[eDebate] Fwd: Consult - Ans. Hardy

[Steven D'Amico]

Does this mean I'm now going to have to listen to Scott Phillips evidnece in
my Consult rounds?





On 10/9/07, Scott Phillips <scottyp431 at gmail.com> wrote:

>

>

>

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------

> From: Cyrus Ghavi <cghavi at gmail.com>

> Date: Oct 8, 2007 1:01 PM

> Subject: Consult - Ans. Hardy

> To: Scott Phillips <scottyp431 at gmail.com>

>

> Could you post this for me?

> Thanks,

> Cyrus

>

>

>

>

> Since this might as well be called the Emory CG judge philosophy rule,

> and I have read consultation counterplans as much as anyone in debate,

> I thought I would take a few moments to chime in here.

>

> Knowing that most people won't make it through this whole thing, I'll

> put this at the beginning instead of the end: While I won't judge at

> nearly as many tournaments as Hardy to make this an effective

> counterbalance.  as long as Hardy has this policy is in place I will

> give 30s to each negative speaker if a consultation counterplan is

> presented in the 1NC.  I think this is justified because if he can

> decide to discourage arguments that he doesn't like, I should be able

> to encourage arguments that I do like using speaker points.

>

> Also I'll note that I'm puzzled by a lot of these posts because it

> seems that you only make arguments why PICs are bad and not making

> arguments that are unique to consult. By this logic you should have

> you speaker point rules for every PIC and we should just call you the

> Duck.

>

> First of all – even if consultation is the least educational argument

> in the history of debate, In terms of maintaining a healthy community,

> setting a precedent for judges to dictate the arguments the debaters

> in this fashion is FAR more dangerous than having debaters read an

> argument like this.

>

> You surely disagree, so consider what your reasons are for thinking it

> is wrong to simply say "I will not vote for consultation

> counterplans?" Whatever the reason is, it is equally applicable to

> putting a speaker point cap at 26.  Analogize this situation to

> policies regarding freedom of speech: would it be appropriate for a

> government to say "we won't throw you in jail for making statements

> against the government, we'll just fine you $1000." Also you should

> realize that speaker points are not all that innocent of a check

> because your little point bomb could prevent teams from clearing,

> quite literally because you didn't like the argument they went for (or

> according to your posted philosophy, perhaps only read in the 1NC).

>

> Fairness is something that should be decided in the round. It is a

> question to be resolved for the debaters.  When you were debating

> wouldn't you be upset at a judge that said he would dock points for

> anyone who read a PIC? Conditional CP? Topicality? Politics DA? Lopez

> CP? These can be construed by judges to be uneducational and unfair.

> It's an arbitrary line for you to draw, the only solution is to let

> the debaters sort it out in the round. Debate is for the debaters, not

> the judges. To be sure, there is no need for judges without debaters.

> This activity should be about what the participants want it to be and

> not subject to restrictions that are akin to behavior of someone on an

> immature power trip.

>

> What are speaker points for?

> You are right that content is relevant for speaker points, but not in

> the way you explain. People get high speaker points, not just for

> making intelligent arguments, but for making intelligent and strategic

> arguments in the response to what your opponent has said. This is

> also why people don't usually get good points for reading their 1AC if

> the aff is really good.  Most debaters can make a smart argument, but

> it's a whole other story to make smart arguments to preserve your

> position in response to an attack by your opponent.

>

> In this context, you don't punish someone for taking a position that

> you think is stupid, you punish them for not making good, smart

> arguments to people's response to your position. It's debate, not

> original oratory, meaning that the entire point is responding to the

> other side—that's where the speaker points should focus.

>

> The Debaters Should Fix It

> This entire discussion is absurd because if consultation counterplans

> are so bad, the affirmative should just beat them. The fact that they

> don't do this makes all your arguments suspect.

>

> You say it's a tough call to go for theory. That would not be true if

> they are so indisputable bad as you claim.  I've obviously had a ton

> of these debates. There have been exactly ZERO debates that the other

> team went for consultation illegit against us. There ARE, however,

> several debates in which the other teams decided to go for dispo bad

> instead. This seems to indicate that the affirmatives DO NOT fear

> going for theory, rather that when it gets down to the arguments and

> the nitty-gritty they feel consultation illegit is not as great of an

> argument as you think.

>

> You also say that we live in an age of "neg flex" bias etc.

> Does this also mean that when you decide theory debates you will find

> arguments like neg flex unpersuasive in the context of other theory

> debates (conditionality, etc)?

>

> The problem with the way consultation is debated today is that

> everybody just writes them off as "stupid counterplans" without having

> a discussion about why that is true.  The result is that there are

> multiple generations of debaters that have irrational knee-jerk

> reactions to the counterplan, saying it is illegitimate when they can

> either give no reason why or can only make arguments about why it is

> at a very basic, shallow level.  IF this is not true and IF

> consultation counterplans are really that bad, then there is literally

> NO REASON why the affirmative would not be winning every single

> consultation debate.  I'd like to believe that we made good enough,

> and specific enough, arguments on this issue to deter other teams,

> like yourself Aaron, from ever going for this.

>

> Perhaps that is also why the claims that the counterplan is "dumb"

> have been pretty baseless in the edebate discussion….

