Author: palmer

A theory of theory

A is the interpretation.

Most theory is terrible, and never should be run.   Theory as a strategy is harmful to debate.

B, the violation, is self-evident.

C is the ground.

Judges are routinely voting for things they hate, because the debaters present them little choice.     Theory is everyone’s villain: nobody refers to a theory heavy debate as a classic. We speak of rounds “devolving” to theory battles, designating them for a lower plane of evolution. It leads to unhappy judges, lowered speaker points, and unsatisfying rounds – all assertions that need little warrant.

Theory doesn’t win. Sure, it wins rounds – a lot of them. But it doesn’t tend to win tournaments.     Debaters who resort to theory a lot are the under performers – the debaters who never seem to reach the level of success their skill would suggest for them. The big championships tend to be won by the debaters who engage in it least.     Theory can win when both debaters do it, as the judge wishes to be elsewhere while signing the ballot. Theory can win when the debater using it is much better versed in it than their opponent – a round which the theory debater would have won anyway.     It can also win in the cheap shot round – throwing a trick out there, a snake hidden in the weeds, to snatch a victory from a better debater. The last approach is seductive to sophomores, struggling in their first varsity rounds. It also only works for sophomores – once a debater does it enough, they cease to catch anyone unawares, as their opponents grow alert to the threat.

Theory doesn’t help LD. The more theory has grown in the last four years, the more LD participation numbers have dropped. Theory is not useful beyond debate. What little it does teach – logic, extemping arguments – substantive discussion teaches better. Theory could easily drive students away – it’s boring. It’s a skill that will give them nothing past LD.     We’re left with the debaters who would have stuck around anyway – debaters who are glad to win theory because they’re in it to win, and don’t especially care about how they get there.     Debaters run it as a time sink, which crowds out actual substantive debate by definition.

Theory encourages more abusive affirmatives in the first place. If every debate is just going to devolve to theory anyway, there’s little penalty to breaking realistic norms with intent. Why not run an abusive, shifting and non-topical plan, when you’re going to have to win a theory debate anyway? May as well start off with a lead on substance.     This year, I hear a lot of angst at the rise of critical race theory arguments or other non-topical cases based on identity, which some LDers have imported from policy. I wonder how an LD debater who runs mutually exclusive theory interpretations can possibly object to abandoning topical debate in favor of identity arguments, when what it’s really replacing is theory games involving invented rules.

Theory blocks access to LD.     It’s totally opaque in most cases, as ground arguments speed on by incomprehensibly; I rarely even bother trying to flow it, given I can’t understand and don’t pretend to care. The local debater or debater trying out LD for the first time is just blown out of the round, and then figures they should look at PF or mock trial. There’s nothing wrong with PF or mock trial, but there’s something wrong when someone who really loves philosophy and would be happiest in LD settles for them because they can’t make headway against theory.

Theory is the preserve of those who can afford camp. Research about topical literature is available to all. Research about identity and performance is likewise available to all.     Camp makes arguing these things easier, but it’s not necessary.     Theory, however, can be learned nowhere else.     It rose in part so camps could justify their cost – it’s the only way, short of rigging the topic votes, that a camp can provide arguments guaranteed to be useful in the coming school year.     But their utility comes at a cost; since there’s no external way to learn about theory or practice it, beyond the bounds of a large coaching staff or affording camp, it becomes a gateway issue, a hurdle to those who have neither. It’s hard to teach oneself substantive debate and philosophy, but the internet and the library do afford the chance. It’s impossible to teach oneself theory, since it’s all about technique, and most of that technique is about freezing your opponent out of rounds in the first place.

Theory prevents the formation of actual norms in the community. If we had the occasional theory everyone asserts is necessary – some viable limits on the topic, and the approaches that affirmatives and negatives take with it – then the argument would hold. But in a world where debaters are constantly inventing rules mid-round and accusing their opponents of violating them – when the violation comes ahead of the interpretation – it’s impossible to settle on actual norms. It’s further impossible when the educators are removed from the question. Judges are admonished not to intervene, which means we’re unable to use the debate round as a platform to help establish those norms and get past most of the frivolous theory out there.     Theory can never reach an actual answer in the round; if we did, the debaters who rely on it would just move the goalposts.

Theory has no impact debate. Education and fairness are rarely sketched out arguments, but instead are watchwords, talismans invoked but not explained. Rarely are LD theory impacts actually tailored to the violation; instead they are rote incantations with little value beyond their ritualistic necessity.

