Hey proteus great video as always. I got a question. For context I’m in pf and this is relating to the septober surveillance topic If I were on the aff and I wanted to argue for specifically helpful surveillance technologies, like drones to detect contaminated water, and ai to streamline immigration processes, could I do that? Because the neg I’m thinking would get up there and say that’s not likely, empirically what’s happened is weve built walls and not drones to help with wastewater. Any and all help greatly appreciated.
What an excellent, reasonable, and difficult to answer question, lol. Let's get into it. The concept that you're referring to is called "parametricizing". I think all debate jargon is dumb, but that's gotta be one of the dumbest. I don't choose these terms. "Para-metri-sizing." In plan-based debate format, it's the idea that the aff gets to defend only a specific part of the resolution. Using the Septober topic, "Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially expand its surveillance infrastructure along its southern border.", these could be non-combat drones to monitor water contamination or, say, track animal migration patterns. The key concept in debate theory is that in plan based debates, the negation isn't linking to the resolution, they're linking to the aff's plan. What this means is that the negation has no burden to reject the entire concept laid out in the resolution, they just have to negate the aff's specific plan. So they're allowed to say oh, surveillance is great, but your specific method is harmful. This has a few practical benefits for the neg, such as not forcing them to defend the status quo (and allowing them to run counterplans). But it also has a downside. If the negative prepared an argument that says ICE is very harmful and abusive to migrants, well, now they literally can not use that argument. It's completely irrelevant in the debate because it's not a negation of the aff's specific proposal. The only recourse the negative team has is to read a topicality argument that says, "In order for this to have been fair, the affirmative should have read a plan that allowed me to use this argument about ICE." They would then give a few justifications for that, like, "It's the most predictable ground, it's what most of the literature base talks about, and it provides the most educational debate." And finally they would say, "If you buy this argument and believe that the aff made this debate less fair and worse for the quality of education in the round, vote them down." But now let's get into PF. We have a lot of videos talking about the "flaws" of PF. Depending on who you are, you might not view these as flaws at all. It was part of how the activity was designed more or less on purpose. But PF was designed so that "technical" arguments like topicality could not be read. Tricky and cheaterish strategies like counterplans can not be used. And one of the ways they did this was make it so that the negations arguments link to the resolution itself, not the advocacy of the aff. Some techy PF teams might try to argue against that, but in the vast majority of cases that's just going to be treated as fact. What that means on the plus side is that the negation team never has to worry that the aff team's strategy is going to make their arguments irrelevant. But the down side is two things. First, it makes it so the aff and the neg can spend the whole debate talking about completely different things. You can have the aff saying, "Tracking water contamination would be good!" and the neg saying, "ICE abductions would be bad!" without there ever being any actual clash. How is a judge supposed to resolve that round? Which leads us to the second thing. Second, it makes it so that you get much less mileage out of clever strategies and niche research. To answer your question directly, yes, you can absolutely write an aff that says X, Y, and Z are excellent forms of "surveillance" of the border. But there's nothing to stop the negative from saying, "And here are bad examples of surveillance." At that point it partly become about which scenario is more likely. But really, beyond the surface level, it just becomes about what the stronger impact is. Probability is just one facet of an impact's strength. What that means is that if your niche scenario has massive magnitude in some way, it might still stand a chance. But it also means that most rounds are going to come down to cliche argument has the biggest impact. Of all the major debate formats, Public Forum centers the most around weighing impacts. And that's because it's really bad for doing the only two other ways you can respond to an argument: 1. Challenging the accuracy of someone's arguments (topics are only 1 month long, no disclosure required, evidence paraphrasing allowed, most teams are really bad at sharing evidence), 2. Challenging the relevance of an argument to the overall debate (which, again, is because when the aff doesn't get to set any parameters on the scope of the debate you end up with pretty much every argument linking). That was a very long answer to a very simple question. I hope it wasn't too much of a wall of text. If I can elaborate on anything, don't hesitate to ask. All the best, Sasan
I ate dinner while reading this about four times. It was extremely helpful. First of all I had heard from other videos on your channel about the structural issues of pf but not until i started hitting them myself did i realize just how broken as a format is. Second this actually brings a ton of meaning to things I have heard pf debater say. Since my introduction in middle school I have heard "weighing wins debates" and now the story makes a lot more sense Third I'd like to thank you again for your incredibly in depth and thoughtful response. People like you make the debate space worth being in, and your help is really meaningful to people like me. Have a great day, and keep up the great work Mr. Proteus
Well said as always. In most forms of debate most of the time, speaking broadly and not just in the scope of competitive debate, most negative arguments link to the resolution. In plan-based debates (which Parli becomes only in the case of policy resolutions), the negative’s arguments link to the plan and not the resolution. That’s when topicality becomes a thing. If topicality was just an argument you read when you disagreed with your opponent’s definitions, then the aff could read a topicality against the neg in the MG if they didn’t agree with their arguments. Disagreeing with definitions is just another thing to productive debate about. A topicality is read in scenarios where something happens that makes it not possible to have a productive debate. In Parli, that only applies to policy resolution rounds. That’s my longer and more confusing write up of what Tanya already explained, lol.
