I can see that you have a technical bent, which means you’ll be interested in last night’s TVFT. Bietz did some research and found undeniable statistical evidence of negs beating affs way too often for it to be kosher. We looked into this with more data, and I’m pretty ready to say that the prevalence of neg wins increases as the field gets better. In other words, at a novice or low-key regional tournament, things look fifty-fifty. But as you proceed to the bubble rounds and outrounds at a $ircuit tournament, things go dramatically neg.
On the podcast we analyze some possible reasons. Maybe it’s the judging. Obviously resolutions have something to do with it. And the structure of the round is certainly one of the usual suspects. We kicked around ways of testing new structures, although implementation is difficult. In any case, smart affs have no choice but to recognize this inherent neg bias, regardless of its cause, and prepare for it. The trouble is, we’re unclear how, as it depends on the individual case in hand. But think about that. It might be important to you real soon now. In the best of all possible worlds, it shouldn’t matter if you flip aff or neg. Unfortunately, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.
In other news, I’ve ported the Twitter feed from the DJ over to the right hand column here (which means if you’re RSSing this you don’t give a rat’s hoot). It’s not filled to overflowing with new tweets, but there’s one or two a day about books, old and new, that you might find interesting, if you’ve ever read a book in your life or intend to do so at some time in the future. Looking at the old right hand column when I did this, I realized that it’s time for a little spring cleaning. Too bad it’s not spring. Soon.
And in the most shocking development of all, O’C forgot that we needed medals at the MHL this weekend. This is like Donald Trump forgetting that people need real estate. Like Tom Cruise forgetting his elevator shoes. Like Lindsay Lohan forgetting to do cocaine. Whoda thunkit?
6 comments:
Re: Neg bias.
I would suggest it is because substantive policy arguments in a LD round (given the structure of a LD round - and given evenly matched quality debaters-)will almost inevitably
have the result of negative fun time.
Given Professor's Bietz comment about policy naysayers two TVFT ago (and I sympathize with his view of people who simply say 'that's bad because that's policy') I should say here that I'm not against policy in arguments because of some distate for policy debating. I'm uncomfortable with these approaches because I think it is unlikely in the extreme that policy in LD can ever be more than a JVish form of policy, as David McGuinnes has said. The debate structure won't allow for anything more.
I believe that MPJ has plenty to do with this trend. People pref judges who favor (or at least tolerate) bad JV policy. And judging purely off the flow, they are correct to do so. The time skew 'is what it is.' That style is what is rewarded, and that contributes to the cycle.
I DO think that changing speech times, numbers of speeches, etc., is a bad idea. To me, choosing a debate approach is like 'creativity within a straight jacket' If someone wants to try to be an Olympic Diver while wearing that straight jacket, that is their perogative. Exchanging a trampoline for water though, would fundamentally the nature of that choice and that activity.
i resent that comment about my girl l.lohan
there is no need for the "creativity straight jacket" to remain static. if improvement would improve both the contours of the jacket and the creativity allowed within it while holding on to the original form and intention, WHAT IS THE POINT?
LD is good, it could be better, it isn't perfect. there is nothing but diminishing returns destined by retaining our current model.
PJ,
Agree (as someone who did college policy) about the pains of JV policy and some of the form constraints...but I'm not quite sure what to do about it. I'm also not sure why moving a minute from the AC to the 1AR would be a terrible idea...most competitive activities seem to have occasional rule changes for rebalancing and it works well.
More tactically, I think the major problem is that affs actually haven't figured out how the policy game works yet. I see lots of negs running counterplans and disads, but I see relatively few affs with strong narrow weighing frameworks, and basically nobody is just spending their whole 1AR straight-turning the disad or running politics on the counterplan. I don't see why affs who constantly complain about neg critiques or disadvantages don't really step up and use those tools on the neg.
Even in policy, the trick to winning on the affirmative against a good neg is to either pivot the debate in the middle (by accepting the neg's weighing and straight-turning an argument) which nullifies the time skew the neg has already used to develop their arguments, or to come out with a really strong narrow weighing framework so the neg has to debate on your terms -- meaning you only need to defend the framework in the 1AR and you actually get to focus on weighing in the 2AR thus making it a useful speech rather than a vain attempt to answer 6 minutes of line by line.
Huh.
Apropos of Ryan's comments on speech times, and as a history fan, I am mildly curious if LD speech times were originally constructed three decades ago as a specific attempt to discourage policy strategies in LD rounds. Maybe the Founders thought the resulting negative skew would keep people from ever trying plans and such. Wouldn't suprise me. That is the case with PF. We can always ask Justice Scalia I suppose.
Better yet, maybe Jon knows. There are primary sources from a few years later from national debate conferences, but I haven't read them in years. Before the war.
For Tom, I'm unconvinved that 'new' approaches are so intrinsically superior to the 'old' ones that they warrant changing the current structure.
Perhaps they are. But that is a distinct argument, and one I don't concede on face.
Honestly, I think much of debate's educational value is based on figuring out how to ethically win based on the given restrictions. Which is why I don't know that I agree with Ryan's reasonable suggestion to shift a minute from the 1AC to 1AR.
Of course Ryan may be right in suggesting that eventually Aff's will figure out how to better play the policy approach, which would make it academic. I don't think I could be wrong.
We're going to have some sort of limits regardless, whatever structure we have will inform what we do. And it's true that in other parts of debate we have found ways of working around those limits.
Speech speed and argument type has gone beyond the abillity of many of the best debate folks abillity (or perhaps willingness) to flow. -I confess I absoutely don't 'get' the practice of debaters reading each other's cases and basing their orally delivered responses off their worthy opposition's written text. I have (fill in your least favorite politican here) levels of not getting it. Why bother with the oral part of the debate at all? Why not type everything and skip the middle step?
Forget promoting the skill of speaking. What about the skill of listening? That former limit is out the window.
But that's a discussion for another day.
So I apparently omitted the word 'so' from a paragraph in the above posting, which makes me appear even more arrogant than I actually am.
It should read-
Of course Ryan may be right in suggesting that eventually Aff's will figure out how to better play the policy approach, which would make it academic. I don't think SO. I could be wrong.
(I also have a browser old enough it has no spell 'czech' and I am too lazy to type the posting in a word processing document first. Alas...
wex -
the neg bias is producing the plan, plans are actually a pretty good way to screw the negative hard enough to counterbalance their advantage. doesn't mean i'm into em b/c they produce "ground skew for each side" whatever that means. but the progression wasn't policy 1st, producing neg skew.
as someone who competed in LD and policy, the policy times are just better. there is no argument.
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