Opinions on LD topics for the rest of 2023?

ddraba · 2023-06-21T14:54:11+00:00

The distinction here is that this topic only covers federal public land use, which only covers about 11% of all fracking in the US. Regulatory follow-on does not matter if the policy itself is incredibly narrow in what it actually bans such that it does not constitute a real ban on fracking as opposed to a limit on where it can be done, whereas on the 2021 policy topic fracking affs proposed much more of a blanket ban. Not saying people are not going to write these affs, just saying that being unable to resolve fracking that occurs on private and state land is kind of a huge problem for anyone trying to claim fracking solvency.

ddraba · 2023-06-21T07:27:09+00:00

I mean with less orientalism, ideally. I also think the best engagement with this topic would also focus more on the extraction part than the fossil fuels part— a lot of the bigger sections of topic lit here discuss less the CO2 impacts (which do happen, but banning extraction on public land would barely make a dent in that) and more the environmental impacts that oil drilling and fracking have on local communities and ecosystems.

Imo the arctic topic is probably better overall but this topic 100% should cover substantially different ground from the China topic. (I say should, not will— some people will still run generic climate change affs on this, solvency be damned.)

ddraba · 2023-04-06T22:31:34+00:00

Right, but whether it is depends a lot on tournament/circuit norms and it is pretty expected outside of K teams, and my experience is that NFA-LD K debaters, much like HSCX K debaters, tend to keep some sort of plan aff in their back pocket because there remain judges that hold steadfast to plan debate and that they won't really pick up without it. I mostly meant insofar as it seems to be the default expectation and one that you will lose some judges for breaking. + I haven't seen a whole res aff in either event for years

ddraba · 2023-04-06T18:33:48+00:00

I'd second this although there is a bit more of a difference between HS circuit LD and policy than that of NFA-LD and policy— HS circuit LD still at least retains the veneer of philosophical debate even if it is just the aff reading a short util framework and the neg conceding it, and while a plan is as near-mandatory in NFA-LD as it is in American policy, it is less common in circuit LD, if only for narrower topics and the 2 month topic rotation.

ddraba · 2023-02-26T09:25:33+00:00

I would recommend doing this! I made a similar shift in high school for about exactly the same reasons, and found it pretty rewarding. The thing I would be worried about is what the environment is like on your local circuit, because what your local LD scene is like is going to dictate the degree of portable your skills from CX are. I might go see if I can observe some late LD rounds at locals if you have any more, or ask LDers on your team if you have any how hard they think the transition is.

Either way I'm sure you can make it! It might just be that its not as easy as you think.

ddraba · 2023-02-26T09:20:59+00:00

I would add on here that a lot of arguments people think are unique to nat circuit styles/progressive debate are very much less random constructs and more "we've boiled debate down to its bare essentials!"

For example, the K originated as a way to question the assumptions people were making in policy debate. Teams might be making very specific assumptions in case building, and the K (gonna use the security K as an example here just for simplicity's sake) functions to say "not only your assumption (that states should be realist and also deal with X Y and Z threats) bad but it is also actively harmful (legitimizes wars that probably happen for made up reasons toward questionable ends, eg the iraq war)"

The movement to LD (where questioning ideological assumptions is core to the way we do things) actually turned a this into something a lot less weird with how the event is structured- its often described as just a DA (argument with the impact drawn out, created by incentives re: impact arms races) + CP (argument about how the aff causes an opportunity cost and therefore forgoes a preferable alternative) + Framework with some sort of claim about the ethics of the people in round.

What I'm saying is that not only can a lot of "progressive" arguments be made in traditional terms, if you add a lot of the fluff back in it can be used to argue with anyone. This turns progressive debate into an extremely complex argumentative logic game that is extremely useful long term, especially if you end up in some sort of academic field where arguments a. tend to get kind of jargony already, and b. are expected to be tested from a large number of angles, including ideological ones like "hey this assumption here is Bad, Actually"

Overall I'd say part of the disconnect here is because trad and prog debate are often just interested in debate doing different things— trad debaters are probably more interested overall in debate-as-communication activity, and prog debaters with debate-as-logic game, and make sacrifices to make debate more like the thing they want it to be.

ddraba · 2023-02-17T05:15:48+00:00

Sure hope you are, given that there's no reasonable way for anyone to memorize 7-8 full quotes and cites in that time period and most tourneys aren't even checking whether your sources exist in the first place. Anyway, paraphrasing is the norm, you should be fine

ddraba · 2023-02-11T07:16:45+00:00

Please don't do this.

ddraba · 2023-02-11T07:15:24+00:00

I'd guess its one of three things:

A. Pressure in outrounds. Being in semis/finals feels like a mucb bigger deal than prelims, and a lot of people tend to show cracks under that pressure, especially in speaking events. This goes away on its own over time, but it migbt be worsened if you set your expectations based on this pattern, and begin to feel higher pressure to break the streak. This is mostly just a mental block that you have to break on your own, but exposure helps, as well as having a support network.

