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Isn't the entire point of debate to restrict how you can argue in order to provide a similar creative structure to artists using arbitrary rules? Doesn't allo

Isn't the entire point of debate to restrict how you can argue in order to provide a similar creative structure to artists using arbitrary rules? Doesn't allowing adhoc attacks on semi related structures effectively bypass that structure? Also given the notes in the article it sounds like the judges are too generous with blue sky proposals. "It would be neat if" does not make good policy and shouldn't make good debate. Policy and by extension debate should focus on changes small enough that the outcome of the change is predictable. "Capitalism is terrible" is easy to show but an off ramp to anything else requires more than an hour of explanation...

welshwelsh 3y ago
Yes, but a more important function of debate in school is to expose people to new ideas and to question assumptions. Unfortunately, debates are often structured in a way that forces students to accept some ideas and prevents them from expressing others, which is a problem. For example, whether you argue to raise or lower the minimum wage, either way you are still implicitly accepting the wage system. By framing the debate in this way, the teachers prevent students who oppose the wage system from having an opportunity to express their views. Another example - as Noam Chomsky wrote about in "Manufacturing Consent", after the Vietnam War, the New York Times discussed many different theories for why the US didn't "win" the war. But it never considered the obvious - that the war itself was a mistake, and the US was wrong to be there in the first place. Framing the debate in this way is a way of silencing the opposition, by presenting two "sides" that are actually both on the same side and only disagree about trivial details. If you opposed the Vietnam war, then it would be against your interests to follow the rules of a "debate" about how to win the war. The correct course of action in this scenario is to take the opportunity to argue for what you believe and to undermine the debate itself, even if it results in you "losing" the debate.
- morelisp 3y ago
  > Yes, but a more important function of debate in school is to expose people to new ideas and to question assumptions. While this is definitely the overall goal of teaching debate, it's not clear to me this is actually how policy debate in school should operate in order to teach that. For one thing, I think other events (congressional is more persuasive and iterative, group discussion more freeform and collaborative, L-D more moralistic) have the potential to do this better. Policy's structure is really meant to force you to defend an evidence-based position in depth. Basically inherent the format is that at least 50% of the time you won't agree with it.
  - ang_cire 3y ago
    Which is how you get exposed to new ideas. Learning how to argue for something you don't agree with means actually learning about that thing, in depth. You will not learn more in a 40 minute debate round than you will in the hundreds of hours you spend *preparing* for debate rounds (which is something that many other forms lack in comparison to policy). If it's my job to argue the GND is bad, I have to actually learn what the real tenets of it are, because otherwise I'm not going to find evidence to counter their impact and solvency claims. Likewise, if I have to argue it's good, I have to learn what its tenets are in order to find evidence supporting what it can accomplish, etc. (Just using GND as an example, obviously you aren't assigned advocacies in policy)
whimsicalism 3y ago
The point of extra-curricular high school debate is there is a topic and there are norms that we are here to discuss the topic. The argument about creativity is a good one - the point is that if someone starts talking about how "capitalism is terrible" then you can make that argument. 'They should lose because they are not talking about the topic which means we lose out on that creative structure. I have to take some ridiculous side like "racism is good" if I want to oppose them. It's bad for the structure of debate, etc. etc.' You can make and win on those arguments in-round. I'm very familiar with high school debate and happy to discuss in detail.

welshwelsh 3y ago

Yes, but a more important function of debate in school is to expose people to new ideas and to question assumptions. Unfortunately, debates are often structured in a way that forces students to accept some ideas and prevents them from expressing others, which is a problem. For example, whether you argue to raise or lower the minimum wage, either way you are still implicitly accepting the wage system. By framing the debate in this way, the teachers prevent students who oppose the wage system from having an opportunity to express their views. Another example - as Noam Chomsky wrote about in "Manufacturing Consent", after the Vietnam War, the New York Times discussed many different theories for why the US didn't "win" the war. But it never considered the obvious - that the war itself was a mistake, and the US was wrong to be there in the first place. Framing the debate in this way is a way of silencing the opposition, by presenting two "sides" that are actually both on the same side and only disagree about trivial details. If you opposed the Vietnam war, then it would be against your interests to follow the rules of a "debate" about how to win the war. The correct course of action in this scenario is to take the opportunity to argue for what you believe and to undermine the debate itself, even if it results in you "losing" the debate.

morelisp 3y ago
> Yes, but a more important function of debate in school is to expose people to new ideas and to question assumptions. While this is definitely the overall goal of teaching debate, it's not clear to me this is actually how policy debate in school should operate in order to teach that. For one thing, I think other events (congressional is more persuasive and iterative, group discussion more freeform and collaborative, L-D more moralistic) have the potential to do this better. Policy's structure is really meant to force you to defend an evidence-based position in depth. Basically inherent the format is that at least 50% of the time you won't agree with it.
- ang_cire 3y ago
  Which is how you get exposed to new ideas. Learning how to argue for something you don't agree with means actually learning about that thing, in depth. You will not learn more in a 40 minute debate round than you will in the hundreds of hours you spend *preparing* for debate rounds (which is something that many other forms lack in comparison to policy). If it's my job to argue the GND is bad, I have to actually learn what the real tenets of it are, because otherwise I'm not going to find evidence to counter their impact and solvency claims. Likewise, if I have to argue it's good, I have to learn what its tenets are in order to find evidence supporting what it can accomplish, etc. (Just using GND as an example, obviously you aren't assigned advocacies in policy)

whimsicalism 3y ago

The point of extra-curricular high school debate is there is a topic and there are norms that we are here to discuss the topic. The argument about creativity is a good one - the point is that if someone starts talking about how "capitalism is terrible" then you can make that argument. 'They should lose because they are not talking about the topic which means we lose out on that creative structure. I have to take some ridiculous side like "racism is good" if I want to oppose them. It's bad for the structure of debate, etc. etc.' You can make and win on those arguments in-round. I'm very familiar with high school debate and happy to discuss in detail.