Interesting that your debate predictions tend too low. In my debate experience, nearly everyone consistently overestimated their likelihood of winning a given round. This bias tended to increase the better the debaters perceived themselves to be.
I think a lot of debaters I know fall into the general trap of believing the things they argue. In a debate round, you have to be focused on the mentality of “I’m winning”, or you won’t be able to convince the judge of that; I am probably atypical in that I notice that kind of self-deception and apparently overcorrect for it. I’ve convinced a number of my teammates to try this experiment as well, and most of them follow the trend you noticed.
My own experience of debating is that while I can estimate the ‘strategic’ side relatively effectively I find it more difficult to predict whether the judges accept an individual argument. I’ve noticed this as a problem with several debaters, often due to the inferential gaps between them and the judges (e.g. assuming some psychological/philosophical/economic concept is intuitively obvious).
[Incidentally, I’m involved in UK bp debating, so if that makes it probable we’ve met pm me a name or a hint. ]
Nope, US high school policy. I’m thinking of writing an article on debate and rationality (though not until after I’m done applying to college, which will be January); if you’d have something to say about that, PM me.
Could the debate tournaments be to some extent responsible for extremely irritating counter productive arguments online where you are left wondering what exactly did so much convince the other side and why they won’t tell what it is? I never did debates at school.
Interesting that your debate predictions tend too low. In my debate experience, nearly everyone consistently overestimated their likelihood of winning a given round. This bias tended to increase the better the debaters perceived themselves to be.
I think a lot of debaters I know fall into the general trap of believing the things they argue. In a debate round, you have to be focused on the mentality of “I’m winning”, or you won’t be able to convince the judge of that; I am probably atypical in that I notice that kind of self-deception and apparently overcorrect for it. I’ve convinced a number of my teammates to try this experiment as well, and most of them follow the trend you noticed.
My own experience of debating is that while I can estimate the ‘strategic’ side relatively effectively I find it more difficult to predict whether the judges accept an individual argument. I’ve noticed this as a problem with several debaters, often due to the inferential gaps between them and the judges (e.g. assuming some psychological/philosophical/economic concept is intuitively obvious).
[Incidentally, I’m involved in UK bp debating, so if that makes it probable we’ve met pm me a name or a hint. ]
Nope, US high school policy. I’m thinking of writing an article on debate and rationality (though not until after I’m done applying to college, which will be January); if you’d have something to say about that, PM me.
Could the debate tournaments be to some extent responsible for extremely irritating counter productive arguments online where you are left wondering what exactly did so much convince the other side and why they won’t tell what it is? I never did debates at school.