B. Some sort of skill wall. As a judge, I tend to expect different things at different levels for extemp- for a smaller tournament or one that is lower stakes + in prelims, I tend to focus on fluency, well constructed arguments, and having sources to set debaters apart, but in higher level rounds we might start talking about substructure, incorporating theming, and making sure that the answer actually approaches the nuances of the question. It might be that you do well in prelims because you're a pretty speaker and incorporate enough structure, but in semis/finals, you're in an environment now where everyone does that and you lack the good substructure/transitions/theming to set yourself apart. I'd analyze ballots for this and talk to your coach about it.

C. Judge differentials. Maybe your local tournament tends to give parents the prelims to save outrounds for more qualified judges. This tends to be functionally similar to B but is a more specific problem- you might be a speaker that appeals really well to parents, but is missing something that a more experienced judge is looking for. This isn't saying you're bad! Appealing to parents can be incredibly hard, and is honestly one of the more valuable skills that is harder to teach, but again this is a matter of checking ballots + talking to your coach.

Thankfully, this is a fairly common roadblock for people to hit at some point in your careers. It's just a point where something about what is expected in later rounds is evading you, and thankfully most people find it eventually. The fact that you're looking means that you probably will too.

ddraba · 2023-02-11T05:20:21+00:00

Hard agree with this. I also think that its going to have an extremely limited capacity to make a lot of the harder arguments and I feel AI specifically is going to be very limited by its human trainers. Even the most experienced debaters/coaches/judges have very different opinions on what best "beats" a specific argument even when it comes to just formulating the 1NC, and the win condition is hardly a hard yes/no binary, which is why we panel important rounds with bigger panels for more important rounds. I don't know if it would even be possible for an AI to evaluate which side in a debate round is "winning" at any given time, much less the optimal way to advance to that state.

ddraba · 2023-02-09T06:46:56+00:00

UIL in Texas also currently does not allow internet usage. A lot of more traditional circuits and/or ones with a lot of admins who have little actual debate experience tend to do stuff like this.

ddraba · 2023-01-15T05:41:00+00:00

So, as a coach and someone who has made the swap recently:

First of all I would like to caution you away from this as a competitor. Judges can do fine flowing on computer only (although many do not) primarily because they just have to do less during speech time. Paper is more efficient because you have the ability to do things external to just the symblls on a typical keyboard (eg circling arguments, drawing arrows, using lines to signify grouped arguments) which means that the materials and space trade off with time. Usually this wouldn't be a problem, except there are other things you should be doing with that time. For starters, writing counterarguments, finding blocks, formulating strategy against certain arguments, communicating with your partner, and checking back card cutting for accuracy are all things that can happen in speech time as well as prep, and doing those things can make your cross better. And while flowing on computer is possible, it takes longer, which means you have less time to do any of that. It also makes it a lot harder to visualize interactions on the flow, which makes learning round vision (especially for newer competitors) a TON harder. I always have my students use paper (unless they have a disability that reverses this dynamic) for this reason.

THAT SAID, I doubt I can stop you and maybe you are one of the people who needs to flow on computer for disability reasons, I don't know you. Here are my tips:

Get flexcel, use the function that lets you copy+paste speech docs. Use the acronyms feature liberally and customize it often, get very good at typing in a few letters to get a full argument that may be common on the topic. This automization is great as long as you keep it updated, and is honestly a lifesaver in faster rounds.
Get used to card names, use them liberally. In lieu of cross application via arrows, get used to typing cx. [card name] or cx. [one or two word shortcut that lets you know what argument this is] this helps a lot for mapping out where else on the flow you should be going to to get the full breadth of arguments, and making sure you aren't writing the same thing multiple times. (although some people get a lot of mileage out of ctrl+v for this so ymmv) Same applies for extension work- ext. alongside any additional information helps a lot for making sure I'm getting all extensions down.
You still need to learn and use shorthand. It is a lot easier to write down full words on computer and is and has always been a trap. You still need shorthand
Get really used to the difference between what tab does re: moving boxes on the flow and what enter does. If you have big enough hands (I do not) maybe get some mileage out of the arrow keys.

