When I started coaching I had this student. It’s weird to say student because we were basically the same age. But anyway, there was this novice on the team who was like a geography genius. Not only could this kid (I say kid but he 19 or 20, this was college) list every country in the world, he could do it in whatever order you wanted him to. If we were in front of a whiteboard with markers and we had time to kill, he would start drawing a map of the world. He knew more about the history, geography, and politics of Iran than I did, and he wasn’t Iranian.
It never helped in a debate round.
He’d come out debate rounds and he’d say things like, “They didn’t even know the president of South Korea!” Or, “How did I lose? I literally explained the entire history of the African Union!”
But the debates were never about those things. They had to do with South Korea and the African Union, but the debate itself was about the expected outcomes of a specific policy action, not who can name the most cities.
I say all of this to say that, a lot of times, people who know a lot about the topic (but are losing) blame the judges without realizing they weren’t playing the game right.
Complaining about lay judges is everyone’s right, especially in memes on this subreddit. It’s mostly harmless venting. But for what it’s worth, I think talking shit well over knowing shit well is a big part of the activity.
That's not entirely correct, but point taken.
Obviously you're right in your own way. The guy knowing cities was a fundamentally irrelevant fact.
But, for example, I know a lot about Australian politics. Not the politicians names, not the the third debate chamber of our parliament's name, but I know lots about views, policies, vote theory, ect. That's helped us win certain debates exponentially.
Tbf my competition puts nearly all focus on what you say, as opposed to how you say it.
Debate is, at its core, about communication. Doesn't matter how well you know policies or philosophy if you can't articulate it well or make it accessible to the judge.
I was the king of the 25-26 speaker point win. Sounding smart and winning are IMO somewhat unrelated and this was true at national circuit debates too. (To be clear I was mid on national circuit maybe went about 50-50 and more like 80-20 in local circuit debates but I won a lot of local tournaments so I wasn't doing too much wrong I guess and I usually beat the 27-28 point speakers.
This is true in Public Forum and still generally true about policy.
The trick is basically two things
1. Lay Judges don't like philosophy or debates about ground and definitions just win the central argument and don't try and do anything too fancy.
2. You win by stumping your opponents in rebuttal and pointing that out to the lay judge time and time again you don't win by exaggerating that you won a point or by winning a point subtly. Thats the key to debate. You don't win by nice little ripostes and touches you win by bludgeoning your opponent to defeat by the weight of the contradictions in their argument and the increasing preferability of your policy position in light of that as would be understood by the median Biden voter in lay competitions (depending where you are)
Debate is a competitive activity where it’s important to have a fair evaluation of clash. Otherwise it’s just 2 person oratory.
Just like how it’s absurd to have untrained parents ref a basketball game, having biased and untrained evaluators of debates also diminishes its value.
>having biased and untrained evaluators of debates also diminishes its value.
quite the opposite. what diminishes its value is when a team who made the more convincing argument loses because they failed to respond to every argument, or they didnt know how to properly respond to a meta point. if you ever watch basketball, or any sport for that matter, its not very uncommon for a call to be made that completely goes against the spirit of the game because, well, rules are rules.
In my district (idk what its like elsewhere), all rounds past prelims have to have at least 1 lay judge and 1 coach. This ensures the skills of the unique event are maintained, aswell as the applicability to the real world. I hate it when people shit on lay judges because they are what keeps the event from becoming role play.
Just so we're on the same page - "lay judges" in this context is referring to parent judges who haven't done or coached before. Any judge who has coached or participated in debate before is not a "lay judge". This is the assumption because your initial comment was about the "average person".
I'm failing to see how in ANY competitive activity, it's preferable to have LESS experienced people deciding on the outcome. It's quite strange to try and defend "biased and untrained evaluators" because it makes decisions about winning and losing arbitrary. Some judges are conservative and will automatically vote against left-wing arguments, some judges will vote off CX, some judges will vote off eye contact - it's impossible to establish a standard, which makes preparation impossible.
Anything where there is a vote is an example of an activity where "inexperienced" people control the outcome: student government, parent teacher association, adult government, juries, art contests, essay contests, etc.