Theory is impossible to judge, and to train judges in.     Without a reference to the rest of the world, there’s no way a judge can gauge theory arguments on anything other than crosshatched tallies of argument quantity. I can tell you whether an economic argument or a moral one has internal sense; I cannot do the same of theory arguments. Debaters complain about random outcomes to theory debates, and then those same debaters become judges and understand – now only too late to run something else as a debater.

D, of course, is the impacts.

Theory hurts fairness, freezing the debater without money or resources even further by pinning debates on esoteric nonsense that give automatic wins to those who invoke it. It makes preparation infinite, as you can never prepare for the invented rules of your opponent. It excludes people without the time or the inclination to learn material that never will be useful again.

Theory hurts education. It displaces topical debate, a lot of it. It displaces substantive non-topical debate, too. It lets negatives who haven’t prepared enough get away with using it as a filler. It prevents both sides from having to think about responding to novel arguments, to engage in the crucial skill of applying evidence and reasoning in a way they hadn’t thought of to answer a new position.     It encourages frivolous affs who know full well nothing will be extended.     And it reduces the numbers of debaters, and even programs in LD in the first place.

The last impact is a personal one. If theory keeps being a dominant part of LD, then LD will cease being a dominant presence in my life. Among the many major impacts is a minor one – it’s boring me to tears. I’ll coach something else, if at all, and even recommend that Lexington stop doing it. It’s a waste, of time, effort and money, to play in this self-referential sandbox. I’m not sure why I do it even now. If it lasts much longer, I won’t, and I’ll steer others away it as well.     It doesn’t help matters that next year’s policy topic is one I am really interested in and have technical expertise in.     This minor impact becomes major because I’m not alone in feeling that way.

E is the alternative. OK, so this just became a K.     You’re going to have to cope.

Without some theory, we go back to the land of eighty three NIBS, of floating advocacy, of made up evidence, or whatever else got us started down the path.  But the status quo means the solution has become worse than the illness. So we require means to keep the limits without the excess.

So I propose we add one rule to theory that can sweep aside many others: every interpretation should be warranted with a card.     Before a debater may run theory in a round, they should first justify the interpretation and standard on real grounds in public writing, or have a coach do the same.

That solves many of the harms above. It allows for rules to be fleshed out in an open arena, devoid of the competitive pressures, time limits and necessity to vote a round entails. It could be two competing theory interpretations are both wrong – a judge still must vote for one of them, but in an open forum, the audience may easily reject both.     Therefore, bad rules or norms can be winnowed out. A good proposed norm will stand the scrutiny of many voices, while a harmful or spurious rule will quickly grow a list of arguments against it.

It allows for adult participation in the argument. Adults have no voice in the course of a debate, which is proper – but adults should have a voice in the formation of norms, which itself is the curriculum of debate in a real way.     If theory must be cited, then a coach can generate those citations, or argue against them as easily as a debater.

Publication is no bar to anyone; there’s essentially infinite space on the debate web, and few of the sites aren’t looking for content. Getting a coherent theory article published should be possible for anyone. And once online, they become a resource to those who can’t afford the tuition and travel of camp; a debater can self-educate on theory, and prepare for a circuit tournament from a local league. Theory cards would have to carry the same citations as any other, and the ground and impact level debate would be already developed within those cards.

About the only harm is that it would limit what you could do in a round when something truly bizarre and objectionable emerges. In that case, you might lose a round – a somewhat less serious harm than debate practices eating at the very fabric of the event.     Or, you’d have to think about the arguments raised and the parallels to evidence and theory already established – which would, incidentally, be a critical educational goal of debate in the first place.     Independent thinking isn’t so bad, once you get used to it.

Answering innumeracy with data

He still doesn’t understand my point about increased mutuality, but I’ll write that up when it’s not   12:30 AM on a Tuesday.

For now:

  • Percentage of 1-off judges at Lexington:     8.46%
  • Percentage of 1-offs at Columbia:   8.33%

Man, really blew mutuality to shreds with those 9 tiers at Lex, didn’t we?

At Columbia, 12.5% of the VLD pool did not pref; at Lexington it was only 9%, thus making the job harder at Lexington to boot.     As we say in the business, “No Link.”

 

Potshot #2

Menick is reaching a flawed conclusion, in my opinion, not because his reasoning is unsound — try not to faint of shock — but because his underlying assumptions are.