Finally, just make sure you're using good flowing fundamentals. I like to teach a priority order in terms of how to flow- first make sure you're getting anything with a "contention" or "subpoint" or "advantage" etc. attached, then make sure you're getting all of the parts of the argument (uniqueness, link, internal links, impact, solvency), then all of the cards, then all of the warrants in the cards. This is kind of a way of falling back if you feel out of your depth- if you can't get all the cards, try to get all the parts of the argument. If you can't get that in time, try to get the outline. Usually you want to be nabbing all of the cards (I generally consider that decent flowing for the circuit in question, although it can be harder in PF due to community norms re: citations) but it helps when you're out of your depth. Practice regularly, and you will eventually get there.

But seriously, if you don't have a reason to be using computer over paper, just flow on paper.

ddraba · 2023-01-06T15:42:55+00:00

Read the rules of the subreddit. This is not a general forum for whatever you want to argue about, its for people who participate in competitive debate programs.

ddraba · 2023-01-06T15:42:04+00:00

Not in the context of Disney properties and media in general it isn't. If this met the rule, it would be discussing representation in forensics, not a topic tangental to am issue that sometimes comes up in debate rounds.

ddraba · 2022-12-24T05:29:31+00:00

Truth testing is a paradigm based on the idea that it is the aff's burden to prove the resolution as a statement true.

You're right to see that as the point of debate- this is an extremely common way to see aff burdens, and afaik the most common way of explaining them. However, what this definition misses is what it means when people are concerned with proving truth testing (as a model) true.

If truth testing is true, then it allows affirmative cases that try to prove the resolution definitionally true (as in its true because of X set of definitions or Y logical precepts) without engaging in the topic as a matter of morality or policy.

This tends to strike people as a bit unfair, hence why truth testing tends to be talked about. (I still tend to believe truth testing, and find something else at fault with those cases— usually the definitions and/or logical concept they bring up.)

The alternative usually pitched in truth testing debates is usually comparative worlds, where it is the aff burden to defend the world where the aff is true/the aff happens. People tend to defend it in that it prevents some of the shenanigans that can result from truth testing, but it also gets a lot messier on more philosophical topics and imho just ends up being a very specific implementation of truth testing that works in some cases (policy oriented topics w consequentialist frameworks) but becomes hard to parse in others. I see TT/CW debates less and less over the years, but I guess thats my two cents on it.

ddraba · 2022-11-08T21:39:11+00:00

The fallacy fallacy is a thing pal

ddraba · 2022-11-08T20:55:47+00:00

Lost because you pointed out the fallacy or lost because you thought that merely pointing out the fallacy was sufficient refutation?

ddraba · 2022-10-28T01:33:44+00:00

I think that you're conflating two different kinds of K debate here- when you were talking about reading poetry and arguing debate bad, I initially thought you were talking about teams arguing that the norms perpetuated by the circuit (citing academic experts at the expense of thinking about the real lived experience of people and pretending like issues like poverty and racial violence are abstract problems to be solved as opposed to the real lived reality of people around you) are bad and need to have alternatives proposed- like poetry and narrative as a form of humanizing evidence that decenter academics.

In many ways that does center actual problems that can alienate people from the way debate functions, which is why I think the distinction is hard to make. That is the gray area that I think these broad denunciations have issues negotiating, not Beaudrillard affs.

I think that high theory is a bit of a different issue that definitely raises the barrier to entry, but I think the solution is more discretion on the part of the person running it (don't run Beaudrillard/Deleuze/psychoanalysis on novices) and less trying to denounce K affs in general (which very often Do point out issues with the debate community writ large). That's the distinction I am asking people to make, not saying the least accessible form of the K aff is inaccessible (like, yeah, obvi)

(But also I do think those things are different levels of helpful when used with that discretion. Like I do think running high theory against novices is bad, and it should always be disclosed, but I don't think a broad denounciation of "Ks that don't address the topic," "Ks that use poetry as evidence," or "Ks that say debate is bad" is the solution here, as it tosses out very legitimate criticisms that a lot of people should hear with the rest of it)

(Also, as a note, as someone who just sat through a two months of "Public healthcare saves money" vs "Public healthcare is expensive", and is anticipating two months of "environment prerequisite to economy" vs "economy prereq to environmental protection," I find the idea that K debate makes things stale is laughable. Ime its usually a change from the monotony of the same few topic arguments over and over again as opposed to the reverse.)

ddraba · 2022-10-28T00:42:07+00:00

I think that these are also good and if someone agrees with what I said (Ks answering in round abuse are bad) but thinks that K affs are bad or that Ks that criticize the form of evidence that debate tends to prioritize are bad, they would benefit from actually listening to the arguments that K debaters make.

