly punish someone, you have to be at least moderately confident that they did x, and that x ought to be punished...because, most of us agree, punishing innocent people is bad. We’d never be like, “Dude, there’s a risk you were jaywalking, so we’re gonna have to execute you,” because a) the mere existence of risk doesn’t justify punishment and b) nobody cares about jaywalking. Likewise, voting someone down based on “risk of violation” or “risk of offense” violates the prima facie presumption against punishment absent substantial evidence that it’s warranted. 3. “Interpretations must be ‘positively worded.’”This particular collective delusion might be fading a little bit, but lots of people still seem to believe it. Let’s try to understand this principle by applying it to a few possible interps, and seeing what it says.Interp #1: “Debaters must read solvency advocates for their counterplans.”Well that’s just a-okay, no problem, great interpretation.Interp #2: “Debaters must not read a counterplan without a solvency advocate”This is clearly nonsense. Possibly not English.Interp #3: “Debaters who read a counterplans must advocate them unconditionally or dispositionally.”This is excellent, the veritable epitome of a well-written interpretation.Interp #4: “Debaters must not read conditional counterplans.”Terrible. Just truly, truly awful. This existence of this interp is might be the worst thing that has ever happened, ever.So, just applying the principle a few times should make us suspect that it’s silly. But in case the point is unclear, let’s spell it out: Every “negatively worded” interp is equivalent, for all intents and purposes, to some “positively worded” interp. In fact, with slightly more awkward wording, we could that any given negatively worded interp is logically equivalent to some positively worded interp. So even if there’s some interesting distinction that people are trying to get at when they invoke this rule, positive vs. negative wording ain’t it.Even if there were a real, non-verbal distinction between “negatively worded” and “positively worded” interps, there would still be no reasonable argument for prohibiting the former and requiring the latter. The usual thing people have been taught to say is: “A negatively worded interp tells me what I can’t do, but it doesn’t tell me what I can do.” This is a fantastic way of explaining what the phrase “negatively worded” means, but as an argument...well, it’s not.Consider the following rule: “Debaters must not poison their opponents’ water bottles.” Now, are you impossibly confused by this rule, because it fails to tell you what you’re permitted to do? If so, then like any negatively worded interp, we can give a logically equivalent “positively worded” paraphrase: “Debaters must behave in ways that leave their opponents’ water bottles un-poisoned,” or something like that. But what’s the point? Did the interp just magically become clearer? Fairer? More educational?(Incidentally, not that it matters, but positively worded rules don’t tell you what you are allowed to do any more than negatively worded rules. For instance, the interp “Debaters must read a plan” doesn’t tell me that I can do x, as long as x involves reading a plan--e.g. read a plan plus fifteen a priori reasons to do the plan, then poison my opponent’s water bottle. It doesn’t tell me that any particular case or strategy is permissible, because there could still be other rules that strategy violates.) 4. “The aff can’t run topicality.”On some resolutions, there might be an argument for this claim. As a blanket generalization, it’s bizarre. Suppose the resolution is something like, “Just governments ought to value A over B,” and the aff says that the neg must defend “the converse of the resolution” (i.e., “Just governments ought to value B over A.”). In this fairly common situation, at least, it seems completely obvious that the neg has exactly the same sort of topicality burden as the aff. People sometimes say something like, “Well of course the neg doesn’t have to be topical,” where by “topical” they mean “topically affirming,” rather than “defending the appropriate side of the topic.” So if that’s how you want to use the word, then fine, when the neg runs arguments that only negate under a misinterpretation of the resolution, we can call the aff’s argument “schmopicality,” if that makes you happy. But substantively, it’s the same thing.Generalizing from the case just described, things get a little more complicated--if there’s no “defend the converse” argument, or if the topic isn’t comparative, then the neg’s burden is not so clearly structurally analogous to the aff’s. But so long as you think that the neg is supposed to argue against the truth of the resolution, or defend the desirability of a world on the negative side of possible world space, there are still situations whether the neg fails to do that, or claims to do so in a way that relies on a tendentious interpretation of the topic. And in these cases, there’s no intelligible reason we’ve ever encountered why affs should not be allowed to run an argument that is, in every interesting respecting, exactly like neg topicality.The only obvious reason why someone might think the aff can’t run T is if you’re committed to a view of debate that permits topical neg advocacies, and permits them even when the aff hasn’t run a plan or otherwise limited their advocacy. But the only reason we can see for accepting such a view is: that’s how it works in policy. Which is, well, silly.TL;DR: Silly things are silly. Believing them is silly. So don’t.