Assumption #1: My pref sheet is based on paradigms.

Hah, as if.   The nether regions of the pref sheet are sometimes based on a reading, or the mere existence, of a paradigm.   The meat of the pref sheet, however, is based on first hand experience with judges.   We keep a written log of our RFDs in our team Dropbox; I read those regularly to adjust our pref sheets, because that’s actual data, and not just random assertions and opinions like the paradigm represents.     I’ve never read the paradigms of our top judges; I rely instead on being in the room when they say “I vote on theory” and ignore their assertion that they never will.

As such I find judges, the ones I prefer anyway, rather predictable.   When my debaters lose a round, they get an L; when they win one, they get a W, and we can talk about how to make the former turn into the latter.     99 times out of 100 I can figure out why they lost a given judge and most of those times, it’s because they ignored something I told them to do beforehand.   The other 1 time, the pref sheet probably changes.   My pref sheet isn’t about converting Ls into Ws; it’s about winning when we do win the debate, and being able to coach beforehand.

Remember, señor Menick, that the folks you’re hearing from are those coming into tab suggesting that you find them a better panel, as if you hadn’t already thought to try.   It takes someone rather unfamiliar with the way things work to imagine that tab rooms put out horrendous panels and withhold good ones until asked.   In short, you’re hearing only from people who don’t know what they’re doing, and drawing general conclusions from that data.   Talk about your flimsy evidence.

Assumption #2: Good pref sheets can win all the rounds!!!

A good chunk of rounds are yours no matter the panel; a good chunk of rounds likewise are impossible to win.   If you’re a senior with ten bids against a sophomore with ten cards, you’re going to win unless you do something tragic, even in front of a 1-5 judge.   The pref sheet isn’t about that; it’s about helping you in the marginal debates.   Which debates are marginal depends on what your level is; a younger team should have different prefs than an older.

Assumption #3: The W/L is the only concern of the pref sheet

This assumption is the most important of the set.   The number I hang on a judge isn’t entirely about the likelihood they’ll vote for us.   It’s just as much informed by the type of debate that judge would like to hear.   If you don’t like debating theory, then you de-pref the theoriest of the theory judges, even if one or two of them is likely to vote for you anyway.   The aim here is not to win rounds you would have lost otherwise, but to have debates you find enjoyable and are prepared for.

NStar was a mighty LARPer, and was most at home with DAs and CPs and such.   If some framework-happy sophomore in her first varsity tournament came along, and hit him round 2 in front of a 1-2 judge in her favor, a judge who positively loves philosophical framework debate, she’d still be toast.     But she could argue the kind of debate she wanted, and he could not, despite being better at it.   So even with the W, a harm is caused.   It’s sometimes an unavoidable harm, but it’s one the pref system is designed to minimize; and it’s one that blunt, imprecise tiers minimize less well.

Note that it is not a harm that NStar had to debate framework; it’s simply relatively unfair that one debater got to steer the debate into her own home turf and the other didn’t.   A better outcome is a judge who likes yet a third style of debate, and so both debaters have to adapt equally.   That is, after all, the idea behind mutuality, and an argument for the maximal mutuality possible.

At a wider level, too, I’ll pref differently for younger debaters.   Some judges are not as good for us stylistically, but they’re great educators and can give excellent feedback.   I won’t stake a junior or senior’s last bid round on being able to adapt to them in front of their favoritest debaters; but I might take the chance to get a good post-round for a student who is going to lose those rounds anyway.

Assumption #4: Team’s opinions don’t matter

Take away everything else, denounce it as the foul lies of a dirty Papist or what have you; and you’re still left with a final thought: the perception of fairness sometimes matters as much as the reality.   If a rating is entirely about unfounded imprecise opinions — which I would assert might be true for some people’s pref sheets but isn’t of mine — those opinions still matter.   A kid walking into a debate where she feels she has no shot to win because of the judge, likely will not, even if she actually had a decent shot after all.

There are a lot of reasons to de-prefer a judge; there’s the judge who might actually like your style a great deal but freaks out out, or the college freshman judge who you have a crush on and can’t string two words together in front of.   There are a host of considerations that go into a pref sheet, and some of the are opaque to the tabber; if we’re going to have the tool at all, it may as well be as good as you can make it.

