Last changed on
Mon October 24, 2016 at 9:26 AM EDT
I’m a fourth year college student debating for Johns Hopkins. I debated in Canada in middle school and high school, and have good familiarity with Canadian Parliamentary and British Parliamentary. I currently judge and compete on the APDA circuit and at domestic and international BP tournaments. The following only describes my thoughts on the APDA debate format.
I am not committing myself to abiding by everything written here. It may be outdated or my beliefs may have since changed. This is only intended as a tool to help you understand some of the ways I think about debate. Please ask me if you have any questions.
TL;DR
Tight call standard is a “path to victory”, don’t bother contesting this.
It’s probably not spec. Read more!
Don't spread. At best I simply won't understand you, at worst I will get annoyed and spitefully drop you.
I’ll Google disputed facts.
Please don’t go over time, I will stop listening.
I’ll strike out new arguments in rebuttals myself.
Ask and answer POIs, your speaker points depend on it.
Top Level Thoughts on Debate
I believe debate is a competitive game of skill and strategy, nothing more and nothing less. Though I recognize debate has immense discursive and expressive value, those aren’t the reason that I do debate or value it as an activity. This probably has several implications:
Any arguments that form logically coherent syllogisms are fair game (with the exception of profoundly offensive and hurtful ones)
I will never punish teams that maximize their probability of winning as long as they follow all the rules – absolutely feel free to make sneaky countercases, tactically tight call, MO dump, etc.
I’m unlikely to be receptive to arguments about alternative value that debate provides, or alternate paradigms to evaluate the round besides voting for the team that wins
I will however be receptive to theory arguments about competitiveness; for instance, that I should punitively drop a team to deter anticompetitive behaviour in the future
I believe sportsmanship and competitive integrity are incredibly important, and I will absolutely act to punitively drop teams that I don’t believe are acting in good faith
Theory of Debate
I will ask Points of Clarification if I believe that the information will allow the debaters in the round to have a better round or if I believe that it will allow me to make a more accurate decision. Ideally, this is really not something I should feel compelled to do. If I feel like I have to do so, I will attempt to only ask framing questions that clarify what each side is able to defend rather than factual questions for the sake of not supplying one side with a competitive advantage.
I am agnostic with respect to whether props or visual aids should be allowed, and I will defer to permitting them unless theory arguments are made by either side. To the extent that they are used, they should only ever be used to add clarity and context to a round rather than advancing offense for one team.
The government team has the affirmative burden to win the round and demonstrate that the case/motion is true. If the round is truly inadjudicable, then the opposition team wins the round by default.
I’m highly unreceptive to burden analysis that argues that opposition has to do less than disprove the case. If you believe that the case is tight, then tight call. If you believe that the case is not tight, then defeat it.
Countercases don’t have to be strictly mutually exclusive to be competitive. For example, I would consider it legitimate to countercase a case about spending X dollars on Y with “spend X dollars on Z” or with “spend 0.5X dollars on Y”. Mutual exclusivity can still be an offensive argument for the government team if the implication is that the opposition team hasn’t successfully negate the case/motion with their countercase. The reason “Gov plus a cookie” countercases aren’t legitimate isn’t because of mutual exclusivity, but because the opposition team isn’t opposing the case or motion. Essentially, the opposition team has to prove “B and not A” to win, while government can win by proving “both A and B” or “A and not B”.
I expect all countercases to invoke no more fiat power than the government case itself. If I believe that a countercase requires significantly more fiat power to implement than government’s case, then I will disregard it as an illegal countercase. Obviously arguments can and should be made within the round to demonstrate why the countercase requires more/less fiat power.
Tight calls are an all-in commitment and must be announced at the beginning of LOC.
I believe that the tight call standard is a demonstrable “path to victory”. This standard is the only coherent one that is reasonably adjudicable and balances the structural advantages/disadvantages of both teams in a tight call. This belief is probably indefeasible and I will almost certainly still apply this standard even if alternative theory arguments are made in the round.