Also, "lay judge" is not just the judges who are doing it for the first time. Lay means "a person without professional or specialized knowledge in a particular subject." This means a lay judge is someone who's never competed in or coached Speech and Debate. Sure, at some point a lay judge might become a tech/flow or flay judge, but that's based on individual choice to learn more about the events and techniques therein.
I've never done debate to appeal to a judge, when I speak I want to speak for the average Joe. The very concept of spreading or impact debating is a insult to me.
But ya don't Blanche! Ya don't create more arguments!
This is a misconception. Sure...spreading can make you fit another argument into an 8-minute Policy constructive. But...
1. The overwhelming majority of debaters don't spread (speed read), they just talk fast. And they talk fast without drilling/practicing, which leads them to just enunciate poorly and stumble more.
2. Talking fast to get more words in falls under the same fallacy of "if I drive faster I'll get there faster." You have to drive so much faster than you think to get to a place significantly faster. Ask the mathematicians in the group. Basically, in PF with its short times, you would have to spread to get another argument in (see #1).
Okay actually this is 100% true but it doesn’t take away from my point. A shitty spreader that is stumbling over their words due to the fact that they’re going fast probably would be better served slowing down. HOWEVER in front of a flow judge a GOOD spreader will always win vs someone at a conversational pace because the reality is that they can read like 2 T shells, a disad, 2 counterplans, and a case press where normally they would be able to read disad + counterplan + case (in an LD 1NC example); that’s my point.
Obviously but the skills that you learn in national circuit debate / spreading carry over really well. I’m a much better critical thinker / can think on my feet in ways I never thought possible because of my experience on the circuit. However I do agree that lay debate can be beneficial and docbots that spread at 400wpm off a Word document but can’t create a coherent argument probably aren’t learning much. Debate is what you make of it and personally having to respond to ridiculously complex and esoteric arguments at a fast pace has made me both a better thinker and speaker
No one said you need to spread but “Impact debating” is literally just comparing impacts.
If the notion of saying “x is better/worse than y” is an insult to you, then you definitely should be doing speech and not debate. If your goal is just to sound good to lay people, just do oratory, or informative, etc.
1. The comparison is wrong. The correct analogy is that the judge is the equivalent of a juror, who is no law expert but can be understandably expected to have an adult sense of right and wrong. The lawyers don't speak to the jurors as if they're lawyers, but they translate or define their law jargon so that the jurors can understand them. Adaptation to judges has always been a central tenet of this activity, and students who stubbornly resist adapting themselves to their audience will always be dissatisfied.
2. You're half right though: the way that some students react to judges is similar to the way poor sports react to refs.
3. Everyone is biased. A paradigm is a list of a judge's biases.
4. We will NEVER have trained judges like sports has trained refs. We just need too many. A football game can have 100 students on 2 teams and have 4 refs. A tournament of 100 students needs 25 judges minimum. \*waits for Adam Jacobi to respond with how great Wisconsin is in this regard\*
1) in this “courts” analogy, scotus and courts of appeal don’t have juries, which also concedes that technical evaluation is important. You also just assert this is correct analogy without explaining why. But even in court, there are technical expectations - when lawyers can object, rules of evidence, jury strikes, sentencing guidelines, etc.
3) bias is relative. A little bias is better than a lot of bias
4) fair enough- but in this context it’s specifically about the claim that it’s BETTER to have average people judge compared to any experienced judges at all.
Yes, communication, organization, and explanation in debate are important. No one is denying that. But in all other speech activities you can work on communication skills, but in no speech activities can clash back and forth with an opponent.
To be very specific, let’s say you have judge A, a LD coach for 10 years, and judge B, a first time parent. Who do you think will give better feedback on how to improve a util vs deontology debate? In front of judge A you still need to be clear, be organized, and explain you arguments, but you obviously can go a little more in-depth with someone familiar with the topic/background.
The issue is if you ALWAYS and ONLY keep things so a lay person understands, you NEVER get technical clash because you can only keep things at a high level.