RFD

Finally, to steal a page from debate; there is no offense in the round for less precise categories.   I’ve given a half dozen or so positive reasons for more precision; thus far all I’ve heard in reply is doubt whether the precision achieves a real effect.   But without any affirmative reason to prefer blunter categories, who cares?   Why is a tournament better for having 4 categories instead of 8 or 12 or 16?   All I’ve heard argued is defense: doubt that the 8 category tournament is better than the 4 category one.   There’s no argument on my flow of anything being harmed by having smaller, more numerous categories.   Sure, an 8 tier system will have more 1-2 matchups, but if it makes you feel better, all those 1-2 matchups would be 1-1s in a 4 tier system; and there’ll be fewer of them on the pairing than there would be hiding underneath those 1-1s.   Better for the debaters and the judges both; though perhaps worse for perfectionists tabbers.   Speaking as a perfectionist tabber, surely my sensibilities are an unimportant factor here.

In absence of offense for the larger category pref sheet then, I’m sticking to, and advocating for, more of ’em.

I’ll have my tiers and eat them too

Menick contends that fewer tiers are fine, thanks.   I’m definitely in the more-is-better school with categories.   Fewer categories needlessly throws away information that could be used by tab to make more mutual pairings, is why.

I think the point of difference is that he   defines a “mutual” matchup as a matchup where the two judges are in the same category, and anything else as imperfect.   But the real picture is murkier than that; simply making the categories larger and thereby forcing me to rate more judges in a category does not magically make all those judges equally preferred to my debaters.

Suppose one tournament has 4 categories and another 8; and the first delivers 100% mutual matchups, and the second has a number of one-offs on the pairing.   The second tournament will have delivered the more mutual judging.   The 4-category tournament will have many more matchups that are just as non-mutual as those 8 category one-offs.   They will only nominally be mutual to the eye of the tabber. There will be more of them, too, as the tab system no longer knows which matchups would have been 1-2s in a 8 category system, and so it can do nothing to minimize them.

When you place a 1-2 judge in an 8 category tournament, you know what you’re doing and you know there’s no better choice.   If that same tournament used 4 tiers, then you might place that same judge into the same debate, despite there being a more mutual option which is concealed by the broader, less precise categories.   The pairing looks prettier, but at the expense of the missing data which might make it fairer.   Choosing tier sizes should not be about satisfying the OCD of tab staff.

Pairing mutual matchups is becoming an automatic process, and there’s little reason to deprive this process of additional data.   The point of expanding to more categories while necessarily growing more permissive of one-off matchups is not to increase the numbers of those matchups, but to minimize the number of hidden ones.   So from a tabbing perspective there is little defense in my mind to using blunter, less precise categories.

It may be there’s a limit past which coaches are unable to make distinctions in the judging pool.   That limit is higher than 9, for me: I certainly could have filled out a pref sheet at Lex with clear distinctions between tiers; all my 1s would have been preferred to the 2s, all 2s over the 3s, etc.   The distinctions would have carried real information well down my sheet, and if I were going to the tournament, I’d want the tab staff to have that information in pairing my judging.

College debate has operated for some years under the premise that the limit of reasonable distinctions does not exist, and rates judging ordinally at most tournaments.   I think the high school community largely hasn’t followed suit only because our software wouldn’t permit it, not for any inherent reason.   At worst, finer distinctions do no harm; if you really don’t have any point of difference between 6s and 7s on your sheet, then just randomly assign them between the two ratings.   Given that I am a coach who makes those distinctions, I don’t see why I should sacrifice them because another coach does not.

So in short, I’m a computer programmer, and a data person, and I don’t see much value in sacrificing more data for less.

A thing to remember

Last year was rough for the LD community; we had flying accusations, acrimony, and internet attacks which by their nature afford few defenses.  A good number of people, both debaters and coaches, were attacked online by anonymous voices for things they did not do, which is wrong.   A good number of people were attacked for things they did do, but since the targets were mostly minors or educators and the forum was the internet, that too is wrong.

I stopped writing a lot last year, largely because of these conditions.   To speak up was to align oneself, taking a side where there should be no sides.   I am averse to conflict, and get along with just about everyone in LD.   That’s not by accident; it’s someone I have chosen to be.  I don’t dismiss people who do things I dislike, or even condemn; instead I try to find out their reasons.  Plenty of bad, unethical actions can at least be understood, if not forgiven, once you know the villain’s story.   Plenty of villains, especially at a young age, can be persuaded out of it, helped by the compassion and concern of their “enemies”.