My standard for specific knowledge is probably quite high relative to most other judges. I think it’s important to be well informed about the world and I will reward debaters for it. However, I think that with very few exceptions, almost all “evidence”, statistics, and experimental results are probably spec. Facts that could have reasonably been clarified during Points of Clarification aren’t spec. Truly spec arguments are very rarely persuasive or part of a winning strategy anyways, so please avoid them.
I'm inclined to permit "status-quo" cases, given the plethora of other legal cases that exist that effectively transfer all burden to the opposition team. I will however be receptive to theory arguments about why this is good or bad for competition, and why defending the status quo but forcing the opposition to construct a counter-factual functionally makes a case tight.
If there are disputes about factual claims, I will look up the correct facts after the round and adjudicate the competing claims accordingly.
I will keep strict time and refuse to acknowledge arguments made beyond allotted speaking time. Speaking time is one of the most fundamental rules of this game and changing them even in a symmetric way affects strategic considerations significantly.
I will identify all new material from rebuttal speeches myself and refuse to take it into account when making my decision. New material in rebuttal speeches is against the rules of this debating format and I see no reason to passively permit it even if the other team doesn’t call it. I still highly encourage Points of Order because I might miss stuff and it helps to contextualize what exactly is/isn’t new. I will never punish attempting to make new arguments or calling Points of Order unless it is exceedingly obviously done in bad faith.
I will extensively cross-apply all arguments to their full logical conclusions and wherever they are applicable. This philosophy is best illustrated with examples:
If your arguments are internally contradictory but this is not explicitly identified by the opposing team, I will still identify this and defeat your own arguments
If there is an argument made in a member speech but isn't explicitly mentioned in the rebuttal speech, I will still take it into consideration and give it full credit as applied to the weighing mechanisms in the round
If your argument interacts with several opponent arguments, you need not explicitly “cross-apply” them for me to take your argument into account everywhere it is relevant
If you identify a weighing mechanism that prevails as the primary weighing mechanism in the round, I will faithfully apply it and potentially defeat your own arguments with it
If there are internally contradictory arguments or “knifes” within your case, I will only take into account the argument that structurally defeats the other. If this relationship doesn’t exist or cannot be determined, I will only consider the argument or claim that is less advantageous for your side.
There is a baseline threshold of coherence and persuasiveness that is necessary for me to consider an argument within a round. My standard for this is probably higher than most other judges. Mere assertions are insufficient to constitute an argument. Having very poor or unpersuasive warrants is no better than not having warrants at all. I will categorically refuse to consider any arguments that are logically unsound or based on factually untrue premises.
I will only weigh arguments myself in the absence of a reasonable weighing mechanism. If such a weighing mechanism exists, I will use it (enthusiastically or grudgingly) to decide the round. If there are competing weighing mechanisms, I will evaluate them like any other argument and assign an ordinality to their persuasiveness and importance and attempt to use all of them to evaluate arguments before resorting to weighing arguments myself.
How I Judge
It is both impossible and incoherent to be truly tabula rasa, and any judge who claims to be is lying to you and themselves. It is simply impossible to judge debate rounds without any prior beliefs or intuitions; it would be impossible to comparatively evaluate competing claims like “murder is morally good and is therefore obligatory” and “murder is morally wrong and not engaging in it is therefore obligatory”. Even the notion that formal logic is valid or that deductive reasoning allows us to make useful claims is an intuition that must presumably be disregarded by a truly tabula rasa judge... As a result, I’ve attempted to try to identify some of the intuitions and beliefs that I approach debate rounds with.
Things I have indefeasible beliefs about (probably don’t waste your time trying to contest these):
Speech times are fixed and non-negotiable
Rules: protected time, new arguments in reply speeches, etc.
One team wins and one team loses
How speaker points and ranks work according to the tournament rules; no low-point wins, etc. (I actually believe low point wins do exist, but will abide by tournament conventions)
Tight call burden (path to victory standard)
Specific knowledge standard (my own subjective belief about what is reasonable for a debater to know)
How logic and axiomatic principles work, how logical reasoning works, what makes a coherent syllogism, etc.
What makes an argument “good”; deductive arguments must be logically sound to be valid, abductive arguments are more compelling the simpler and more probable they are, etc.