We were so lucky at Benicia High to have Tristan Keene on our team when, in her Senior year, primarily coached by BHS alumni Tim Knox, she qualified, with her partner Juhi Yadav, for state finals in Public Forum. I believe they finished first or second at state qualifiers. Unfortunately, the Covid shutdown meant canceling state finals that year. Our high school team was also fortunate that as Tristan trained and competed at DVC with Paul Villa, she coached our team. At that point, we switched to the Parli format. She was the primary coach, along with Tm Knox, Braden Begbie, and Juhi Yadav, of the BHS Delgado/Stockwell team that recently placed 17th in the country in high school Parli after competing at the 2024 Parli nationals in New York. She is a much-loved alumni of the Benicia High School Debate Team.
Thumpers are link uniqueness arguments that answer common negative positions. - They say: DA: Business Confidence, econ growing now, you make it worse, that is bad - You have like 5 reasons the economy is bad prepped that you can quickly read to takeout or at least scare them off the position by hiding behind what may appear to be quality ink. The premise of most disads is "we are 5 units of X away from our disad impact happening and wouldn't you know it, the plan is 6 units of X". Thumpers basically say "here are a bunch of other things that have happened or are going to happen that are also at least 5+ units and therefore should have or will inevitably trigger your link" OR thumpers say "we are 0 or a bajillion units away from X so it doesn't matter" Edit: and crucially, these are super easy to prep a file of ahead of time ( i have my kids do it every thursday or friday before a tournament) and then you can just prep them every round in case you need them.
To “front” is to pretend to know things you don’t or to be able to do things you can’t. As slang it can refer to if someone buys flashy things they can’t afford to pretend to have more money than they do. Paul here is talking about learning to just sound like you know what you’re talking about. It really goes a long way and it’s the skill from debate that I probably use the most often (lol). -Sasan
Sasan explained but basically, despite what they tell you, judges are not flowing robots. They absolutely are persuaded by the performative element of the round independent of the words on their flow and you should exploit this. Sounding like you are winning matters, seemingly like you aren't pressed when really you are dying inside matters. I think this is why I view cross-x as being so under utilized in national circuit debate, most people just figure the judge doesn't flow it so it is just filler time or free prep but cross-x lets you really control the ethos debate. At a minimum, we want the judge in every round to have to pause at the end of the round and question whether we really lost or not, no matter how far behind we are on the flow.
not including UTT KR was a crime. Sure they never got the natty champ but they were in that natty final round several times to where they are probably a top 10 team.
I some how didn't see this comment until today so here are my thoughts: First and most important, the entire premise of this video was comparing nationals winners and like... they never won nats. Ignoring that for a second, calling UTT KR a top 10 team of all time IS INSANE. Oregon GL dog walked them in finals and was the 14th seed of this bracket. Rice TR beat them in finals and was the 19th seed. I think independent of that, KR was never dominant on the national circuit outside of nationals (which, again, they never won). I remember the first year they made finals it was a huge upset and we were all talking about how they came out of nowhere to do it. Obviously the minimum requirement to make this list is winning nats but if we put that to the side, I don't think there is a single year of the UTT KRs career where anyone thought they were the best team in the country and if you aren't the best in your own era then surely you can't be top 10 of all time. There are teams on this list I think they would probably be favored to win debates against but that's not the point of the list, all of these times lost rounds to very good teams, but none of those teams won nats.
this guy is the coolest alive i am taking notes and watching this as i sleep (not at the same time) so i subconsciously consume the information and become him
You should review an APDA debate! I saw your tier list video and I don’t think you’re understanding the format and I think you’d like it more than you think!
That’s not a bad suggestion. Just a few weeks ago I was at the Parli TOC in New York and a lot of East Coast/APDA Parli folks were there and we chatted for a while. I don’t wouldn’t say we know nothing about APDA, but I think it’s fair to say it would be good to review an APDA round or something. If you have suggestions let me know. It’s gonna be a few weeks before I can make videos because my laptop has official gone kaput, but upside is that when I get the replacement it should be way less of a hassle for me to make videos than it has been for the lifetime of this channel.