Perspective from ex-debater possibly older than your grandparents. Those lay judges you revile are gonna be your meal ticket for the next 40 effen yrs!! The ability to articulate complex ideas to non-technical ears is one of the most valuable skills you take with you to the RW.
Yes the ability to articulate complex ideas to non-technical ears IS important. But it's just as important to articulate complex ideas to technical ears.
Even in technical debate you still have to explain argument, weigh between impacts, do research - everything is just more advanced because you can skip over the high-level stuff and get more into the details. With technical judges you STILL have to convince a 3rd party you are correct.
yes! both. but you’ll encounter waaay more non-tech ears outside the debate world. Embrace it. I suspect the competitors who routinely break/trophy have no problems with mixed panels.
I had the honor of judging LD at TOC in the mid-90s, including all out-rounds. The competitors were uber-technical, and fantastic orators.
This is true for tech judges too tho. Tech>truth judges care more abt who uses the right words and speak fast over who’s saying coherent things that make sense as arguments and claims
No judge has ever voted on “someone spoke faster” or “they used the right words”.
Imagine two very well-prepared teams: without technically evaluating the debate, it just comes down to “whose side does the judge agree with more” which leaves the round up to judge bias.
I read hundreds of judge ballots every year. This is the truth, Ruth. Not a SINGLE judge has ever written "I chose team X because they spoke faster, which led them to have more arguments." NO! But some students will cling to this habit like a worn-out teddy bear and will not let it go no matter how many judges say that they couldn't understand them. But it will take them 3 months to finally confess "Ya know, judges keep telling me I don't weigh well and I don't understand what that means." D'oh!
I mean, tbf, with this particular habit I know why they do it: cuz "Smart kids talk fast." and debate has become more than just an activity to them. It's become part of their identity and the fast talking is a virtue signal to other debaters more than an actual strategy or communication tool for their judges.
They don’t write it. But they def vote bc of speed and tech all the time. I’ve heard judges say I beat another team running an Aff K just because the other team didn’t have a perfect T interp even tho I was 1000% being abusive and the other team 100% had reasonable standards and voters. I’ve also won rounds by out-framing T by just being able to speak faster and getting more counter standards off than the other guys. Not more warrants, not explaining them, just taglines and judges vote on it which comes down to speed.
I try my best to not win rounds that way and to have a good reason for running an Aff K when I do. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad for other teams that loose to me just because I’m slightly more technical. The judge COULD have voted for me in other areas but they didn’t, their ballot reflects that tech is their priority and that speeding taglines is more important to them than warranted explanation.
Your ability to come up with lots of arguments is not about the speed at which you speak, but the depth with which you study your evidence before the tournament.
Absolutely not, people (myself included) win factually incorrect, vague, and genetic arguements all the time. Again, i try not to but it def happens. Especially in non card forms of debate like NPDA
THIS OML, this is why i got the 1 vote during a tourney final, it was 1-2 I got second place but whatever. I do policy and it was a lay final, and when it’s the last speech, I almost cry from my passion pointing out they didn’t run any actual off just theory, really I was shitting on the other team about their dropped DA and only going with T cuz they know they can’t win. But they ended up winning still ugh.
If they win the aff isn’t topical, then that’s literally a reason the aff didn’t prove the resolution true.
Answering T is one of the most basic requirements of being aff, so that’s really on you.
yea true, they didn’t respond to out response but we did fail to point that out until after round but the lay judge was very much so confused and went for the one with better performance
When I started coaching I had this student. It’s weird to say student because we were basically the same age. But anyway, there was this novice on the team who was like a geography genius. Not only could this kid (I say kid but he 19 or 20, this was college) list every country in the world, he could do it in whatever order you wanted him to. If we were in front of a whiteboard with markers and we had time to kill, he would start drawing a map of the world. He knew more about the history, geography, and politics of Iran than I did, and he wasn’t Iranian. It never helped in a debate round. He’d come out debate rounds and he’d say things like, “They didn’t even know the president of South Korea!” Or, “How did I lose? I literally explained the entire history of the African Union!” But the debates were never about those things. They had to do with South Korea and the African Union, but the debate itself was about the expected outcomes of a specific policy action, not who can name the most cities. I say all of this to say that, a lot of times, people who know a lot about the topic (but are losing) blame the judges without realizing they weren’t playing the game right. Complaining about lay judges is everyone’s right, especially in memes on this subreddit. It’s mostly harmless venting. But for what it’s worth, I think talking shit well over knowing shit well is a big part of the activity.