After all, life is just a collection of more or less broken individuals; the best we can do sometimes is try not to harm each other with our jagged edges.   A lot of folks failed to avoid that last year, but many of them were young people with problems of their own, stories of their own, and our debate community failed them as much as it failed their targets.

So in retrospect, it was ill judged on my part to stay out of it.  That was as active a choice as speaking out, after all.  If all the responsible voices are silent, then only irresponsible people speak.  As a result, we never really resolved anything in LD.  We simply outlasted the issues by letting the students who served as lightning rods, unfairly or otherwise, graduate and move on.  I fear we have no better handle on how to address or prevent such things in the future.   That is our shame, and should be our challenge.

Collegiate policy debate is going through a much louder and more fundamental dispute this year.   The divide between teams running arguments based primarily on critical race theory and similar literature, and those who concentrate on the more traditional government plan/disadvantage debate, has grown sharper and more acrimonious.   There’s been active talk about splitting an already small world in half.   The divide is mostly driven by coaches and adults: the debaters seem to be mostly trying to keep their heads down and win rounds.   The nature of how their preference sheets work mean that while the “right wing” and “left wing” debaters regularly confront each other in rounds, their judges and coaches do not, and so the judges and coaches both seem uniquely uncompromising and hostile throughout this past fall.  They view each other at some level as simply enemy generals.

I’m about to be thrust into the middle of it, as I travel to LA next month to tab the USC and CSU Fullerton tournaments, together a “major” tournament swing, occupying the same space an octos bid tournament does in high school.   I will mostly keep a low profile, as it’s not my world; they’re a userbase for Tabroom to me, and I have no direct stake in their dispute.   I appreciate the value of traditional policy debate, even as I laugh at some of its excesses like the politics DA and the consult counterplan.   I can appreciate the need for boundaries like topicality, but at the same time, I cannot help but be persuaded and compelled by the criticisms of the society and debate itself which the “left wing” teams level.   I too am an outsider, though I do not wear that on my skin as others must.   Instead, I have to tell people, which is sometimes an asset, and other times a burden.

Times like last year in LD, and this year in college policy, are when debate disappoints.   When an activity dedicated to discourse and communication fails to address its own issues in a productive forum, but resorts to ad hominems and vitriol, online and in whispered conversations, we have failed in our mission on face.   We contradict our own purpose.

In both instances, the coaches and powers of debate have forgotten something about the nature of tournaments.   They forget that we cannot, and do not, educate only our own teams.   I am your students’ teacher too, and you teach mine.   At tournaments I teach Lexington, but I also teach Bronx, Scarsdale, Whitman, Greenhill, Hockaday, Harvard-Westlake, PV Peninsula… as their coaches teach Lexington.

Debaters can and should compete against one another; one of the secret sauces of debate is that the competitive aspect encourages debaters to use what they learn actively, instead of just repeating it undigested, as on a standardized test.   They have to assimilate information well enough to win rounds on it, and that teaches them a wider body of material with more depth than nearly any high school class.   Debaters can challenge and contend with each other all they want, and not harm debate itself; their competitive drive is our engine.

But coaches should not.   Coaches should see themselves as responsible for the whole of debate, not just their portion of it.   We realize this when prompted, and pay lip service to it occasionally, but do not remember it enough.   Smearing a debater online is a competitive tactic, meant to make the debater less successful; it doesn’t actually address any negative behavior, real or imagined, that debater may have committed.   Attacking judges online for voting on topicality and framework, or for failing to do so, is a competitive tactic, concerned about the wins instead of the message.

In the end, when we start viewing some coaches as “them” and not all part of the grand “us”, be it because of debating style, camps, or worst of all because of race, gender or identity, then we have ceased to be coaches.   The only “us” and “them” is the line between a coach and a debater.   The debaters should play the game, play it hard and fast and to win.   However, as coaches, we lose the right to make winning supersede our responsibility to debate itself, and each others’ debaters.  A good coach is not always a successful coach; and a coach who only aims for success is a bad one.

If I could say something at the start of each tournament, I’d say: be colleagues first and antagonists second.     Say something helpful every tournament to your biggest rival, your least favorite team, and the debater whose style is most unlike your own.   If a debater is upset, ask why; if a debater wins a big round, congratulate them no matter who they defeated to do it, and no matter if you agree with the judges’ decisions.   Wish your opponent good luck before you try and defeat them.   In short: live up to this contest we have built together, and cannot have without each other.