There’s definitely more people making online content now than when we started! I don’t closely monitor stuff so I can’t make any specific suggestions off the top of my head, but I recommend trying to search for specific topics you want to find videos on and seeing what’s out there, then clicking around the channel and see what else they have. Super vague answer unfortunately, lol.
@@proteusdebateacademy I genuinly appreciate the tight knit community the channel creates (like replying to comments: thank you so much). If you have any videos you can recommend for LD (specifically voters and the 2AR) I will be sure to check them out!
@@georgeshubitidze3324 that’s really kind of you to say! Our videos aren’t really organized by debate style and specific speech. We typically focus more on the underlying concepts that will apply across various debate formats. I took a look at what we have and I would recommend checking out our “How to Collapse” video first. It’s relatively short-ish (20 minutes ish). If you find that useful, you might eventually be interested in watching parts of our video on writhing good impacts (because that’s ultimately what your voters are about) and the video on “Round Vision”. These videos are a lot longer though and talk about bigger subjects than just giving voters and 2ARs, but I think there’s important information there for eventually getting a more “zoomed out”/“big picture” understanding of effective voters. None of it is, like, a checklist of things you should include in your 2AR. It’s possible another channel has something like that but I’m not personally familiar with one. And maybe a video like that is something we’ll eventually make. But the short answer is watch the collapsing video. Hope that helps!
@@proteusdebateacademy Absolutely. I just watched the round vision video and it was very helpful. I will definitely check out other videos as well. You got a subscriber for sure!
@@merhy5509 that’s amazing! Congratulations! We’re really flattered at your kind words and proud to have played some small role, but as you know, the whole point of this video is that that’s all your hard work. Plenty of people watched those videos and didn’t win a state championship. Great work, champ!
Hi! I made a video on writing cross-ex/cross-fire questions a couple weeks ago, but for this topic I think a good line of questioning if they’re saying to destroy the UN is to keep asking them why its bad until they something like because of global super powers/hegemony, and then ask if abolishing the UN means that sec council members can no longer interact with other countries (it doesn’t) then follow up with “so these countries still exist, and still have those resources”. Importantly, don’t ask why the UN collapsing hurts these superpowers because they probably have an answer and you don’t wanna let them make their own arguments in crossfire lol. If they’re saying UN good, I would try and get them to admit there are problems with the UN beyond permanent membership, and that there are ways for perm members to circumvent the aff (“will these countries have money after the aff happens? So they could issue bribes if they wanted?” Etc etc) (note that I asked if they COULD issue bribes, not if they will. There’s only one answer to the first question, but the second one gives them more wiggle room). The CX video explains what I’m saying in more detail, and I think it’ll be more helpful for coming up with questions setting up your specific case. Let me know if you have any more questions!
Just took the test then watched how I did-I think I got all of them right except for the Roses logical question-for some reason I forgot that obviously there are other flowers besides roses (This is especially embarrassing having just taken formal logic). I'd say it's a pretty solid test! As for feedback-I think there are some minor areas to improve (one of the videos that I think was supposed to be embedded of a negative rebuttal speech wasn't for me?), and I might also consider adding a section about rebuttals, like "Which of the following claims is *fully responsive* to argument X", asking students to understand the difference between mitigation, non-unique, turns, etc. On the whole though, I like it!
That's all great feedback. Really appreciate it! I sent you the email with how you did. No stress about the formal logic stuff, lol. It's mistakes we all make all the time.
Hey, I just wanted to mention I’m probably gonna do a video on the PF nats topic, so if there’s any feedback or anything you want me to incorporate in that video please let me know. I could also give the LD topic a gander if anyone wants but idk how many Proteus watchers do LD vs PF
I’ve had to take BART for work pretty often these past few months, and I’ve been going back through these videos to listen to on the commute. Really kicking myself for not watching these more thoroughly as a competitor, this is truly great stuff. Most of it was taught in class or in the van, lol, but to go back home and not take advantage of the off-hours resource was really disadvantageous. I suppose hindsight is 20/20, and all I can do now is absorb this knowledge back up for the future. Once I get my teaching credential and get a “real” teaching job, it would be so fun to coach HS forensics and give back to this activity, because I really do miss it!
