How To Lose

A bit of a digression, perhaps.  Nominally this blog is supposed to show you how to win parliamentary debate rounds.  But, try as we all might, eventually we'll end up losing one or two along the way.

So, let's set the scene.  You come out of a debate round brimming with confidence.  You walk back into the room.  "I vote for (not you.)"  How should you proceed?

1. Assume that the judge is right.

The first reason that you should assume the judge is right is that if the ballot went against you, and your name isn't Tom Schally, odds are you lost.  Might as well get used to that fact early on.

The second reason that you should do this is because one of the most underrated skills in debate is the ability to empathize.  If you cannot put yourself in the judge's shoes, how on earth can you expect to persuade them?

Finally, assuming the judge is right means that everything you do in the next 5 minutes will have the proper tone - one of honest inquisitiveness, as opposed to arrogant belligerence.

2. Reconcile your view of the debate round with your critic's.

To do this, you must listen to the RFD carefully.  Does the RFD sound anything like your side's rebuttal?  If not, the rebuttal was a failure.  Even if it highlighted the right arguments, it was not a clearly communicated vision.  Your rebuttals should be clean enough that a 10-year-old can figure out why you are winning.

If the critic's RFD doesn't account for an argument that you considered important, ask them how they evaluated that argument.  The answer should give you some insight - did they have the relevant argument flowed?  Did your side emphasize it appropriately?  Did it go over your critic's head?  Was it impacted appropriately?  Does your critic have an IQ of 70?  Etcetera.  Ask how they evaluated an argument, get an answer, rinse, repeat.

Again, the skill that you are trying to develop here is empathy.  Debate is about communication, communication is a two-way street, if you ignore your critic, then you're missing the whole point.

3. Extract strategic insights.

I'm a huge fan of asking the following question after a loss - "What needed to happen in my speech for us to win this debate round?"  Most good critics will have a pretty clear idea of what they think you should have done.  Sometimes they'll say something really valuable.  I lost a round against Long Beach at the Loma Round Robin, asked this question, got an answer, and had a much better win rate against the K in future debate rounds.

Notice that nowhere in the above list includes yelling, bitching, whining, etc.  Losing a debate round is a non-event.  A tiny, insignificant moment that nobody in the fucking world will care about.  You could be a five-year-old starving in the desert somewhere, you aren't, be grateful, and figure out how to win the next time you are in front of that critic.

Awesomeness and Fragility

As a debater I found that understanding uniqueness was a difficult challenge.  The phrase "the uniqueness controls the direction of the link" went over my head for a long time.  Part of the problems is that unlike the other elements of a disadvantage - the link, internal link, and impact, uniqueness is not a particularly descriptive term.  It's sort of intuitive what a link is - a connection between the plan and the disadvantage.  An impact is, well, an impact.  But uniqueness?  Like, what makes the disad special?

Right.  A lot of people get taught that uniqueness arguments are just arguments about the status quo.  Of course, that's partially correct, but when novice debaters hear this, they generally take it to mean that their job is to list off a bunch of random facts about the status quo, some of which have exactly zero bearing on the arguments at hand.

To really grasp uniqueness, we have to take a step back, and think about our intuitive understanding of debate in general.  For most people, it's not difficult to understand link-through-impact debate: when we talk about policies in our daily lives with our friends, we are used to arguing about what would happen if a certain policy was passed.

What we aren't used to debating about is "what is the world like right now?"  This is because, intuitively, we don't consider reality as something to be debated about.  Reality is…real…out there…an actual thing, that exists, and is something we "ought" to have a shared understanding of.  The idea of debating about whether or not it is raining outside or sunny outside is asinine.  This intuitive assumption that reality is not something that is up for debate is what makes uniqueness so difficult for many novice debaters to get a handle on.

So, to take the obvious next step, the uniqueness debate is indeed a debate about the status quo, and further, your arguments have the ability to shape what the world looks like for the purposes of the debate round.  In debate, "reality" is a lot more like the Matrix, and if you want, you can be Neo, shaping the world in such a way that it is favorable to your side of the debate round.

How do we do this?  Well, it depends on which side you are on.  Let's think intuitively.  If you are the negative, you want reality to be awesome.  The world should be an amazing place, with bunny rabbits and rolling green hills.  Why?  Well, if the world is an awesome place, the rationale for action is obviously not that strong.  "If it ain't broke, don't fix it, etc."

Further, as the negative, in addition to wanting the world to be awesome, we also want it to be fragile.  If the world is robust to various changes, then it's unlikely that the affirmative's policy will be particularly destructive to the way things are.  On the other hand, if the world is like a beautiful Ming vase perched on a very thin pedestal, well then we wouldn't want to do anything at all, would we?  Don't touch the vase!