Gearing up for Greenhill: An Interview with 2013 Champion, Shania Hunt

 Recently I spoke with 2013 Greenhill Champion Shania Hunt about the unique challenges the tournament offers and what she is up to now. During the course of our discussion Shania offers some great advice about preparing for the tournament and how to turn mandatory disclosure to your advantage, among other things.[soundcloud params="auto_play=false&show_comments=false&show_playcount=false&sharing=true&download=true&"]https://soundcloud.com/victory-briefs/gearing-up-for-greenhill-an-interview-with-shania-hunt[/soundcloud] 

What Was the NSDA LD Wording Committee Thinking?

 To be clear, I have no idea what actually happens at the NSDA’s topic meetings. I’ve never been invited. After over a decade of actively coaching and judging the activity, I suspect I wasn’t nearly detached and aloof enough to start making league-wide policy. That kind of prestige seems to be reserved for career coaches who haven’t actually coached in years. Nor do I know who serves on the wording committee. The NSDA website apparently doesn’t publish that information, preferring to model its membership on the Illuminati rather than a politically accountable institution. So I can only guess what goes on at these meetings, and the only evidence from which I can make inferences is the collection of topics themselves. Based on those topics, I’ve reached the entirely speculative conclusion that NSDA wording committee meetings are akin to some kind of modern medieval festival, replete with an awe-inspiring array of barbiturates, methamphetamine and copious supplies of marijuana. There may be various combinations of strippers and cocaine involved, perhaps even some drunken jousting on horseback for good measure. If these seem like outlandish conclusions, you probably haven’t read this season’s list of topics. They will make you believe. Again, in the interest of avoiding lawsuit, these assumptions are entirely baseless and without any evidence whatsoever. But without a transparent glimpse into the inner workings of this secret society, the imagination runs wild. All we have is that list of topics, a list that screams, “What were they thinking?” A list that quietly suggests they weren’t. For an institution that revels in the notion of “value debate,” there’s a conspicuous absence of value found among these topics. The only saving grace for the 2014-2015 list is that it doesn’t include the current September-October clunker—which may in fact be a bigger waste of time than the wording committee meetings themselves. After trolling one coach on Facebook with the irrefutable claim that this topic was a, “Waste. Of. Time.,” I was quickly reminded that some of us actually know people who are waiting for organs. Unfortunately, of course, the unforgivably boring debates destined to happen on this topic won’t translate into anyone getting those organs. And more to the point, the provincial suggestion that the “sick are among us!” is precisely the problem. Lincoln-Douglas debate has been hijacked by pet causes and first-world problems. The kind of policies and, ya know, relevant issues that should be deciding elections and informing public opinion are virtually nowhere to be found. My argument against these topics occurs against a backdrop, which I term: “Things that actually matter.” The Arab Spring had radically redefined the Middle East. United States policy with respect to Syria and Iraq (and other flash points) will remain a pivotal plot point for years to come. Surveillance flights in international air space near China (and other territorial disputes) threaten to spark significant superpower unrest. Russia is instigating conflict in Ukraine just a few short years after invading Georgia. West Africa is being torn apart by a deadly virus spreading at an unprecedented rate. The “Islamic State” (ISIL) is beheading, crucifying, raping, pillaging, enslaving and forcing the dislocation of 100s of thousands. Vital nuclear negotiations with Iran continue even as the Iranians ostensibly support the West’s position against Sunni-based extremism. And those are just a few of the really important things going on internationally. Nevertheless, the lone foreign policy topic on this season’s list somehow manages to avoid all of those developments, instead posing a conflict between the United States’ economic interests and women’s rights. To quote Ron Burgundy, “I’m not even mad—that’s amazing.” It takes a remarkable knack for nonsense to literally ignore everything happening around the world. “But Babb,” says the stubbornly incoherent defender of horrible topics. “This is VALUE debate, and we don’t want to