This was super fun to read, thanks for sharing! Hm… your new student seems like an interesting person to talk to. Mind asking if he’d be interested in a chat with someone else his age? I’m also a public form (debate format) debater in high school, and I’m doing prep work for this particular topic on student loans as well. I’d love to get a chance to talk with him a bit, and I feel like he may enjoy it as well.
On that note, I think I can elaborate a bit on the format a bit in ways others might find helpful.
Public forum is one of many debate formats with it’s own time and argument structure. The general idea goes something like this. You and your partner (this is a 2v2 format) prepare a case about a few weeks to a month in advance for a topic that’s disclosed prior to the debate. Each side gets 4 minutes to make their initial speech. From there, each side gets a rebuttal, a cross examination, a summary, etc etc. About an hour later, each side gives their closing statements (final focus) and the judge drops their vote for the side which was more ‘persuasive’.
Now, I think your student is a bit new to the format, because it seems like he hasn’t gotten the optimal mindset for the format yet. In public forum, being persuasive almost never means being right. Quite the opposite, actually. You typically be persuasive by being completely damn wrong.
Let me illustrate with an example. In one of my last debate tournaments the resolution was: “The US military should substantially increase it’s military presence in the Artic.” Seems pretty clear cut and typically vague, and it could go any direction. A reasonable person might consider future artic trade routes, security obligations to neighbors, defense of strategic chokepoints or resources…
Fortunately, we were debaters, not reasonable people, so me and my partner ran two main arguments. Climate change and nuclear Armageddon. On the affirmative, the argument was fairly straightforward. Climate change bad, renewables good. To stop climate change we thus need rare earth minerals… but… China has 90% of them. We proceeded to find an evidence card saying how the Artic has a massive deposit of rare earth minerals, and how the US military should deploy forces to maintain security against grayzone operations. On the negative, things were much more fun. We found some instances of Russia sending ships/submarines to the US coast, the range of a nuclear hypersonic missile, and a few buildups of military bases in the Artic. We then proceeded to argue that Russia had a credible first strike capability and if we didn’t take the Artic we’d be at risk of nuclear Armageddon (yes, I’m serious, I actually argued that).
We clean swept that entire tournament without losing a single round.
For an outsider, I imagine this might seem pretty ludicrous (to be honest I’d think so too) but in the context of the actual format it makes perfect sense. The debaters aren’t experts, nor are they proficient in Bayes craft. Their readings are limited, and their prep time even more so. On a regular debate most teams would be scurrying to make counterarguments for common objections opponents might raise, often as late as the night before. We have just enough information and confidence to sound like experts, but only to a layperson. In front of an actual expert I’d imagine we look ridiculous. (I’d love to hear Bryan Caplan’s reaction to my argument saying student loan forgiveness boosts the economy). But that’s not a relevant concern. Nobody is an expert.
So what even if they were? You have 4 minutes for the main speech, and 4 minutes for the rebuttal. It takes 5 minutes to make a bullshit claim and a whole debate to prove it wrong. This is part of the reason why scientists typically don’t debate flat earthers. Any tinfoil hat theorist worth their salt can spend a minute spinning some wild story an exasperated expert will have to spend hours to disprove. Thus, most debaters can spare themselves the trouble of even trying.
Case in point: my evidence card for Russian nuclear threats was the range of the Kinzhal hypersonic missile, about 1000 miles. Coincidentally, around the same distance from the Artic to the US mainland. Thus the argument for why control of the Artic is important. You can hit the mainland US with a first strike from the Artic, but not from Moscow. If my opponents spent 2 minutes to read the card they would’ve discovered another missile I neglected to mention, the Avantgarde, which has a range of 3000 miles. Even if they didn’t know this, the argument is obviously bogus. Hypersonics are not a credible first strike capability unless Russia has the ISR to identify and destroy ALL of our nuclear submarines, silos, and aircraft at the same time. But of course, my opponents never read much material on nuclear doctrine, so they repeated the claims about mutually assured destruction which I was able to shoot down with ease. (What mutually assured destruction? We’d be dead before we could react).