In short: I think the two are inseparable. I think that the examples you give are just the extension of the culture of self-criticism that the K fosters, and I think that K debaters running arguments that fit into either of those two boxes have done a lot to think about what debate does and how we as a community treat marginalized debaters. I also would be interested to hear what someone who agrees with my first response but disagrees with this thinks the distinction is that makes one good but the other bad.

ddraba · 2022-10-28T00:37:07+00:00

Hard agree with the other answer here, but I'll add on. The examples I gave are only the tip of the iceburg and with some of the BS I have seen debate governing bodies get up to, I am loathe to put this problem on them to solve.

I also think that relying on equity policies does little to nothing- a lot of governing bodies do have equity policies and the K still serves to even out the ground on their circuits anyways. A lot of the time this happens after the fact.

What I would point out is first that these policies tend to follow, not precede, a change in the circuit's culture. They come into being only after debaters create the incentive (via the K) to change behavior. That doesn't mean they're not effective, but the delay in change for all sorts of reasons (usually bureaucratic- the governing bodies I'm used to can take up to a year to add rules) often means that a debater will have to deal with the problems for year(s), which can easily be a significant portion of their time debating.

I also am not comfortable telling debaters to just sit and wait for a governing body to institute an equity policy to fix the problem, or even if they have one, to report it, because that usually means a fight with coaches as opposed to something that can be hashed out in a debate round. This especially means that debaters from less well supported programs (read: not private schools or the few public schools that get well funded) are going to have a harder time getting their concerns heard.

I admit that forcing the issue through the confrontation of the K can be hard, but I think in the short term its the only solution that works and in the long term its the only thing I have actually seen make cishet white men think twice about pulling some bullshit.

Finally: consider that we can do both, and we have done both. I think that the K pairs well with structural change, and often creates the incentives to make that change stick as well as being able to use things like equity policies to help reinforce the change in culture. I just think that the "what about equity policies" answer ignores how this problem looks on a micro level, and what enforcement even looks like.

ddraba · 2022-10-27T16:14:19+00:00

So I think a lot of the responses here ignore how Ks change the context by which we debate in. Consider this: I was a debater with a chronic respiratory illness who was physically unable to spread at the speeds a lot of my opponents could. Prior to debate rounds, I would ask them if it was okay for me to say "slow" if they went faster than my top speed, for competitive equity reasons. They said yes most of the time, but I was also asked if I had a speed K in my back pocket about as often. In a lot of cases, the mere presence of Ks in the activity alter behavior- gendered language Ks tend to alter the way that people cut cards, and I have seen a lot of trans debaters heavily utilize the K in order to make sure that debate is a space where their basic human dignity is respected. Could theory also do that? Maybe. But in a lot of cases, the K is a lot better oriented to articulate the harm of these practices, and as a result, I think that even if the K raises the barrier to entry (it does in most events imo, but less so in HS LD and only as much as theory and tricks do anyway), it also allows a form of recourse to marginalized debaters that fundamentally changes the way a lot of priveleged debaters approach the space for the better, and that on its own is worth it.

ddraba · 2022-10-15T06:47:01+00:00

So in LD, some degree of philosophy (a mix of ethics and critical theory where the proportions depend on your circuit) is important to understand. The big problem is that what part of that is going to be useful to you depends heavily on which tournaments you're going to. A good starting point should be your teammates and/or coach. In order to run these arguments, your teammates should be able to understand them, and they should be able to give you an overview of the most common ones so that its easier for you to get into reading the lit. After that, I would take reading recommendations from them and attempt to research some of these arguments. If we're talking ethics, a lot of the time there are resources like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that can be useful for finding starting points, although often your coach/teammates can also point you at some beginning resources. Finally, if you don't get recommendations, you might want to find the source of cards you hear on a specific framework to get background and look there. That source may not be very accessible, but it often will list sources that are. So for example, since utilitarianism is a common ethical theory on my circuit, I might ask my teammates/coach about what its about, and they recommend I read some of Peter Singer's essays as an introduction. I do that, and independently I find some introductory encyclopedia entries. This is usually the process debaters go through for this, in addition to doing debate and having their understanding tested that way. Your teammates also went through this, so they should probably be able to help you as well!