Conversely, if we are on the affirmative, we want the world to be a terrible place.  If it's ok at the moment, that needs to be a temporary illusion, with Voldemort lurking around the corner, his arrival inevitable.  If the world sucks, then even if the plan might not work, or might have some unintended consequences, the rationale for doing something, anything at all, is extremely probable.

We also want the world to be fixable (which is actually similar to fragile.)  We want our plan to be able to change the status quo in a positive way, and we can't do that if the world is robust to the type of change we want to make.

If you internalize these concepts, you will understand how to construct uniqueness scenarios.  You aren't just listing off random facts about the world.  You are trying to paint a picture of reality that serves your interests.  If you are negative, you want to paint a picture of a world that is awesome and fragile.  If you are affirmative, the world needs to be terrible, but fixable.

More on this later.

Arguments that Annoy Me, Part 1: Phytoplankton

This is a really obnoxious argument that has found its way into parli and needs to die.  Usually the argument goes something like - Phytoplankton, the micro-organisms that live in the oceans and other waters and are at the base of the food chain for most species on earth, are extraordinarily temperature-sensitive and will go extinct if the earth warms one or two degrees.

I mean, just intuitively, this is wrong.  For chrissakes, how much temperature variability do phytoplankton experience in a given year?  Now, realize that life has been around for...a really long time.  Imagine the worst, hottest year in the last few hundred million.  Hot, right?  Yeah.  Phytoplankton survived that.  And the Ice Age, and the medieval warm period.

Oh, and the study that launched that scare - turns out the methodology was bullshit.

Pro tip: if you are losing a lot of substantive debates, maybe you should focus a little less on trying to win the impossible-to-evaluate debates on top-level uniqueness, and instead focus on reading a little bit of intutive, obvious, and true impact defense.  Like the fact that a slight increase in temperature won't destroy all life on earth.

Speaker Roles and Complementarity

Apple is awesome.  I own almost their entire suite of products, and odds are that you do too.  They just recently eclipsed ExxonMobil as the most valuable business in the entire world.  Now, clearly, there are a lot of reasons for their success, but today I'll focus on one - the notion of the Directly Responsible Individual (DRI.)

Steve Jobs made a point of ensuring that there were no "committees" at Apple.  Groups were never responsible for any decisions.  The organization may have been enormous, with hundreds of different projects going on, but there was always one single person responsible for any given project or sub-project.  The Directly Responsible Individual.

The DRI had complete say about what would happen on a project, and what the people under him or her had to do - but if they failed to deliver, they would cease to be the DRI.  It seems failure was fairly rare.  When the options were deliver or be fired, individuals delivered, because there was no one else on your committee to hide behind.

How does this relate to debate, you might ask.  Simple.  While Apple is a giant corporation and debate partnerships have…two people, the notion of having a DRIs for each debate partnership is equally important. 

The question of who should be responsible for what is a tricky one, but I believe that it comes down to this: Which speaker actually wins the debate?  On the negative, the debate is almost never over after the LOC.  It's just the opening - arguments are shelled out, but not developed, and it's rare for case responses to be totalizing.  The MOC is normally where the debate is won or lost, with the LOR having some ability disrupt the PMR and pre-empt potential affirmative visions, but little else.  On the aff, the debate is sometimes over after the MG, if the LOC is particularly weak, but most of the time, the PMR has to make the big decision about what arguments to go for and figure out where the win is. 

The MO and PMR are the control roles.  Their job is to win the debate.  And when we think of talented MOs and PMRs, the same suite of skills seems to pop up: round vision, a willingness to make big strategic decisions and strong collapses, and an ability to communicate a clear and coherent vision of the debate round.  Speed, technique, and line-by-line skills are not as important for these speeches, because the job of the PMR and the MO is not to respond to every argument, but instead to identify the most important arguments and win those. 

If the MO and the PMR are the control roles, the MG and the LO are the support roles.  This is not to denigrate them - they are not more or less important than the control roles.  They are just different, and designed to be complementary.

Since the debate generally cannot be won by the MG and the LO, their job should be to facilitate a round-winning speech by their partner.  Speed, technique, and line-by-line responses are much more important for the LO and the MG - it is essential that the LOC lay out a complete strategy that maximizes the options of the MO, just as it is essential for the MG not to concede a bunch of arguments so that the PM can communicate a winning vision in the PMR without being point-of-ordered every three seconds. 

Now for the most important point.  I believe that most dysfunction and disharmony in partnerships can be explained by this theory of speaker roles - more precisely, by the failure of one or more of the debaters to embrace or understand their role. 

