Buildacase

Two ships passing in the night: a WSDC story.

When helping Enting Lee and Naomi Panovka coach WSDC Panama in 2021, I had the opportunity to give the team feedback after a devastating round 2 loss. The kids were quite upset: they had an excellent positive argument, so they expected to win. When they somehow lost, they inevitably became angry and confused. Let’s see if you can identify the reason they lost this debate.

Motion that was debated: This house would ban the production and consumption of meat.

• Gov argued: “Meat production causes climate change and environmental damage, which hurts major regions of the world, causes pollution, ruins jobs and industries and lives.
• WSDC Panama (Opp) responded: “But meat production is actually very important for many peoples lives, because lots of jobs in the global south rely on this production.”

Do you see the problem with Panama’s case?

Meat production can simultaneously cause environmental devastation and also be important for many peoples’ financial stability! Opp’s response is addressing the same metric as Gov (the effects of meat production on human lives), but opp’s response is just new positive material: it does not mitigate or refute Gov’s argument. This is what is called ‘competing analysis.’ Competing analysis is an argument that might be strong on its own, but in the context of the debate round it fails to engage with the other teams’ arguments. Competing analysis is one way debate arguments become uncomparative. It is the most common novice mistake in refutation.

(Another way to think of the problem is: they built positive material for why their side is good, but used it to explain why the other side was bad. They mistakenly used positive material as refutation.)

When you make inadequate comparisons (be uncomparative), it forces a judge to make the decision about the impact that is more convincing. If both things can be true simultaneously, the judge has to defer to what impact they decide is more important. If one team makes false comparisons (be uncharitable!), the judge has to decide themselves what arguments are reasonable to compare, and which ones are not. When you fail to compare, you give up your power to determine your position in the round, and you allow room for the judge to insert themselves into the debate. We want to close all the doors for interpretation and force the judge to see things from your perspective.

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Identifying criteria and metrics

For context, debates almost always have a tradeoff. A tradeoff is a harm you must accept in exchange for a positive benefit. Being comparative is the act of accepting a tradeoff and comparing on the same criterion whether the tradeoff is worth it.

Being uncomparative is either a) ignoring a tradeoff (competing analysis), b) comparing arguments on different criteria (false comparison).

• A criterion is the different analysis teams use to reach the same impact. You can think of them as first-order impacts which reach an overall (second-order) impact that both teams want to prove.
• A metric is a decision of what impact(s) are important in the debate.
• There are often multiple criteria and metrics in a debate, and it is up to the debaters to argue which is the most important in deciding which argument wins a round.
  • When a mechanism proves an impact, it creates a criterion and establishes a metric to adjudicate the debate.
  • When a metric is ‘won’ by a team, that means their case had impacts which won the most important criteria.

Worked examples:

Confused? Me too. Let’s use an example comparing two arguments to better understand these new terms:

Example 1:

Motion: THP, under a veil of ignorance, to be born in a wealthy autocracy rather than a poor democracy.

Gov argument: Wealthy autocracies are likely a better life because they have more money.

Bad Opp response: Yeah, they might have more money, but wealthy autocracies also don’t have freedom. Therefore, less freedom = worse quality of life.

• Metric (the overall impact both teams are going for): quality of life in autocracy vs. democracy
• Criteria:
  • Gov’s criteria: money (you need money for quality of life)
  • Opp’s criteria: freedom (you need freedom for quality of life)

Do you see how opp’s argument is currently uncomparative? Opp made a similar mistake as WSDC Panama. They are not comparing between eachothers’ criteria, and instead they are asserting their own metric as the better one.

• A more comparative opp argument addresses the same criteria as government: money.
• Good Opp response: perhaps there is more money overall, but there are several structural reasons why that money is unlikely to be distributed to the vast majority of people/the average person.

Example 2:

Motion: THW ban zoos

Gov argument: Zoos are bad because they hurt the health of animals by trapping them in small enclosed environments.

Good Opp response: Yeah, they might be trapped and not able to move as much as they need, but at least being trapped keeps them safe. These animals are likely to suffer and die in the wild without the zoo’s protection due to predators or environmental disaster.

• Metric: harms to the quality of life of animals inside zoo vs. outside zoo
• Criteria:
  • Gov’s criteria: being trapped
  • Opp’s criteria: being trapped

Do you understand why Opp’s argument is comparative?

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How do you be comparative?

Your biggest takeaway from this lesson will be recognizing criteria and metrics.

1. Recognize: Separate arguments under metrics and criteria.
2. Note what the arguments are on each side, and sort them by their similarities (similarity in mechanism, or similarity by impact)
3. Recognize where the two sides diverge: Do you agree on the mechanism but disagree on the impact? Do you have different mechanisms that have the same impact?
4. Label the criteria based on where the arguments diverge. Which criteria are your arguments fulfilling, which criteria are your opponents’ arguments fulfilling? Your analysis must consider both sides.
5. Refute: Use the same criteria.
   1. They take it for granted that…
   2. They fail to consider…
   3. They incorrectly assume…

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Not everything can be comparative.

You cannot be comparative in every argument or every debate. Here is a list of instances where you cannot ‘bite the bullet’ and accept a tradeoff:

When you have not defined or clarified or proven a tradeoff, or when the other team has not accepted a tradeoff. Or when the debate is about the existence of a tradeoff, rather than which side of the tradeoff is preferable.

• For example, in the motion THP a world where Karmic reincarnation exists, it isn’t immediately clear what the alternatives to Karmic reincarnation are (therefore, it is unclear what are the tradeoffs are). As such, when debating this motion, you would have to identify and defend a tradeoff to make your case comparative.

• In the Doxbridge 2 Final (click here to watch), the PM recognizes that their case is contingent upon an agreed-upon tradeoff. That is why they take a POI as early as possible from Opp. This avoids a messy and poor debate about ‘what is the tradeoff.’

When the argument is not about a tradeoff, like with most most principled arguments. (We have an article on the unique qualities of principled arguments here if you want to read further after this lesson.)

• This is more obvious: most principles are not arguments that you can compromise on. If you do compromise, you must analyze the differences between the different contexts which the principle operates in, to establish the conditions where the principle applies. Therefore, you cannot be comparative when analyzing principles.

• However, you can be comparative between principles. If you have a different principle than another team, you can weigh between them to show your principle is better. We cover weighing in Lesson 3, so don’t worry about this until then.

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Exercises

Exercise: Judging a tophalf exchange

• Open up a new debate video. Here is a playlist of Gwen Stearn’s and I’s recommendations.
• Watch the first four speeches in the video (the OG and the OO). Write down the main arguments from each side, applying linear flow.
• Pay particular attention to refutation given by each speaker. Recognize and label the criteria and the metrics in the debate.
• Assess whether their refutation was comparative or not. If it was not comparative, why? How would you fix it? What refutation would you give instead?
• This exercise will take you approximately 45 minutes.
• *You can apply this exercise to your old debate refutation as well. Pull out your old debate notes and try to piece together if you were comparative or not, and how you could improve that refutation to make it comparative.

In the next lesson, we will introduce the concept of weighing — a fundamental part of every debate speech.

Next Lesson: Lesson 3-1: How to weigh