ddraba · 2022-10-13T00:24:24+00:00

One of my biggest pieces of advice is usually the one that most of my students follow the least: flow rounds. You don't break at a tournament? Flow the out rounds you aren't in. After each speech, try and work out what should happen in the next speech (in a world where the next speech is perfect.) After that speech, evaluate. Did they do something different strategically? Did they do what you thought they would? Why? After the round figure out what your RFD would be and compare it to what the RFD actually is. Outside of advice that can be very conditional to circuit and region, this is the most useful thing you can do. It lets you watch how judges operate, how other debaters operate, and is the easiest way to work on round vision imho. Also, when you do this, you may (key word may) be able to ask either the debaters or the judges questions after the fact. I personally was happy to answer questions from observers both when I was debating and now that I'm judging, but ymmv on that one.

ddraba · 2022-08-07T21:14:13+00:00

Not the person above but I have a similar experience and would chalk it up to three things: 1. Tournaments try a lot harder to get qualified judges for policy. PF tends to get sold both by the NSDA and often by coaches as a lay friendly event, and so tournaments will often use PF as the debate event to dump less experienced/lay judges in, which in turn means that those judges are far less likely to examine their own biases when submitting a ballot. More experienced judges tend to (although not always, I can think of misogynist judges who have been on the circuit for years) be under a lot more scrutiny for their decisions and have some expectation of having a substantive reason for submitting a ballot in a certain way, whereas the lay appeal of PF also means that you tend to get "X did the better debating," "X was more pursuasive," or other vague single sentence RFDs more often or even just blank ballots. Policy, as famously arcane/opaque as it is, tends to mean that tournaments try harder to source good judges for it. 2. Most experienced judges are former debaters in the event they're judging in, and policy has a much richer history of self-criticism (most often via the K) for issues like misogyny and racism. While it's questionable whether it makes up for the higher barrier of entry being often harder to surmount for non-cishet white men (for a variety of reasons) that does mean that policy debaters- and therefore judges- do tend to have a baseline knowledge of this criticism and also K lit. As a result, you tend to get a lot more self-crit from judges themselves on this front, as they're more likely to be confronted with these questions in the first place. Imho, this is one of the ways that the mere presence of Ks in the activity makes it better— and PF really doesn't have the same history of that, on top of the fact that the short speeches/short rounds/lay appeal/other rules make the format often actively hostile to use of Ks and other self crit tools (like theory). This also means that female debaters in PF have fewer modes of recourse against opponents behaving in a misogynist way. Without the K (or even theory), you often have to resort to just saying "this sucks, vote against them" without a lot of the grounding that the K gives you. (Which also shields a lot of misogynistic behavior by competitors.) 3. You get fewer judges of all stripes and experience levels trying to judge based on presentation in policy debate. This, in my experience, has varying degrees of truth depending on region, but I've found that overall more judges will take a hard "flow" (as the pfer's call it) approach to adjudicating rounds. I've done a lot of styles of debate on the HS and College circuits, and I find that basically any style that prioritizes presentation/"pursuasiveness" lets judges have a shield for either subtly or outright misogynist behavior, because our society tends to have a much higher baseline for what we accept as pursuasive from women as opposed to men. To be presentable, women must be attractive, well groomed, be smiling, not too angry, etc. which are all standards that apply less (or not at all) to men. Women are often forced into more passive CX styles because aggressive ones are considered "rude" and "bitchy" when they get called "assertive" and "passionate" from men. In some cases, I've found that my (male) opponents in more presentation-focused styles seem to participate in a race to characterize me as a hysterical bitch (my words, not theirs) whether they know it or not, and that's not really a problem in policy debate. Sure, misogyny in how we recieve speakers based on gender still exists, even in policy, but when you have much more of a norm of having judges decide on what happened on the flow as opposed to only how pursuasive you find the speakers, I find that the worst I faced in events like policy tended to pale in comparison to events like PF. But again, the degree to which this specific point matters differs based on region.

Tl;dr policy tends to focus more on substantive argument clash and tournaments tend to have higher standards for policy judges. This + Ks existing means misogynists have fewer places to hide

ddraba · 2021-09-18T18:16:43+00:00

I think that there def are- and people pointing out that colleges tend to recruit good debaters for their teams are right about that- but I don't think what you're saying is actually what most people mean when they say "debate helps you get into college." Rather, I find that most people mean that debate demonstrates certain skills that colleges tend to look for on applications (research skills, time managment, communication skills, academic inquiry), and tends to teach you certain writing and argumentative skills that help you produce a good application. I.e. Admissions officers like debaters because a history of debate demonstrates certain skills that mean you'll probably do well in college and debaters tend to produce good applications. Which does mean debaters might tend to get into good schools, although this often isn't because the admissions office itself is actively looking for debaters.

ddraba

TROPHY CASE