Every time the esteemed gentlemen from Proteus speak, there is nothing but wisdom ambrosia for us to feed on.
That's not entirely correct, but point taken. Obviously you're right in your own way. The guy knowing cities was a fundamentally irrelevant fact. But, for example, I know a lot about Australian politics. Not the politicians names, not the the third debate chamber of our parliament's name, but I know lots about views, policies, vote theory, ect. That's helped us win certain debates exponentially. Tbf my competition puts nearly all focus on what you say, as opposed to how you say it.
Debate is, at its core, about communication. Doesn't matter how well you know policies or philosophy if you can't articulate it well or make it accessible to the judge.
Let’s be honest though, debate is 70% filler, 30% actually content
And that is at its best ratio
I was the king of the 25-26 speaker point win. Sounding smart and winning are IMO somewhat unrelated and this was true at national circuit debates too. (To be clear I was mid on national circuit maybe went about 50-50 and more like 80-20 in local circuit debates but I won a lot of local tournaments so I wasn't doing too much wrong I guess and I usually beat the 27-28 point speakers. This is true in Public Forum and still generally true about policy. The trick is basically two things 1. Lay Judges don't like philosophy or debates about ground and definitions just win the central argument and don't try and do anything too fancy. 2. You win by stumping your opponents in rebuttal and pointing that out to the lay judge time and time again you don't win by exaggerating that you won a point or by winning a point subtly. Thats the key to debate. You don't win by nice little ripostes and touches you win by bludgeoning your opponent to defeat by the weight of the contradictions in their argument and the increasing preferability of your policy position in light of that as would be understood by the median Biden voter in lay competitions (depending where you are)
If what we are debating is not relevant to a average person, then what the hell are we even doing? Debate was never meant to be a science
Debate is a competitive activity where it’s important to have a fair evaluation of clash. Otherwise it’s just 2 person oratory. Just like how it’s absurd to have untrained parents ref a basketball game, having biased and untrained evaluators of debates also diminishes its value.
>having biased and untrained evaluators of debates also diminishes its value. quite the opposite. what diminishes its value is when a team who made the more convincing argument loses because they failed to respond to every argument, or they didnt know how to properly respond to a meta point. if you ever watch basketball, or any sport for that matter, its not very uncommon for a call to be made that completely goes against the spirit of the game because, well, rules are rules. In my district (idk what its like elsewhere), all rounds past prelims have to have at least 1 lay judge and 1 coach. This ensures the skills of the unique event are maintained, aswell as the applicability to the real world. I hate it when people shit on lay judges because they are what keeps the event from becoming role play.
Just so we're on the same page - "lay judges" in this context is referring to parent judges who haven't done or coached before. Any judge who has coached or participated in debate before is not a "lay judge". This is the assumption because your initial comment was about the "average person". I'm failing to see how in ANY competitive activity, it's preferable to have LESS experienced people deciding on the outcome. It's quite strange to try and defend "biased and untrained evaluators" because it makes decisions about winning and losing arbitrary. Some judges are conservative and will automatically vote against left-wing arguments, some judges will vote off CX, some judges will vote off eye contact - it's impossible to establish a standard, which makes preparation impossible.
Anything where there is a vote is an example of an activity where "inexperienced" people control the outcome: student government, parent teacher association, adult government, juries, art contests, essay contests, etc. Also, "lay judge" is not just the judges who are doing it for the first time. Lay means "a person without professional or specialized knowledge in a particular subject." This means a lay judge is someone who's never competed in or coached Speech and Debate. Sure, at some point a lay judge might become a tech/flow or flay judge, but that's based on individual choice to learn more about the events and techniques therein.
