“Com judges” might not exist any more (or might be called something different)?
I think the current meta focuses on “K” vs “not-K”? (Roughly, the “K” people only want to debate philosophy, and they sort of abuse the Policy Debate platform (using the logic of policy debate) to try to undermine doing policy debate within a Policy Debate tournament because maybe “better policy outcomes” would happen “in real life” if people stopped having policy debates and debated philosophy instead.)
Coms judges probably do exist, but maybe not “by that name” anymore because they are somewhat timeless? They come in two archetypal flavors:
(1) the default you’d expect of a private school PMC (Professional / Managerial Class) parents who volunteer to judge when their kid’s coach asks for parent volunteers to enable the coach to run a tournament, where those parents will act and judge like normies, and will predictably reward “the appearance of articulate prestige” in terms of PMC cultural standards and...
(2) church lady debate coaches who think the naive reactions of those PMC parents are essentially correct and timeless and wants to consciously “teach to that test”, and who also personally “judge to the theory that teaches to that test” when they are judging… in a high church way that connects back to latin phrases like “post hoc ergo prompter hoc” and “status quo” and and “ad hominum” and certain ways of organizing policy proposals based on “prima facie stock issues” of some kind (the lynchpin of all of them being the stock issue of “Solvency” where the plan had better at least pretend to be positively likely to positively work to fix some problem, and the AFF has to prove this or else they are a bad AFF). Some of them get very defensive, and sort of refuse to flow, and will pantomime “ripping up the ballot” if a debater starts to talk really fast.
Sankar’s comment is indicative of the lay public’s attitude, that church lady com judges respect.
If you watch some modern competive debate, you might have a better understanding of why it’s disliked. The Cross Examination Debate Association’s National Championship is the most prestigious of the US college debate tournaments, and the 2014 finals was widely circulated as an illustrative example of the current style.
((
Arguably, however, the NDT year end tournament of the merged CEDA/NDT circuit system is more prestigious that the CEDA year end tournament? And former NDT regional circuits tend to be in the South, and are more rhetorically traditional, and less “post-modern” (which some peopledislike for separate reasons). The distinction here isn’t about flow vs not-flow, or stock-issues vs not-stock-issues, but rather K (post modern? philosophic? anarchist? woke?) vs not-K (modernist? policy-centric? archist? conservative?).
))
Flow Judges… flow!
And rely on it heavily to decide their ballot. (There are subtypes. I will not enumerate them <3)
Here is an example image (sauce here) of a flow for ONE (or two???) position(s) (maybe an entire case?!), that was discussed substantively by skillfully-intellectually-organized speakers all of whom remembered and addressed each other’s previous points coherently in a skillful way, to make flowing easy (often maybe using verbally numbered arguments based on everyone taking similar notes in similar ways), in seven sequential speeches (which we know, because there are seven columns):
We have sub-issues going horizontally across the page.
Interpreting this a bit… “H” with a circle at the top left in black ink probably stands for “Harms”, which often shows up in the first affirmative constructive (1AC) proving the stock issue of “Harms”. Something has to be wrong with the status quo. If the status quo ain’t broke, it shouldn’t be fixed. The AFF has to make people want change before they propose change. All of this is latent in “H” in a circle… and it has something to do with something being “untraceable”. Everyone heard this in the round of course. That’s why they can get away with so much shorthand. They might have a whole logic loop in working or audio memory and be able to know what is being talked about if someone says “on the traceability argument in Harms, our response to their response saying <blah blah> is… NEW X”.
Whatever the arguments are, it involved a cited substantive claim, published in 2010, by “Bachi” (whoever that is).
Back in the image, where is says “Brower ’08” that means someone with the last name of Brower was quoted ver batim based on something published in 2008. The substance of what was said is going to be in everyone’s working memory, but the gist of it is “The economy going down somehow causes something to do with satellites” which we get from “econ V → satellite”.
The red ink is almost certainly the negative rebuttals, which attacked various subarguments line by line with the first such speech not “reasoning” that much, but mostly just reading four pieces of (probably case specific) counter-evidence. (When that happens to you, as the AFF, your stomach often sinks, because you might drop an AFF round, even though you picked the ground upon which to fight, which is a huge advantage.)