betray our roots by getting too sidetracked by policy.” All policy questions also involve value questions. This is neither controversial nor confusing. The failure to specify and engage more concrete policy domains is principally due to a lack of imagination, awareness and pedagogical responsibility. If you’re an educator and care about educating, do your damn job. If we can’t find ways to incorporate a robust discussion of values whilst investigating germane policy areas, that says more about our intellectual creativity than our potential topics. Even if you insist on making this about domestic policy, we should probably still focus on important things. The NSA is snooping at an alarming rate, and some have leaked important revelations thereabout. Or we could talk about immigration reform, regulation of financial institutions, climate change policy, corporate tax loopholes, the militarization of the police force, the sustainability of social safety nets in the face of an aging populace, etc. Almost anything would be more topical than the topics on this season’s list. I’d learn more from a debate about the Ice Bucket Challenge than I will about whether, “Historic preservation is a legitimate constraint on property rights.” That’s not even a first-world problem. It’s a history-buff problem. How a topic like that lands on a top-10 list of any sort is thoroughly mind-boggling—although it’s making a strong case for my top-10 list of things I couldn’t possibly care less about. And yet it’s getting competition from another 2014-15 topic: “Sin taxes are just.” Please. This is the most pressing issue affecting tax policy? If irrelevance isn’t your thing, perhaps vacuous ambiguity is. If so, sink your teeth into this one: “Inaction in the face of injustice makes individuals morally culpable.” Who needs context? When a topic is so hopelessly vague that the only appropriate response is “it totally, 100% depends,” you know the wording committee has done its job. Why encourage meaty, clash-inspiring debates when you can settle for a meaningless philosophical platitude? The only two reasonably decent topics on the list are straight-up sabotaged by the rhetorical usage of “just governments”: “Just governments ought to ensure food security for their citizens,” and, “Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage.” Use of the phrase is further proof that no one on the wording committee has judged a national circuit debate in at least 10 years. But even without robust judging experience, that nagging voice called common sense should perhaps raise a red flag. There are no just governments. And as annoying as arguments to that effect (in all their skeptical grandeur) may be, they’re perfectly understandable given the absolutely head-scratching wording of these topics. “But Babb,” says the last bastion of these topics’ defense. “Shouldn’t we explore some topic areas that may be on the margins of public discourse?” I’m sensitive to that claim, but it hardly defends the actual topics at hand. Excepting a topic about reparations, it’s not as though this list is born of progressive politics. There’s a difference between unearthing silenced perspectives and just being randomly irrelevant. Moreover, our discourse—especially in the context of debate—is something of a zero-sum game. We spend two months at a time investing research, writing and tournaments into the topic at hand. It becomes extremely time-consuming and quite obviously trades off with limited opportunities to discuss other—more important—things. There’s absolutely no compelling pedagogical argument for spending two months talking about “sin taxes” given the litany of more pressing concerns. To some degree, we should let the market be our guide here. We should read the news and craft our topics accordingly. Lincoln-Douglas debates are too valuable for an out-of-touch cabal to waste our time with its uninspired attempts at creativity. Who knows what actually goes on beyond those closed doors? Perhaps the process is too democratized. Perhaps its standard operating procedure is corrupted by misguided first principles. Perhaps those to whom we entrust authority just don’t know what they’re doing. But the consequences are unequivocal. We’re wasting time, money and a rare educational opportunity. We’re squandering the chance to prepare students for interrogating and understanding the first-order issues with which they’ll be confronted now and in the future. I’d love to hear a defense of these topics from someone on the committee, mostly for its entertainment value. There’s little doubt a debate about these topics would be more productive than any of the topics themselves. 

