Question from a fellow debater (I do parli, although I know a few PF debaters) how often does this sort of “ultra-BS” devolve into tech / kritiks / theory in PF? While most of the points here seemed (at least on the surface) true, I’ve also seen judges vote for teams on absolutely horrible arguments simply because they didn’t flow a response from the other team.
Mhm? Right, in my personal opinion I don’t consider kritiks/theory as ultra-BS. This is mainly because ultra-BS is intuitive narrative framing, and usually not too complicated (the idea is to sound right, and avoid the trouble of actually having to explain yourself properly). Kritiks/theory are the opposite, if that makes sense. They’re highly technical arguments that don’t make sense outside of debate specific settings, which most lay judges simply won’t understand. In my experience it’s almost never a good idea to run them unless you’re with a tech or a flow judge (and then a good chunk of flow judges don’t like it either).
That said, yes, judges do often vote for horrible arguments, or for whomever speaks better, irrespective of argument content, so I’d be careful labeling something ‘ultra-BS’. Sometimes a bad judge is a bad judge, there’s nothing you can do there.
A lot of this piece is unique to high school debate formats. In the college context, every judge is themself a current or previous debater, so some of these tricks don’t work. (There are of course still times when optimizing for competitive success distracts from truth-seeking.)
Hm? Is it? Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but in my experience flow judges (who tend to be debaters) tend to grade more on the quality of the arguments as opposed to the quality of the evidence. If you raise a sound rebuttal to a good argument it doesn’t score, but if you fail to rebut a bad argument it’s still points in your favor.
Question from a fellow debater (I do parli, although I know a few PF debaters) how often does this sort of “ultra-BS” devolve into tech / kritiks / theory in PF? While most of the points here seemed (at least on the surface) true, I’ve also seen judges vote for teams on absolutely horrible arguments simply because they didn’t flow a response from the other team.
Mhm? Right, in my personal opinion I don’t consider kritiks/theory as ultra-BS. This is mainly because ultra-BS is intuitive narrative framing, and usually not too complicated (the idea is to sound right, and avoid the trouble of actually having to explain yourself properly). Kritiks/theory are the opposite, if that makes sense. They’re highly technical arguments that don’t make sense outside of debate specific settings, which most lay judges simply won’t understand. In my experience it’s almost never a good idea to run them unless you’re with a tech or a flow judge (and then a good chunk of flow judges don’t like it either).
That said, yes, judges do often vote for horrible arguments, or for whomever speaks better, irrespective of argument content, so I’d be careful labeling something ‘ultra-BS’. Sometimes a bad judge is a bad judge, there’s nothing you can do there.
A lot of this piece is unique to high school debate formats. In the college context, every judge is themself a current or previous debater, so some of these tricks don’t work. (There are of course still times when optimizing for competitive success distracts from truth-seeking.)
Hm? Is it? Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but in my experience flow judges (who tend to be debaters) tend to grade more on the quality of the arguments as opposed to the quality of the evidence. If you raise a sound rebuttal to a good argument it doesn’t score, but if you fail to rebut a bad argument it’s still points in your favor.
Is it different in college?