We’ve looked at the case list as something where cases to be run are placed online, and where people can access and do whatever they want to do with those cases. We’ve concluded (all right, I’ve concluded) that this material provides advantages to all, and while the bigger programs conceivably could do more with it, the smaller programs previously never had it at all, which may be the better advantage. Everybody gains, but no one really loses. The big programs always had their size advantage, and maintain it, but the little programs now have access to everything that will be run at a tournament (theoretically), and that is a good gain for them.
Again, I’m working from the assumption that cases are in there, and those are the cases run. We’ll stick with that assumption for the moment.
The issue of what happens at tournaments is different from what happens in the preparation for tournaments, and we need to look at that next. Says Bietz: “One of the most frustrating things for me to watch is one debater being prepped out by a group of coaches or other debaters because they happened to know someone or are friendly with someone who either previously watched, judged, or debated against them, while the other debater just sits there and waits, not having any idea what their opponent is arguing. I don’t find the prepout to be intrinsically frustrating. In fact, I have no qualms with coaches who help their debaters prepare for rounds. I even have less of a problem with teammates who help each other. My concern is for the debater who isn’t as connected, or doesn’t have as many teammates.”
I think this is an honest appraisal of the situation. I see it regularly enough. I have regularly seen my debaters prepped out by other teams. It can be frustrating when one doesn’t have the resources to do likewise, but I don’t think that, if they were suddenly given similar resources, my team would say, Oh, I’m not prepping out because I’m against it in principle. They’re against being outnumbered. Of course, the prep out of the small by the big requires that the big have the small’s case in the first place. The odds are, they do, whereas the odds are that the small don’t have the big debater’s case. Sheer numbers, here. The bottom line, size notwithstanding: If I did have the case, I’d prep out on it as best I can, with whatever resources I have at hand.
Well, disclosure means I do have the case. Yes, none of the advantages of size are mitigated on the big side of things, but on the other side of things, the smaller team is better prepared. Of course, there is a possibility that the bigger team would not have had the case and now does, and therefore the advantage of size is multiplied by the availability of the previously unavailable case, but that’s really not what usually happens. Let’s face it. Look at an theoretical tournament. There’s a hundred kids in the field, and the big team has 6 teammates and 6 prelims. That’s hitting 36 different people, and judging another 12 (with some duplication in both areas, of course), although this is balanced by the leveling effects of the brackets, so by the end of prelims, the good debaters on the team of 6 are pretty likely to know what everyone who breaks is running. The 2 debaters on the small team, on the other hand, with a tournament hired judge, have a maximum of 12 flows. I fail to see how having cases doesn’t advantage the smaller debater, faced with these numbers. The balance to be weighed is, having their cases with the knowledge that the bigger team is guaranteed to have your cases and act on them, versus not having their cases against the mathematical likelihood that the bigger team has your cases and is acting on them. The balance easily swings toward the former as preferable.
Paras makes this point: “Teams usually acquire flows from the debaters that flowed the round, but most debaters have very incomplete flows, whereas disclosing would provide the perfect flow. That means the quality of the prepout in a non-disclosure world is worse.”
True, to some extent. The prep is only as good as the flow. But I think we’re overlooking two things. First, the nature of the posted case is, in fact, not much more than a flow of tags, going by the example Cruz posted for Big Bronx. There’s the argument tag followed by the cite. We know what you’re running overall, not every single nuance. And second, but playing off that, there is the actual debating in the round. Debate is not an exercise in essay writing, where we pick the best case. Debate is about the arguing, the choosing of arguments, the weighing, etc.
Let’s look at what Shane said: “Disclosure increases education -- if people know what you are running then you have to make good arguments. Good arguments withstand the light of disclosure. Secrecy breeds can breed bad arguments and trick arguments. My stance: find a good argument and get better than anyone else in the country; that is the way to success in debate.” I think this is an awfully important point, one that Cruz makes in a different way in his responses. As I said above, debate is not about my case versus your case. Our cases are simply the starting point. Debate is about the arguing of those cases.
One of my original points in favor of the database of cases was to provide a pool of all the arguments that are being run. People are talking about, for instance, cerebellum development in juvie justice. Okay, so I know I need to have good arguments pro and con on that subject. I am going to spend my time between tournaments studying that (and whatever else), learning about it, developing sharp arguments. So when it comes up in a round, I’m ready for it. Knowing that my opponent in the next round will be arguing it allows me to pull my evidence in advance, which is helpful to me and means I can spend round time plotting and thinking, not digging in my briefcase. (I would imagine that one of the great advantages of plan disclosure in policy, if not the single and absolutely sole reason for doing it, is to eliminate tub diving.)
A lot of the arguments against disclosure paint certain debaters as automatons regurgitating if not literally parroting positions created by their coaches. Okay, I’ll grant that that happens, to some extent. But are we saying that the really good debaters are automatons parroting positions created by their coaches? Are we saying that well wrought arguments can’t beat memorized positions? Sure, the powerhouse school varsity automaton can crush my JVer in the random prelim, and maybe once in a while do very, very well at a tournament. But most debaters are not that robotic animal, and don’t want to be that robotic animal, and would mostly resist being that robotic animal at all costs. Where is the pride in knowing that you were so prepped out by the expensive coaches your team uses that you never had to think? The people I have known who have been strong debaters have never been that person, even when those debaters have represented big programs. And even if the world is filled with all these automatons, I see no evidence that they win more than non-automatons. Plus it’s simply counterintuitive that people who draw on knowledge understood will fall to people who draw on memorized blocks. I don’t buy that disclosure will increase the number of debate robots, and that those robots will have increased success. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
What I’ve been continually putting off is the consideration of anything other than posting your case in advance and running that case. That is, the simple use of the case list as one would theoretically imagine it ought to be used. Or, as I said early on, the use of the case list. But what about the abuses, all those situations in the debaters’ responses that were about how people were, at best, gaming the system, and at worst, using it as a tool to trick their opponents. We need to look at that, because, as I said, if the abuses are intrinsic and bad enough, they could kibosh the whole thing. And while we’re at it, we’ll talk about the one fatal flaw I see in all the thinking in favor of disclosure which, if fixed, could make all the difference.
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