Likewise with rare earth minerals. I neglected to mention the US is not fully mining it’s stockpiles. I neglected to mention other mineral reserves. I also neglected to mention that China has no military forces in the Artic, and there’s no credible threat to defend against. Even if there was, I had no evidence of any US mining interests in the Artic. (I actually pointed this out against a team that stole the case and tried to run it against us. ’Why are you sending the military? What are they going to do, mine the minerals with tanks? Bomb the deposits with HIGHMARS?)
Now, all of this is obvious in hindsight, but in an hour long debate a team only has 2 minutes of prep time, so there’s basically no room for anybody except the fastest readers to credibly review all the evidence carefully. (Hell, I read at 1000wpm and I still have trouble). Thus, most of the time you can safely get away with the most egregious bullshit. In a setting where all claims are purportedly from ‘experts’ or ‘reliable sources’, where each word comes with complete confidence even when the speaker is lying through their teeth, it’s rarely an efficent strategy to actually pursue the truth. Rhetorical flourishes, appeals to fear, ridiculously outsized impacts, and weak arguments are the name of the day.
In that sense, I think I’ve illustrated that there isn’t such a thing as a truly ‘indefensible’ argument, only overly scrupulous debaters. With my four years of experience in the format I have reasonable confidence I can beat an novice in a fair public forum debate, even while taking a completely ridiculous stance like flat eartherism. Much the same with student loans, though the problem is less acute. Your student could do the same. Say with a straight face that student loans help the economy, and the power of social cognition will make it so.
To conclude, never argue with a public forum debater. They will drag you down to their level, and beat you with experience.
(Note: This was an argumentative piece by a debater. Realities explained are not necessarily endorsed, and arguments made typically do not reflect my opinion or that of any sane person. I disavow responsibility for anyone who takes my arguments seriously :P)
Hm… your new student seems like an interesting person to talk to. Mind asking if he’d be interested in a chat with someone else his age?
I’ve sent you his Discord information via PM. (After obtaining permission, of course.)
Say with a straight face that student loans help the economy, and the power of social cognition will make it so.
XD
Yep. In a debate competition, you can win with arguments that are obviously untrue to anyone who knows what you’re talking about, which is why I’m much less interested in traditional debate these days. (Not to discourage you, of course. The dark arts are useful.) When teaching Socratic dialogues, the first thing I have to teach is “Don’t give arguments you don’t actually believe in.”
There’s lots of tricks I use to get around this in real life (mostly betting face, since betting money only works for facts), but they’re not allowed in a debate tournament.
I’ve sent you his Discord information via PM. (After obtaining permission, of course.
Thank you very much! I think I’ll enjoy the chat. Just sent him the friend request. Oh, and, my discord is the same as my lesswrong btw.
Yep. In a debate competition, you can win with arguments that are obviously untrue to anyone who knows what you’re talking about
YES! Hahhahahaa… it’s quite dumb. The information you can reasonably convey in 4 minutes is so short that even when your case is common sense it’s hard to actually prove your point. I can bring up a variety of commonsense and economic arguments for why student loan forgiveness inflates prices, but my opponents can basically just say ‘nu-uh’ the entire debate, citing some random article saying it… somehow creates 1.2 million jobs? I sometimes wish I could just throw a book at them and say ‘read the damn research!’
But then, I should talk, I’m equally guilty. On the affirmative side I decided to all in on an emotional appeal to the starving children of bankrupt parents, and when my opponents brought up the obvious objection (rising tuition prices due to overcharge) I decided to sneakily claim that forgiveness wasn’t an actual subsidy and thus doesn’t allow the government to read prices. I also told the judge, verbatim, that my opponents were ‘misrepresenting their own evidence’ by claiming that forgiveness as a subsidy. I even invited the judge to examine the evidence himself, saying that it was on our side (it wasn’t). Seeming reasonable won us that debate, even though I most definitely was not being reasonable.