Things I will enter the round with reasonably strong but very defeasible beliefs about (in the absence of compelling arguments to the contrary, I will default to the following priors when judging the round):
The winner of the round should be the team that better fulfills their burden (prove the case/motion is on balance true for government and prove that the case/motion is on balance false for the opposition)
God does not exist
The world is not deterministic
The world is not solipsistic
Morality exists
Mill’s harm principle should be respected
Utilitarianism (I will evaluate the round using this standard if no other competing moral claims are made)
The following are categorically good all else being equal (though I’m agnostic about how they should trade off against each other):
Life (Probably only conscious/sentient life)
Freedom
Maximizing preferences
Happiness/utility
Equal treatment
Risk aversion (only to the extent of having a concave risk function; no strong thoughts about exactly how risk averse to be)
Debate and discourse (it would be bizarre to engage in this activity if I didn’t believe this were true)
Some of my Idiosyncrasies
To be clear, I will attempt to the best of my ability to disregard all of my personal beliefs when adjudicating debate rounds. However, I also recognize that it’s impossible to fully excise my cognitive biases. Take this not as a reassurance that I don’t have strong cognitive biases, but that I at least am aware that I have said biases. Play around them as much or as little as you want to.
I am sexist, racist and almost certainly also prejudiced against many other groups and identities. It would be profoundly intellectually dishonest to assert that I don’t have any implicit, cognitive biases against marginalized groups. I will obviously attempt my absolute best to not take such biases into account when making decisions and assigning speaker points and ranks.
I’m a very strong believer in utilitarianism. In the absence of an alternative, compellingly warranted moral philosophy, I will default to adjudicating the round using a utilitarian framework. I probably care more about maximizing preferences than utility, and I’m reasonably indifferent to the merits of act versus rule utilitarianism. This also probably means that I almost certainly have strong cognitive biases when I have to evaluate which moral framework to apply within a round and will likely prefer utilitarianism.
I’m an explicit/positive atheist. I will probably have some difficulty evaluating rounds from the perspective of a religious actor, and I probably have a below average knowledge and appreciation for theology.
I’m a first generation Chinese Canadian immigrant and I’ve only spent my college years in the United States. Thus I probably have a below average level of knowledge about American history, and institutions unique to the United States like constitutional law or domestic governance. I will probably not know anything about minor civil war battles or obscure constitutional law cases.
I don’t have a background in debate formats prevalent in American high schools like PF, LD or Policy. Therefore, I likely won’t understand any format specific jargon and won’t have any appreciation for arguments or styles common to these formats but not prevalent in American/Canadian/British Parliamentary. I don’t have any experience with spreading and will likely be unable to comprehend it. I also think that it is an ineffective and anticompetitive strategy, so please don’t do it.
I don’t assign any a priori value to the constitution, you’d better warrant why the constitution and respecting its principles is important for me to even consider such arguments.
There are many liberal principles such as free speech and democracy that I don’t consider to be particularly valuable. Don’t just assume that I believe these are a priori goods, actually warrant and impact their importance.
I’m a subjectivist, Bayesian probability theorist as opposed to an objectivist. This significantly informs my worldview and has quite a few interesting implications for how I evaluate debate. It means that I will probably require overwhelmingly persuasive analysis to believe that your conception about the state of the world is so probable as to be functionally certain, as opposed to simply being more likely. For example, if there are two mutually exclusive, competing conceptions about the likely state of the world and one is slightly more persuasive than the other, I will not believe the slightly more persuasive conception with 100% credence and the slightly less persuasive conception with 0% credence. Instead, I will assign prior probabilities to my belief in the likelihood of either state of the world that sum to 100% based on how persuasive I find the analysis within the round to be. This also means that when I evaluate impacts, I will consider the magnitude of the impact with respect to my priors about how likely that particular state of the world is (informed by the analysis within the round).
I study Sociology and International Relations, and I intend to attend medical school. I probably have more nuanced understanding of issues related to my areas of study, and a correspondingly higher standard of what I would consider spec.