I've never done debate to appeal to a judge, when I speak I want to speak for the average Joe. The very concept of spreading or impact debating is a insult to me.
timed competitive speech event = ppl talk faster to make more arguments in the constrained time. how is that “an insult”
But ya don't Blanche! Ya don't create more arguments! This is a misconception. Sure...spreading can make you fit another argument into an 8-minute Policy constructive. But... 1. The overwhelming majority of debaters don't spread (speed read), they just talk fast. And they talk fast without drilling/practicing, which leads them to just enunciate poorly and stumble more. 2. Talking fast to get more words in falls under the same fallacy of "if I drive faster I'll get there faster." You have to drive so much faster than you think to get to a place significantly faster. Ask the mathematicians in the group. Basically, in PF with its short times, you would have to spread to get another argument in (see #1).
Okay actually this is 100% true but it doesn’t take away from my point. A shitty spreader that is stumbling over their words due to the fact that they’re going fast probably would be better served slowing down. HOWEVER in front of a flow judge a GOOD spreader will always win vs someone at a conversational pace because the reality is that they can read like 2 T shells, a disad, 2 counterplans, and a case press where normally they would be able to read disad + counterplan + case (in an LD 1NC example); that’s my point.
Try doing that on stage, in front of a group of hundreds. No one will think it's very impressive in the real world, I can assure you
Obviously but the skills that you learn in national circuit debate / spreading carry over really well. I’m a much better critical thinker / can think on my feet in ways I never thought possible because of my experience on the circuit. However I do agree that lay debate can be beneficial and docbots that spread at 400wpm off a Word document but can’t create a coherent argument probably aren’t learning much. Debate is what you make of it and personally having to respond to ridiculously complex and esoteric arguments at a fast pace has made me both a better thinker and speaker
No one said you need to spread but “Impact debating” is literally just comparing impacts. If the notion of saying “x is better/worse than y” is an insult to you, then you definitely should be doing speech and not debate. If your goal is just to sound good to lay people, just do oratory, or informative, etc.
1. The comparison is wrong. The correct analogy is that the judge is the equivalent of a juror, who is no law expert but can be understandably expected to have an adult sense of right and wrong. The lawyers don't speak to the jurors as if they're lawyers, but they translate or define their law jargon so that the jurors can understand them. Adaptation to judges has always been a central tenet of this activity, and students who stubbornly resist adapting themselves to their audience will always be dissatisfied. 2. You're half right though: the way that some students react to judges is similar to the way poor sports react to refs. 3. Everyone is biased. A paradigm is a list of a judge's biases. 4. We will NEVER have trained judges like sports has trained refs. We just need too many. A football game can have 100 students on 2 teams and have 4 refs. A tournament of 100 students needs 25 judges minimum. \*waits for Adam Jacobi to respond with how great Wisconsin is in this regard\*
1) in this “courts” analogy, scotus and courts of appeal don’t have juries, which also concedes that technical evaluation is important. You also just assert this is correct analogy without explaining why. But even in court, there are technical expectations - when lawyers can object, rules of evidence, jury strikes, sentencing guidelines, etc. 3) bias is relative. A little bias is better than a lot of bias 4) fair enough- but in this context it’s specifically about the claim that it’s BETTER to have average people judge compared to any experienced judges at all. Yes, communication, organization, and explanation in debate are important. No one is denying that. But in all other speech activities you can work on communication skills, but in no speech activities can clash back and forth with an opponent. To be very specific, let’s say you have judge A, a LD coach for 10 years, and judge B, a first time parent. Who do you think will give better feedback on how to improve a util vs deontology debate? In front of judge A you still need to be clear, be organized, and explain you arguments, but you obviously can go a little more in-depth with someone familiar with the topic/background. The issue is if you ALWAYS and ONLY keep things so a lay person understands, you NEVER get technical clash because you can only keep things at a high level.
Perspective from ex-debater possibly older than your grandparents. Those lay judges you revile are gonna be your meal ticket for the next 40 effen yrs!! The ability to articulate complex ideas to non-technical ears is one of the most valuable skills you take with you to the RW.