When an LOC operates independently, under the assumption that they are the controlling debater, the opposition will consistently have difficulty winning important debate rounds.  Because while the LO might come up with some brilliant arguments, if the MO does not understand those arguments they cannot be used to win the debate round.  The same applies with brilliant MG arguments - if they are not explained or phrased in a way that the PMR understands them, they might as well be black holes.  It is almost impossible for an LO to prompt and MO through their speech, or for an MG to prompt a PMR, without the prep time available in policy.  If the MO doesn't get it, the opp loses, because the MO is when the debate is won. 

In properly functioning partnerships, the MO captains the opposition strategy.  The off-case positions are ones that the MO is comfortable winning - politics or criticisms that the MO is well-versed in, or disads written by the MO during prep time or during the PMC.  The LOC is not a robot, certainly; but to the extent they are generating arguments independently, their goal has to be to make those arguments as clear to their own MO as possible, and as close to the MO's knowledge base as possible.  And, most importantly, whenever there is any disagreement between the LO and the MO during the round, the MO wins.  Even if the MO is wrong, it is better to defer to the MO and their vision of the debate round, and try to resolve the communication problems outside of the round.

The affirmative requires slightly more balance between the PM and the MG.  The PM is still the control role, and the MG is still the support role, but due to the fact that the MGC has to be more extemporaneous by its nature, the PM has to surrender some level of control over the specific arguments that the MG is making.  Still, the goal of the MG is not to win the debate round on their own, but to neutralize negative arguments and lay the groundwork for a winning rebuttal in a way that the PM understands.  And, again, if there is a disagreement between the MG and the PM, then the PM wins.  The PM is ultimately responsible for making the big strategic decisions and "winning" the debate round.  Good MG's will check in with their partner on a regular basis while going down the flow, saying "anything else?" at the bottom of any position that they respond to, to give the PM a chance to prompt an MG on a single argument they think is compelling, or to ensure that an important argument is responded too. 

The nature of these roles means that most partnerships work best with one debater as the PM/MO and the other as the LO/MG, in order to ensure that each debater is responsible for the same role on both sides of the topic.  A double member/double leader partnership is trickier, because the debaters have to alternate between control and support, which can create some tricky interpersonal dynamics - but it's doable, as Sarah and I can attest to.  But, still, right now, if you look at the top 4 teams in the NPTE rankings, all four of them split speaker roles in the same way - Testerman, Warren, Campbell, and Heckendorn take the control roles and the primary strategic responsibilities, and Donaghy, Smith, Selck, and Morton take the support roles and primary technical responsibilities.  It's not about being better or worse - it's about being complementary, and embracing the responsibilities inherent in your speech and your role in getting the ballot.

Entitled to Understand

Let's face it: NPDA Parliamentary Debate is an extremely strange format of debate.  It was designed almost 20 years ago, and it was designed to be a slow, non-technical, non-logocentric type of debate.  20 years later, the activity has little to no resemblance to what its designers intended it to be, but we are still using the same structure.

The best demonstration of this is the lack of cross-examination, with points of information as a supposed substitute.  Obviously they are very different - points of information are isolated questions, where as cross-x is a sustained period of questioning.  But more important than that is the fact that during cross-x, the questioner is in control, whereas with a point of information, the questioned is control.  This creates an obvious problem - what if the speaker does not want to take questions?  There is no rule that would prevent them from doing so (SIU-style procedurals notwithstanding,) and it would seem to be strategically advantageous NOT to take questions - you can make more arguments, and your opponents don't understand your own.

In old-school parli, this wasn't as much of a problem - since style and ethos were paramount, you would take 3 questions, because doing otherwise was "bad form."  Further, because that event was slower, the need for clarification was almost nil - points of information were a chance for witty banter, and rarely used to understand opposing arguments.  Obviously in modern parli., this isn't the case.

You'll notice something about most top-level parli debaters.  They feel entitled to understand their opponents' arguments.  So entitled, in fact, that they will badger their opponents with questions after the plan text to make sure they know what's going on.  In effect, they are breaking the rules, and creating a sort of quasi-cross-x, where the questioner is in control again.

From the perspective of the governing body of NPDA, it's clearly time to institute some form of cross-x, so that this behavior can be brought within the rules.  But from the perspective of the debater, I think that this behavior is a necessary adaptation to an outdated rule set.   So long as your questions are clearly clarification questions, and not attempts to make arguments, go ahead and talk over the speaker to get your questions answered.  Not doing so, in my mind, is basically giving up the round - if you do not understand your opponents' arguments, how are you supposed to respond?  So go ahead, debaters - be entitled.  Just this once.