>

> AT: Dumb Counterplan with No Value

> Before I get to the more substantive arguments here, let me just say

> that as much as you hate consultation counterplans, I love them. And I

> mean love.  During my college career there were a lot of times that I

> didn't like debate very much, and to be quite frank, Consult Japan

> made me love the activity again because it was fun.  While my

> experience is admittedly rare and the extreme, the point remains: if

> people enjoy consultation counterplans and causes them to participate

> in the activity more, then this is a benefit of the counterplan that

> should be considered. I particularly think that if there are debaters

> that enjoy the counterplan, that should be enough to have a VERY

> STRONG bias against judges taking measures to reign in those

> arguments.

>

> This is also similar to non-traditional debate.  I am as adamant as

> anyone that affirmatives should have plans, be topical, etc. but I

> have still voted for teams that do not fall within this framework and

> if they have performed well, given them good speaker points.  Just

> because I believe in and enjoy traditional policy debate, I don't

> think that means I should impose those beliefs on the debaters—I'm

> simply there to evaluate the arguments they make against each other.

> Do you believe that a judge like myself should be able to say "if you

> don't read a plan in the 1AC you can not get more than 26 speaker

> points?"

>

>      You say: There are a million of them.

>

> This is simply not true. There is not evidence that binding

> consultation is necessary for the seven consultation counterplans that

> you mentioned.  If you are dumb enough to lose these counterplans you

> definitely deserve to lose.  It's like reading a politics disad

> without internal link evidence.  Affirmatives simply need to use the

> argument that there is no evidence that binding consultation is needed

> as a tool to bolster their theory and policy based objections.

>

> This is also no different than saying politics disads are bad because

> there are so many scenarios—and before you say that the affirmative

> can prepare for the politics links regardless of scenario, affs can

> prepare for "consultation bad" disads—there are a ton of these,

> including ones the community has not really put to use yet.

>

> You say that even when there is "binding consultation" evidence it is

> never in the context of the aff.  That is no different than the fact

> that you never have a politics DA link that assumes your

> scenario….i.e. "if the aff passed it would kill X bill" – this is

> always two separate pieces of evidence.

>

>     You say: Anti-educational.

>

> This seems to be the brunt of your argument and also the most

> ridiculous. I'll first note that many accepted debate arguments are

> similar in terms of education.  I'll go with the politics example

> again.  It's a stock negative strategy that is often a crutch for 2N's

> that requires non-topic related research.  You'll say that at least

> they have to do research before the tournament, but good consultation

> debaters will do the same (uniqueness updates, say yes updates) and I

> don't think that research for the sake of research is a good standard

> by which we exclude or include arguments in the community. Politics

> disads are only specific to the aff via their link argument, just like

> consult counterplans are specific to affs with their say yes evidence.

>

> It is short-sighted to argue that these debaters will ignore the topic

> completely.  No one reads one-off consultation counterplans.  You have

> to have a strategy outside of the 90 seconds it takes to read you

> Mochizuki cards.

>

> Granted it's not the same, but there is also much to learn from

> reading consultation counterplans, and indeed I feel that I have. In

> my research I have become educated on Japan's population, political

> structure, extended deterrence, military alliances, etc. Also a

> benefit that people might not realize is that when looking for say yes

> evidence it requires you to delve into the policy specifics of

> affirmatives, giving you a detailed look at what the affs are all

> about.

>

> And let's get rid of the blinders and make one thing perfectly clear

> about debate: people are there to win.  How many times to you remember

> walking into a round, seeing your opponent and thinking "gee, I really

> I hope I get to learn something new in this debate!" Highly unlikely,

> I think most debaters are busy thinking about how they are going to

> beat their opponent into submission.  This education business smacks

> of a convenient ruse to eliminate an argument that you just don't care

> for.

>

> AT/ Same bad blocks.

> This reminds me of high school LDers screaming about how uneducational

> policy debate is because they just spew cards bla blab la. The reason

> their argument is stupid is because they are taking example of bad

> policy debate to discredit the whole.

>

> That is analogous to what is going on here. I'm sure that there are

> lots of consultation debaters that use the "same bad blocks" every

> round, but in order to compete at a higher level those blocks can not

> stay stagnate. I changed my blocks continuously—reviewing them after

> each tournament that I had debated a particular answer to the CP. This

> is good practice in general and all debaters should probably do it for

> all arguments, but they don't.

>

> Again, we don't punish people for using "the same bad blocks" in their

> 2AC/2NCs for arguments except by beating them.  The same should hold

> true here.

>

> PREFER OUR EVIDENCE

>

> The bottom line is that none of this really surfaced from anyone who

> wasn't involved in the string of losses by MSU against us on Consult

> Japan on the energy topic. In fact, if I'm not mistaken this speaker

> point adjustment for consult was started by Will Repko that year.  The

> fact that this is the only source of such a backlash is highly suspect

> to me, and honestly sounds like you're holding a grudge against an

> argument that you had no success against despite having a tremendous

> amount of success overall.  Perhaps that's not the case, and if it's

> not then it seems there needs to be a lot more hard thinking about

> this policy and its ramifications for the community.

>

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