The blue and black ink are probably all affirmative speeches. The blue was likely written very fast, in the middle of the round, while speeches were happening.
The black ink was probably “pre-flowed” and written in advance of the round by the affirmative team, to save time, so as not to waste seconds during the round by taking notes on a set speech they already optimized the shit out of (and might know by heart).
This might be a sloppy/weird flow? It has the flavor of something fake.
Normally you’d put each issue on its own piece of paper or file, or tab in your spreadsheet on a laptop, because you don’t know how much it might explode. This is “less real”. Good for pedagogy maybe?
See the “2 Blackouts ’10” in black ink near the bottom?
To the right of that is an “S” with a circle in red ink, which usually means “Solvency” which is a common stock issue that is different from “Harms” (and should be on different paper??). Also, on the far left in the same row there’s red ink that simply says “no solvency” which suggests that the entire horizontal sequence of debate is “about Solvency”… and if this is true then it suggests that the negative had the last word on the subject (and the affirmative might have dropped it)!
If the affirmative really did drop Solvency, then they basically lost the debate.
Therefore a flow judge would probably give the ballot to the negative (unless some other piece of paper also exists, about what standards to use for a ballet, and somehow that debate resolved in “Solvency doesn’t matter anymore for <reasons>”). A Flow Judge would give NEG the ballot even if the flow judge was a flat earther who doesn’t believe in satellites but does believe aliens will rapture us all before anything being talked about in the round actually ever happened… you can be a Flow Judge AND be crazy… but being a flow judge immunizes you some from having wrong beliefs so long as you track syntax and are in a half-honest environment ;-)
So we see here, from the example flow: NEG probably won in some “objective” sense.
And a flow judge would notice and give NEG the ballot?
And this is why debaters often prefer to be judged by flow judges… it puts the speakers legibly and clearly in control of their own destiny within a round, tightening the OODA loop and the lessons it can teach :-)
“Com judges” might not exist any more (or might be called something different)?
I think the current meta focuses on “K” vs “not-K”? (Roughly, the “K” people only want to debate philosophy, and they sort of abuse the Policy Debate platform (using the logic of policy debate) to try to undermine doing policy debate within a Policy Debate tournament because maybe “better policy outcomes” would happen “in real life” if people stopped having policy debates and debated philosophy instead.)
Coms judges probably do exist, but maybe not “by that name” anymore because they are somewhat timeless? They come in two archetypal flavors:
(1) the default you’d expect of a private school PMC (Professional / Managerial Class) parents who volunteer to judge when their kid’s coach asks for parent volunteers to enable the coach to run a tournament, where those parents will act and judge like normies, and will predictably reward “the appearance of articulate prestige” in terms of PMC cultural standards and...
(2) church lady debate coaches who think the naive reactions of those PMC parents are essentially correct and timeless and wants to consciously “teach to that test”, and who also personally “judge to the theory that teaches to that test” when they are judging… in a high church way that connects back to latin phrases like “post hoc ergo prompter hoc” and “status quo” and and “ad hominum” and certain ways of organizing policy proposals based on “prima facie stock issues” of some kind (the lynchpin of all of them being the stock issue of “Solvency” where the plan had better at least pretend to be positively likely to positively work to fix some problem, and the AFF has to prove this or else they are a bad AFF). Some of them get very defensive, and sort of refuse to flow, and will pantomime “ripping up the ballot” if a debater starts to talk really fast.
Sankar’s comment is indicative of the lay public’s attitude, that church lady com judges respect.
((
Arguably, however, the NDT year end tournament of the merged CEDA/NDT circuit system is more prestigious that the CEDA year end tournament? And former NDT regional circuits tend to be in the South, and are more rhetorically traditional, and less “post-modern” (which some peopledislike for separate reasons). The distinction here isn’t about flow vs not-flow, or stock-issues vs not-stock-issues, but rather K (post modern? philosophic? anarchist? woke?) vs not-K (modernist? policy-centric? archist? conservative?).
))
Flow Judges… flow!