“The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.”
But hey, is fine. This is debate, and the only crime is to lose. We went undefeated again. Long live the dark arts!
This was super fun to read, thanks for sharing! Hm… your new student seems like an interesting person to talk to. Mind asking if he’d be interested in a chat with someone else his age? I’m also a public form (debate format) debater in high school, and I’m doing prep work for this particular topic on student loans as well. I’d love to get a chance to talk with him a bit, and I feel like he may enjoy it as well.
On that note, I think I can elaborate a bit on the format a bit in ways others might find helpful.
Public forum is one of many debate formats with it’s own time and argument structure. The general idea goes something like this. You and your partner (this is a 2v2 format) prepare a case about a few weeks to a month in advance for a topic that’s disclosed prior to the debate. Each side gets 4 minutes to make their initial speech. From there, each side gets a rebuttal, a cross examination, a summary, etc etc. About an hour later, each side gives their closing statements (final focus) and the judge drops their vote for the side which was more ‘persuasive’.
Now, I think your student is a bit new to the format, because it seems like he hasn’t gotten the optimal mindset for the format yet. In public forum, being persuasive almost never means being right. Quite the opposite, actually. You typically be persuasive by being completely damn wrong.
Let me illustrate with an example. In one of my last debate tournaments the resolution was: “The US military should substantially increase it’s military presence in the Artic.” Seems pretty clear cut and typically vague, and it could go any direction. A reasonable person might consider future artic trade routes, security obligations to neighbors, defense of strategic chokepoints or resources…
Fortunately, we were debaters, not reasonable people, so me and my partner ran two main arguments. Climate change and nuclear Armageddon. On the affirmative, the argument was fairly straightforward. Climate change bad, renewables good. To stop climate change we thus need rare earth minerals… but… China has 90% of them. We proceeded to find an evidence card saying how the Artic has a massive deposit of rare earth minerals, and how the US military should deploy forces to maintain security against grayzone operations. On the negative, things were much more fun. We found some instances of Russia sending ships/submarines to the US coast, the range of a nuclear hypersonic missile, and a few buildups of military bases in the Artic. We then proceeded to argue that Russia had a credible first strike capability and if we didn’t take the Artic we’d be at risk of nuclear Armageddon (yes, I’m serious, I actually argued that).
We clean swept that entire tournament without losing a single round.
For an outsider, I imagine this might seem pretty ludicrous (to be honest I’d think so too) but in the context of the actual format it makes perfect sense. The debaters aren’t experts, nor are they proficient in Bayes craft. Their readings are limited, and their prep time even more so. On a regular debate most teams would be scurrying to make counterarguments for common objections opponents might raise, often as late as the night before. We have just enough information and confidence to sound like experts, but only to a layperson. In front of an actual expert I’d imagine we look ridiculous. (I’d love to hear Bryan Caplan’s reaction to my argument saying student loan forgiveness boosts the economy). But that’s not a relevant concern. Nobody is an expert.
So what even if they were? You have 4 minutes for the main speech, and 4 minutes for the rebuttal. It takes 5 minutes to make a bullshit claim and a whole debate to prove it wrong. This is part of the reason why scientists typically don’t debate flat earthers. Any tinfoil hat theorist worth their salt can spend a minute spinning some wild story an exasperated expert will have to spend hours to disprove. Thus, most debaters can spare themselves the trouble of even trying.
Case in point: my evidence card for Russian nuclear threats was the range of the Kinzhal hypersonic missile, about 1000 miles. Coincidentally, around the same distance from the Artic to the US mainland. Thus the argument for why control of the Artic is important. You can hit the mainland US with a first strike from the Artic, but not from Moscow. If my opponents spent 2 minutes to read the card they would’ve discovered another missile I neglected to mention, the Avantgarde, which has a range of 3000 miles. Even if they didn’t know this, the argument is obviously bogus. Hypersonics are not a credible first strike capability unless Russia has the ISR to identify and destroy ALL of our nuclear submarines, silos, and aircraft at the same time. But of course, my opponents never read much material on nuclear doctrine, so they repeated the claims about mutually assured destruction which I was able to shoot down with ease. (What mutually assured destruction? We’d be dead before we could react).