I will never be offended if you scratch me, run nasty cases on me, etc. Please just do what you believe is in your competitive best interest.
Some Thoughts on Speaker Scores
The typical (not average!) APDA speech should be a 25. I not sure that the mean speaker score should be 25, but I believe the median speaker score should be.
Speaker scores are almost certainly not normally distributed, it’s silly to think of them as such and I won’t conform my speaker scores to try to fit an arbitrary distribution that almost never exists in reality
The only relevant determinant of speaker scores should be quality and persuasiveness of analysis. I think this is qualitatively different from “arguments” because rhetoric and speaking ability absolutely does and should factors into how persuasive your analysis is and therefore, what speaker scores you should receive.
The speaker scale is highly arbitrary and non-linear. At best, I will be able to identify qualitative characteristics of your speech(es) that I think corresponds to certain scores. At worse, I will simply determine speaks using a “know it when I see it” standard. It’s certainly less useful to think of speaker scores as a quantitative assessment of your debate ability as they are a qualitative judgment of your performance in each round.
As a result of the non-linearity of speaks, low point wins should exist (27/1 and 24.75/4 should probably beat 26/2 and 26/3). Such situations are exceedingly rare and it is almost certainly on balance bad to allow all judges to assign them though. I’ll probably raise speaks to accommodate such situations rather than lowering them.
I will not explicitly consider the enjoyability of the round and your speech(es) when I assign speaks, but it will almost certainly implicitly influence it.
In rounds with significant skill asymmetries, I will never penalize a team that plays safely and maximins. See the previous point about enjoyability though.
I value POIs very highly, and they are a criminally underused part of APDA. Do not expect good speaks if you don’t even attempt to engage the other team with POIs.
Things I really like and will probably reward with higher speaks:
High levels of strategic insight (very narrowly tailored opps, devastating countercases, understanding path dependencies, tactical use of speaking time, etc.)
Precise diction and powerful rhetoric
Very novel and fascinating cases (cases about subjects I rarely encounter in life/debate, multiple/infinite way opp-choice cases, etc.)
Bold, badass risk taking (successfully defending onerously high burdens, all-ins on a single argument, etc.)
Stylish gamesmanship (not using notes or pre-written cases, intentionally not speaking to time, invoking summary judgement, etc.)
Asking and answering POIs well, especially if done in a very deliberate way as part of a larger strategy
Some characteristics I think correspond to various speaker scores:
≤23 – Offensive. A speech that I thought was an actively negative and hurtful influence to debate and the world. Example might include offensive ad hominin attacks, actively advocating for profoundly anti-intellectual positions (vaccines cause autism, Holocaust didn’t happen, etc.), and bad-faith cheating or other anticompetitive behaviour. If you did something to warrant this score from me, I strongly encourage you to quit the activity of debate and never come back.
23.25 – Counterproductive. A speech that actively harmed your team’s advocacy and lowered your own team’s probability of winning.
23.5 – Awful. A thoroughly unenjoyable and worthless speech that does nothing to advance your team’s advocacy.
24 – Bad.
24.5 – Poor. Probably the threshold for my enjoyability. Please, please don’t make me listen to speeches worse than this.
25 – Mediocre. Should be the median APDA speech.
25.5 – Decent.
26 – Good. The hard upper bound for speeches that are very mechanically competent and argumentatively responsive, but are utterly lacking in strategic insight.
26.5 – Excellent. Very strong analysis and crisp execution. No notable flaws that significantly detract from the quality of the speech. Something truly enjoyable to listen to.
26.75 – Exemplary. Goes above and beyond a 26.5 speech in a substantial way. Brilliant strategic insight, remarkable argumentative content, etc. Know it when I see it.
≥27 – Perfect. What’s the point of trying to evaluate something so superlatively excellent on an arbitrary ordinal scale? A speech that manages to dramatically change my own outlook on an issue. A speech that systematically precludes any hope of victory for the other team, turning an otherwise even round to a blowout and a horribly losing position to a strongly winning one. The point at which I think any flaws the speech may have are utterly irrelevant to what it accomplishes; probably not a flawless speech, but still a perfect one.