Being a competitor is so much work. I mean, just using your competitive career as an example, by your last year with us you were juggling 4 events? More? Writing and memorizing and blocking a platform event, being one of the most competitve CC extempers in the country, and still doing debate. All while being the heart of the team and helping so many other people around you directly and indirectly. Not to mention there was a global pandemic happening and you were, you know, a fulltime college student with a classes and tests and essays and friends and family. It's easy to lose perspective years down the line when the stresses and challenges of everyday life are half-forgotten memories, but for what it's worth, that coaching staff talked a lot our competitors, and no one ever said the words, "I wish David would work harder." Any student would be so lucky to sign up for the debate team and have you be their coach, and if that ever happens you know I'll be around to offer whatever help I can. Always great to hear from you, my friend. Thanks for bringing back great memories. All the best.
Obviously it’s not a huge problem but as a captain I want to do as much as I can to make sure they don’t bomb their first round just because they’re nervous. Being prepped out and words of affirmation work but I think a big thing is just themselves as a debater.
@@jk20204 This is a great question! And probably deserving of its own video. I think the simplest advice I can give is to lower the stakes for them in their mind. I don’t think there’s much you can given them in terms of instruction that will help because instruction just adds to the pile of things they’re trying to remember. Ultimately I think it’s about telling them that the results don’t matter and they should have fun and see what they can lear from each round, and then consistently check in with them to ask them how they are, what they’re noticing and learning, and to reassure them that results at the beginning stage aren’t in any way indicative of overall potential and they should just try to enjoy the experience and make some friends. Anxious people will, of course, find things to be anxious about anyway. But consistent messaging that the outcome doesn’t matter to you and that the effort is all that matters will go a long way.
Hey folks! Sasan here. If you watch the you'll very quickly notice that I worried there would be terrible tech issues, and then later notice that there were, in fact, terrible tech issues. If a video has a problem like this I normally wouldn't post it, but (1) I don't have the time to re-re-re-record this, (2) It feels like an important topic for us to have a video on, and (3) this is feedback for a viewer who asked for help, so I'd feel bad not letting them get the full feedback. Hope video issues in the second half aren't too annoying.
Hey mr proteus just wanted to thank you for your content. I just broke for the first time in my life at a national tournament and i feel super on track with debate thanks to your content. I know making these videos is really time consuming so i just wanted to re-assure you that you are actually making a difference out here. We're watching and even though you can't see us we appreciate all you do!
About 20 minutes ago I checked a video I just finished recording. It was my 3rd try recording it, each time took close to 2 hours, and I found out that the video glitches out about halfway through. It’s still usable I guess, I’m not gonna record it a 4th time, it’s just not what I had hoped for, lol. I mention that to say that it really goes a long way some days to read an incredibly kind and thoughtful comment like yours. I really appreciate it and congratulations on your well-deserved success! And best of luck in all the successes still to come.
Sasan here, I considered recording my own addendum to this video but I’ll keep it brief and add it here. (Edit: I’m notoriously bad at keeping things brief) I think there’s a lot of interesting things to be said about the debate job market in general. The main thing that I want to echo from what Paul said is that, in nearly all instances, your debate “working career” is either going to having some other main job and debate as a small part of it, or it’s going to be something entrepreneurial where a ton of your work is going to revolve around things like marketing and managing finances. There are edge cases where someone will just give you a full time salary and all they ask in return is that you teach debate, and if you’re feeling wildly irresponsible and lucky, then I can’t in good conscience discourage you because it somehow worked out for me. I think the number of people making a decent full time living from someone paying them to teach debate is most likely less than 100. They include but are not limited to, people with coaching jobs at a handful of prestigious high schools (master’s sometimes required, at least a bachelor’s), and people who work for major debate organizations (your UDLs, a handful of academies across the nation, they don’t usually require a specific degree if you have a strong enough resume). With that said, the “market” of debate was growing really rapidly for a while until the pandemic dealt what I suspect was a really big blow. I don’t have the exact numbers or anything. So I think there’s 2 ways it can go from here. Either debate as an activity becomes too small to be sustainable (which is a problem we’re facing right now), OR, debate figures things out and comes up with a sustainable and appealing competitive model. If THAT happens, then I think it’s going to be ready for the boom in interest that I think is going to happen soon and there’s going to be more places wanting to hire debate coaches or pay for debate services than there has been in many years. If we don’t make the activity more sustainable and appealing, then I think that boom in interest will come and go like it did around 2008.
And I guessed that correctly BY USING LOGIC. I’m not gonna lie as soon as I said that I was like “probably too much information to give out.” RU-vid let’s you mute just a little section, I’ll give that a shot. lol