And rely on it heavily to decide their ballot. (There are subtypes. I will not enumerate them <3)
Here is an example image (sauce here) of a flow for ONE (or two???) position(s) (maybe an entire case?!), that was discussed substantively by skillfully-intellectually-organized speakers all of whom remembered and addressed each other’s previous points coherently in a skillful way, to make flowing easy (often maybe using verbally numbered arguments based on everyone taking similar notes in similar ways), in seven sequential speeches (which we know, because there are seven columns):
We have sub-issues going horizontally across the page.
Interpreting this a bit… “H” with a circle at the top left in black ink probably stands for “Harms”, which often shows up in the first affirmative constructive (1AC) proving the stock issue of “Harms”. Something has to be wrong with the status quo. If the status quo ain’t broke, it shouldn’t be fixed. The AFF has to make people want change before they propose change. All of this is latent in “H” in a circle… and it has something to do with something being “untraceable”. Everyone heard this in the round of course. That’s why they can get away with so much shorthand. They might have a whole logic loop in working or audio memory and be able to know what is being talked about if someone says “on the traceability argument in Harms, our response to their response saying <blah blah> is… NEW X”.
Whatever the arguments are, it involved a cited substantive claim, published in 2010, by “Bachi” (whoever that is).
((Google scholar offers no insight when I search for something, fwiw. This is bad. A KEY FUNCTION of these notes should be to enable people to do opposition research on key ideas “out in the literature” and get a better picture of reality thereby, and win debates about reality thereby. You want to be able to aumantically hear an argument, and come back later at a new tournament magically knowing the backstory of what was claimed as a posterior, and via scholarship, this can happen! The citation and keywords, for later research, are like the NUMBER ONE THING at least one of the two people on your two person team should be capturing.)
Back in the image, where is says “Brower ’08” that means someone with the last name of Brower was quoted ver batim based on something published in 2008. The substance of what was said is going to be in everyone’s working memory, but the gist of it is “The economy going down somehow causes something to do with satellites” which we get from “econ V → satellite”.
The red ink is almost certainly the negative rebuttals, which attacked various subarguments line by line with the first such speech not “reasoning” that much, but mostly just reading four pieces of (probably case specific) counter-evidence. (When that happens to you, as the AFF, your stomach often sinks, because you might drop an AFF round, even though you picked the ground upon which to fight, which is a huge advantage.)
The blue and black ink are probably all affirmative speeches. The blue was likely written very fast, in the middle of the round, while speeches were happening.
The black ink was probably “pre-flowed” and written in advance of the round by the affirmative team, to save time, so as not to waste seconds during the round by taking notes on a set speech they already optimized the shit out of (and might know by heart).
This might be a sloppy/weird flow? It has the flavor of something fake.
Normally you’d put each issue on its own piece of paper or file, or tab in your spreadsheet on a laptop, because you don’t know how much it might explode. This is “less real”. Good for pedagogy maybe?
See the “2 Blackouts ’10” in black ink near the bottom?
To the right of that is an “S” with a circle in red ink, which usually means “Solvency” which is a common stock issue that is different from “Harms” (and should be on different paper??). Also, on the far left in the same row there’s red ink that simply says “no solvency” which suggests that the entire horizontal sequence of debate is “about Solvency”… and if this is true then it suggests that the negative had the last word on the subject (and the affirmative might have dropped it)!
If the affirmative really did drop Solvency, then they basically lost the debate.
Therefore a flow judge would probably give the ballot to the negative (unless some other piece of paper also exists, about what standards to use for a ballet, and somehow that debate resolved in “Solvency doesn’t matter anymore for <reasons>”). A Flow Judge would give NEG the ballot even if the flow judge was a flat earther who doesn’t believe in satellites but does believe aliens will rapture us all before anything being talked about in the round actually ever happened… you can be a Flow Judge AND be crazy… but being a flow judge immunizes you some from having wrong beliefs so long as you track syntax and are in a half-honest environment ;-)
So we see here, from the example flow: NEG probably won in some “objective” sense.
And a flow judge would notice and give NEG the ballot?
And this is why debaters often prefer to be judged by flow judges… it puts the speakers legibly and clearly in control of their own destiny within a round, tightening the OODA loop and the lessons it can teach :-)