In Defense of Tournament-Required Disclosure

Danny DeBois (Harvard ’18) debated for Harrison High School in New York for 4 years. He won the TOC, NCFL Grand Nationals, Glenbrooks, and the Harvard Invitational (twice). He is now an assistant coach at Harvard-Westlake in California. He attended VBI twice as a student and is now an instructor there.With Greenhill around the corner, debaters attending should keep in mind that this tournament requires disclosure of case positions on the NDCA wiki (found here: http://hsld.debatecoaches.org/). For those unfamiliar with the practice, this entails putting up a page that includes taglines, citations, and the first and last three words of cards (though some debaters opt to put up full text) of any position that a debater has read on the topic so far. While disclosure has become more common on the national circuit over the last few years, mandatory disclosure at tournaments has not. I will present the case for why more tournaments should enforce mandatory disclosure policies.As a debater, I attended the Greenhill tournament twice, disclosing case positions there, but at no other tournaments except the 2014 TOC. While I personally preferred not to disclose when it was optional, I think a system of tournament-mandated disclosure is ideal for a couple of reasons.Firstly, it is the most effective way to create transparency in arguments being run. Disclosure is traditionally justified for the following reasons: Debaters will be able to know what arguments are being run on the topic and prepare accordingly, ensuring that the substantively better position, rather than the more surprising position, wins. Additionally, debaters are less likely to get away with miscut evidence; since opponents can check cites and call debaters out if they see that a card is cut out of context. Finally, access to “intel” on other debaters shouldn’t be contingent on whether you have five coaches, one of whose job is to cover your judging obligation, another to scout your biggest competition in every prelim round, and the other three to sit behind your judges and intimidate them. The wiki is defended on the grounds that it allows every debater, regardless of resources, to find out what they might have to debate in a future round. Accordingly, making everyone disclose as a requirement of tournament participation would maximize the benefits of disclosure.Debaters often don’t disclose for strategic reasons—they’re worried about getting prepped out, or having people copy their positions. While that’s definitely a risk, those problems are already happening in the status quo. Last year, I and many other people heard the same exact Chinese Econ DA in a bunch of different rounds. I’m sure debaters who regularly disclosed hit frequent prepouts as well. I think the best solution to these current problems, however, is to have more disclosure, rather than less. When everyone discloses (like at the Greenhill tournament), people can access every case on the wiki, not just some debaters’. As a result, a prep out becomes less likely just because there’s limited time to prep arguments, but there are so many positions up on the wiki. While this is just anecdotal evidence that should be taken with a grain of salt, I didn’t face the problem of a “massive” prep out at Greenhill either year I attended—worst case, people had a couple of more on-case responses, but they were usually generic blocks that would have been read anyways. Additionally, with so many different positions on the wiki, if position “copying” does occur, at least there are a wider variety of positions to copy, instead of just the cases of three or four teams.However, disclosure is hotly contested, and avid opponents of disclosure are probably not happy with the justifications I’ve presented so far, which leads me to my last justification for mandatory disclosure—it’s the best enforcement mechanism for disclosure compared to the alternatives currently used.Two current alternatives to tournament-required disclosure include disclosure theory (a theory argument claiming you should lose for not uploading your positions to the NDCA wiki) and LDLeaks (http://ldleaks.vbriefly.com//), a website where members can upload flows of other people on the circuit for other members to see. Neither alternative seems enjoyable, but unless tournaments mandate disclosure, they’ll continue. Disclosure theory is problematic because disclosure is often something judges have strong opinions on, and many decisions come down to judges voting for the side they personally agree with. Additionally, debaters who run disclosure theory haven’t stopped running it (if anything, it became more common over the past season), and unsubstantive rounds with disclosure theory are definitely worse than rounds where debaters prepped out each other’s positions and had a debate with a lot of clash.LDLeaks seems less preferable to mandatory disclosure, since it’s run by students and is members only, whereas mandatory disclosure would be open to everyone while still avoiding the problem of “free-riding” because tournaments would punish people who don’t post on the wiki.What do people think?UPDATE: Sign Danny's petition to require disclosure at national LD tournaments!

Drop the Argument, not the Debater

Over the past few years, a lot of judges have claimed that something is wrong with debate theory as it is used in LD. But there is little agreement on what that something is. The alleged problems with LD theory include the framework of competing interpretations, the speech order and times, the lack of RVIs, the presence of RVIs, the lack of LD-specific academic literature, an outdated conception of reasonability, among other things.I think the problem (to the extent that there is one—it's probably a lot of things) is simpler. I believe that the threshold for dropping the debater on theory is, in most cases, too low. If we raised this threshold, it would be harder to win on theory, so there would be weaker incentives to run it at the expense of substantive responses.The following are my reasons for thinking that we should have a high threshold for dropping the debater on theory. I look forward to reading what you think about these arguments.

