Tuesday, July 03, 2012

MJP update

The link is fixed. Revised post.

1 comment:

Pjwexler said...

The explanation is fine or as fine as I can make out of this hour of the day. A few thoughts anyway.

1) I think specialization is bad in general. In theory,I don't want to have 'my' debaters being advantaged anymore than be disadvantaged by having only one debater participate in MJP. I recognize given my preferences MKP may be 2-2 or 3-3 but still. I also think that given the inevitable need to sometimes have a 1-2 or 2-3 in later rounds, someone will sometimes have an advantage anyway ( I have not run a MJP tournament myself, so I don't know how comman that is admittedly, but it seems it w/b a challenge as the tournament drags on.

2) more importantly I believe that more national circuitry programs - larger ones anyway-will almost

always have an advantage in ranking judges. Normally I don't think much of this as an argument but I do think it is valid here. These programs will 1) know more about the judges in the pool as they actually function, not just what is in the written paradigms, 2) be able to have someone read the paradigms and, most importantly, think through strategy for the MJP. It isn't just, or even mostly a paradigm question after all, but ' do I want judge X hearing me in a bump round against those people who I we might be debating in bump rounds'.

It is similar to expecting people to intelligently be able to make decisions about their retirement or health accounts. Sure, some can, but at a certain point there is too much information to intelligently process, especially during the few days rankings are open. For any number of reasons, larger programs will make intelligent rankings, Snaller ones will need to make choices between preparing the topic, ranking the judges, or doing school work, be it studying for tests or writing then.

That is why some opt out, it just isn't a priority given limited resources. Sure, we can say that is their own decision. That is the position some take regarding people who don't choose optimal retirement programs or health ones . I simply don't agree we should rely on the ideology of choice in either case.