Likewise with rare earth minerals. I neglected to mention the US is not fully mining it’s stockpiles. I neglected to mention other mineral reserves. I also neglected to mention that China has no military forces in the Artic, and there’s no credible threat to defend against. Even if there was, I had no evidence of any US mining interests in the Artic. (I actually pointed this out against a team that stole the case and tried to run it against us. ’Why are you sending the military? What are they going to do, mine the minerals with tanks? Bomb the deposits with HIGHMARS?)
Now, all of this is obvious in hindsight, but in an hour long debate a team only has 2 minutes of prep time, so there’s basically no room for anybody except the fastest readers to credibly review all the evidence carefully. (Hell, I read at 1000wpm and I still have trouble). Thus, most of the time you can safely get away with the most egregious bullshit. In a setting where all claims are purportedly from ‘experts’ or ‘reliable sources’, where each word comes with complete confidence even when the speaker is lying through their teeth, it’s rarely an efficent strategy to actually pursue the truth. Rhetorical flourishes, appeals to fear, ridiculously outsized impacts, and weak arguments are the name of the day.
In that sense, I think I’ve illustrated that there isn’t such a thing as a truly ‘indefensible’ argument, only overly scrupulous debaters. With my four years of experience in the format I have reasonable confidence I can beat an novice in a fair public forum debate, even while taking a completely ridiculous stance like flat eartherism. Much the same with student loans, though the problem is less acute. Your student could do the same. Say with a straight face that student loans help the economy, and the power of social cognition will make it so.
To conclude, never argue with a public forum debater. They will drag you down to their level, and beat you with experience.
(Note: This was an argumentative piece by a debater. Realities explained are not necessarily endorsed, and arguments made typically do not reflect my opinion or that of any sane person. I disavow responsibility for anyone who takes my arguments seriously :P)
I’ve sent you his Discord information via PM. (After obtaining permission, of course.)
XD
Yep. In a debate competition, you can win with arguments that are obviously untrue to anyone who knows what you’re talking about, which is why I’m much less interested in traditional debate these days. (Not to discourage you, of course. The dark arts are useful.) When teaching Socratic dialogues, the first thing I have to teach is “Don’t give arguments you don’t actually believe in.”
There’s lots of tricks I use to get around this in real life (mostly betting face, since betting money only works for facts), but they’re not allowed in a debate tournament.
Thank you very much! I think I’ll enjoy the chat. Just sent him the friend request. Oh, and, my discord is the same as my lesswrong btw.
YES! Hahhahahaa… it’s quite dumb. The information you can reasonably convey in 4 minutes is so short that even when your case is common sense it’s hard to actually prove your point. I can bring up a variety of commonsense and economic arguments for why student loan forgiveness inflates prices, but my opponents can basically just say ‘nu-uh’ the entire debate, citing some random article saying it… somehow creates 1.2 million jobs? I sometimes wish I could just throw a book at them and say ‘read the damn research!’
But then, I should talk, I’m equally guilty. On the affirmative side I decided to all in on an emotional appeal to the starving children of bankrupt parents, and when my opponents brought up the obvious objection (rising tuition prices due to overcharge) I decided to sneakily claim that forgiveness wasn’t an actual subsidy and thus doesn’t allow the government to read prices. I also told the judge, verbatim, that my opponents were ‘misrepresenting their own evidence’ by claiming that forgiveness as a subsidy. I even invited the judge to examine the evidence himself, saying that it was on our side (it wasn’t). Seeming reasonable won us that debate, even though I most definitely was not being reasonable.
“The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.”
But hey, is fine. This is debate, and the only crime is to lose. We went undefeated again. Long live the dark arts!