5) More fundamentally, what is debate for? Should it be practicing good, persuasive, honest argumentation by doing exactly that? Is it practice thinking about the structure of arguments, or their form, or their truth? Other?.
My $0.02 is that it’s perfectly reasonable that policy debate bears the same relationship to persuasion that fencing bears to martial prowess. I think that training for this sport with these rules is good even though none of the constituent skills make any sense for self-defense.
In this view, CX isn’t useful because debaters practice the whole of good persuasive speaking (seriously, watch any twenty seconds of any policy debate video from the last 10 years); but it’s more narrowly good for practicing thinking critically about how arguments fit together into conclusions. I have—exactly once—made the mistake of arguing that their plan makes X worse and also (three arguments later) that X is good actually; that loss stung so much that I think I never did that again. I still think about the difference between “impact defense” (if I’m right, you get none of your claimed Y) and “impact offense” (if I’m right, you get bad Z) -- which are diametrically different in their implications if they’re 95% to be true. The debate-the-rules-of-the-game stuff isn’t useful for its content, but is mostly just fine for its structure.
6) I haven’t judged a CX round in ten(?) years, but personally, if I did tomorrow, I’d give a pre-round disclosure (as per the norm) that I’m not going to put down my pen or throw anyone out of the round for what they say or how they say it, and if you have a legitimate problem with what the other side is doing—and you’re right that it’s bad for debate—you should have an easy time winning on that and convincing me to hand them a loss.
5) More fundamentally, what is debate for? Should it be practicing good, persuasive, honest argumentation by doing exactly that? Is it practice thinking about the structure of arguments, or their form, or their truth? Other?.
My $0.02 is that it’s perfectly reasonable that policy debate bears the same relationship to persuasion that fencing bears to martial prowess. I think that training for this sport with these rules is good even though none of the constituent skills make any sense for self-defense.
In this view, CX isn’t useful because debaters practice the whole of good persuasive speaking (seriously, watch any twenty seconds of any policy debate video from the last 10 years); but it’s more narrowly good for practicing thinking critically about how arguments fit together into conclusions. I have—exactly once—made the mistake of arguing that their plan makes X worse and also (three arguments later) that X is good actually; that loss stung so much that I think I never did that again. I still think about the difference between “impact defense” (if I’m right, you get none of your claimed Y) and “impact offense” (if I’m right, you get bad Z) -- which are diametrically different in their implications if they’re 95% to be true. The debate-the-rules-of-the-game stuff isn’t useful for its content, but is mostly just fine for its structure.
6) I haven’t judged a CX round in ten(?) years, but personally, if I did tomorrow, I’d give a pre-round disclosure (as per the norm) that I’m not going to put down my pen or throw anyone out of the round for what they say or how they say it, and if you have a legitimate problem with what the other side is doing—and you’re right that it’s bad for debate—you should have an easy time winning on that and convincing me to hand them a loss.