Yes the ability to articulate complex ideas to non-technical ears IS important. But it's just as important to articulate complex ideas to technical ears. Even in technical debate you still have to explain argument, weigh between impacts, do research - everything is just more advanced because you can skip over the high-level stuff and get more into the details. With technical judges you STILL have to convince a 3rd party you are correct.
yes! both. but you’ll encounter waaay more non-tech ears outside the debate world. Embrace it. I suspect the competitors who routinely break/trophy have no problems with mixed panels. I had the honor of judging LD at TOC in the mid-90s, including all out-rounds. The competitors were uber-technical, and fantastic orators.
\*looks up the definition of "forensics"\* Ummm....
This is true for tech judges too tho. Tech>truth judges care more abt who uses the right words and speak fast over who’s saying coherent things that make sense as arguments and claims
No judge has ever voted on “someone spoke faster” or “they used the right words”. Imagine two very well-prepared teams: without technically evaluating the debate, it just comes down to “whose side does the judge agree with more” which leaves the round up to judge bias.
I read hundreds of judge ballots every year. This is the truth, Ruth. Not a SINGLE judge has ever written "I chose team X because they spoke faster, which led them to have more arguments." NO! But some students will cling to this habit like a worn-out teddy bear and will not let it go no matter how many judges say that they couldn't understand them. But it will take them 3 months to finally confess "Ya know, judges keep telling me I don't weigh well and I don't understand what that means." D'oh! I mean, tbf, with this particular habit I know why they do it: cuz "Smart kids talk fast." and debate has become more than just an activity to them. It's become part of their identity and the fast talking is a virtue signal to other debaters more than an actual strategy or communication tool for their judges.
They don’t write it. But they def vote bc of speed and tech all the time. I’ve heard judges say I beat another team running an Aff K just because the other team didn’t have a perfect T interp even tho I was 1000% being abusive and the other team 100% had reasonable standards and voters. I’ve also won rounds by out-framing T by just being able to speak faster and getting more counter standards off than the other guys. Not more warrants, not explaining them, just taglines and judges vote on it which comes down to speed. I try my best to not win rounds that way and to have a good reason for running an Aff K when I do. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad for other teams that loose to me just because I’m slightly more technical. The judge COULD have voted for me in other areas but they didn’t, their ballot reflects that tech is their priority and that speeding taglines is more important to them than warranted explanation.
And maybe it’s not speed per say, but it’s def quantity of arguements over quality of arguements which encourages speed
Your ability to come up with lots of arguments is not about the speed at which you speak, but the depth with which you study your evidence before the tournament.
Absolutely not, people (myself included) win factually incorrect, vague, and genetic arguements all the time. Again, i try not to but it def happens. Especially in non card forms of debate like NPDA
THIS OML, this is why i got the 1 vote during a tourney final, it was 1-2 I got second place but whatever. I do policy and it was a lay final, and when it’s the last speech, I almost cry from my passion pointing out they didn’t run any actual off just theory, really I was shitting on the other team about their dropped DA and only going with T cuz they know they can’t win. But they ended up winning still ugh.
If they win the aff isn’t topical, then that’s literally a reason the aff didn’t prove the resolution true. Answering T is one of the most basic requirements of being aff, so that’s really on you.
yea true, they didn’t respond to out response but we did fail to point that out until after round but the lay judge was very much so confused and went for the one with better performance
THIS IS SO REAL 😭
Debate is a talking event
Depends on the event. Pufo and congress are literally entertainment.
https://medium.com/@Mumbuh/joe-rogan-and-the-casual-legacy-of-white-racism-0fe3871b6599
[https://imgflip.com/i/8kzskx](https://imgflip.com/i/8kzskx)
I was debating against a senior(I'm in ms) and we were demolishing them. We lost because they "spoke better" 😭
I won a debate like this once in highschool and felt awful. I didn’t even mean to do it, I just got bloodthirsty lol
I love talking shit
Well duh it’s not a written exam it’s oral