AT "Drop the Debater"

1. Proportionality. The punishment of losing the round is much worse than the "crime," even according to the biggest theory impacts (which claim that winning becomes easier or more likely, but not certain). Fairness requires proportionality because fairness is the satisfaction of claims in proportion to their strength. (That requires a bit more development. For the basic idea, see John Broome, "Fairness.") The only residual cost if you drop the argument is the time investment for running theory. But
   1. that is balanced by the investment in the initial practice and in defending "drop the argument";
   2. there's no evidence that they needed to spend so much time on theory; dropping the debater is the main incentive for the excessive time investment;
   3. even if dropping the argument would not fully rectify the "abuse," it's closer to being proportional than dropping the debater;
2. Mismatch with competing interpretations. Just because some practice violates the best rule for debate doesn't mean that it's "abusive," or unfair enough to warrant a loss. It's almost certain that our current debate norms are suboptimal, but it would be crazy to think that almost every round should be decided on theory.
3. Perverse incentives. Making theory a voting issue makes bad theory arguments strategic, because even bad arguments have enough of a chance to make them worth running. Sure, dropping the argument makes unfair practices strategic too, but those practices do not necessarily decide the round even if won. And the threat of dropping the debater in extreme circumstances will always exist. The main disincentive for bad theory arguments is an RVI, but
   • [if they said RVIs bad] that's excluded by that interpretation
   • [if they haven't taken a stance on RVIs] RVIs are bad because [. . .].
4. Ex post facto. Punishment is justified only given rules that are fixed and announced beforehand, but theoretical rules are constructed and changed in the round. This doesn't mean theory is bad but it does make it prima facie unfair to vote against someone on such an unpredictable basis.
5. Reductio ad absurdum.  Their arguments would justify voting neg if the aff made a single new argument in the 2AR. This example shows that the unfairness is in the judge voting on some illegitimate argument or practice, not in its mere existence, so dropping the argument is sufficient.

Three Weighing Arguments

1. Type-I errors outweigh. Ceteris paribus, punishing someone who doesn't deserve it is worse than not punishing someone who does deserve it. This is because punishing the innocent is intrinsically bad, but punishing the guilty is not intrinsically good: the punished person doesn't benefit. It's only instrumentally good in this case because the non-guilty debater wins, but that reward is also undeserved: that I did something unfair doesn't mean that they did the better debating overall.
2. Theory is worse than substance. Substantive debate is centered on a resolution agreed upon in advance, so we can prepare for better clash, which is key to all benefits of debate.
3. Higher standard of evidence. If you do drop the debater, you should require demonstration beyond reasonable doubt to avoid unfair punishment. Use a higher threshold for theory because (a) claims of unfairness are absolute whereas the probability of the resolution comes in degrees; (b) dropping the debater is an action, in contrast to forming beliefs or degrees of belief in the resolution, and there's a slippery slope to allowing debaters to argue about how you should act, even in this round---e.g., about speaker points or your wallet.

Conclusion

I don't think that theory should never be a reason to drop the debater. But, as a judge, I would be willing to accept the following default position: if a debater runs theory as a reason to drop the debater, then it's an RVI. This default, I think, would encourage debaters to run theory as a reason to drop the argument from the get-go, without having to waste much of the debate on whether the theory argument is a voting issue.I am now inclined to think that even topicality is, in most cases, not a reason to drop the debater, but that is a more complicated discussion that we can have in the comments section.What do you think? Do these arguments persuade you?

Jake Nebel is a Marshall Scholar in Philosophy at Oxford. As a coach, his students have won the TOC, NDCA, Glenbrooks, Bronx, Emory, and the Harvard Round Robin. As a debater, he won six octos-bid championships and was top speaker at the TOC and ten other major tournaments. He co-directs the Victory Briefs Institute.