What qualifies as an impact?

[Mr. Notlob]

The only impacts debaters seem to be going for nowadays are death and dehumanization. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me since there are clearly bad things in the world other than death and dehum and there are clearly good things other than avoiding death and dehum. This moral myopia is bad debating from both a strategic and argumentative perspective. If those are the only two acceptable impacts then debaters are left with either ignoring all consequences that aren't death and dehum or rewrite other types of consequences as death and dehum.

When discussing economic topics, for example, the only consequence of economic collapse seems to be resource wars that go nuclear. No one talks about rising unemployment and how that means fewer people going to college or people in their 60's having to put off retirement for another 5 or 10 years. Those impacts aren't big or sexy but they are guaranteed to happen during a recession and it is what millions of people are dealing with right now.

Or suppose that your impact is that you end warrantless wiretapping. That is a violation of rights which is dehumanization which is a state worse than death! Not only are arguments like this are so hyperbolic that debaters should be embarrassed to give them, they are also insulting to people who are actually dehumanized by trivializing their suffering. I wouldn't dare compare the possibility that the government may be listening to my calls to what child soldiers or sex slaves go through.

This isn't entirely the fault of lazy or unimaginative debaters, however. I often hear judges and coaches chide debaters for talking about impacts that aren't death or dehum because they aren't “terminalized” until someone dies or is dehumanized. If your friend had to drop out of college and get a job to support her family, would you tell her that isn't a negative impact because she isn't dead? Or would you tell her that does suck because she is being dehumanized which is fate worse than death?

I don't mean this to be read as a “people shouldn't jump to nuke war” argument. My problem is that there are only two acceptable types of impacts and debaters feel the need to jump to nuke war because that is the only way to terminalize a double dip recession.

[nmatthews]

It's not that death, and I guess dehum to a lesser extent, are the only acceptable impacts. They just happen to require the least amount of work to flesh out. It's easier to have a solid internal link chain and jump straight to body counts than it is to have quick internal links but impacts that don't allow for generalizations and easy comparisons. Take your dropout example - would that happen in a world of economic decline? Probably. Is it bad? Probably. But, weighing magnitude becomes pretty problematic because it refers to a very specific set of circumstances that would be replicated perhaps a few thousand times throughout the country. Are there similar scearios with similar consequences? Obviously, but providing a laundry list of them isn't practical. Existing debate formulas simply don't provide the means to efficiently compare impacts that aren't easily quantified.

[ultravires]

i generally agree with alec, although i think there's more wiggle room within the ambit of "death" and "dehumanization" than he suggests. my bigger problem is that our demand for "quantifiable" or "terminal" impacts represents a larger bias against deontological or otherwise "abstract" impacts. seems pretty bankrupt to assume that utilitarianism is the only ethical frame of reference for policymaking, let alone to affirmatively exclude other approaches because they are "difficult to weigh/evaluate."

[Mr. Notlob]

I think there are two separate problems that we need to distinguish between. The first is that the magnitude of death and dehumanization makes them the most competitively advantageous impacts to go for since their magnitude makes all other impacts meaningless. The second is coaches and judges not accepting impacts other than death or dehum because they aren't "termanalized." The first problem is easy enough to solve since there are a lot of really good arguments for why we should prefer small but probable impacts to large but improbable impacts. The second problem is a lot more difficult to overcome since we have to consciously evaluate and change the way a lot of coaches and judges approach debate.

I disagree that it is usually easier to impact out to death than non-death impacts. The scenario for why economic decline leads to nuclear resource wars is a lot longer and more complicated then why economic decline leads to unemployment and unemployment is bad. Unemployment is one of the most immediate, probable, and widespread impacts of economic decline. If debaters are having a hard time explaining why economic decline leads to unemployment and why that is bad then there is something seriously wrong with our activity.

On Alex's point- as a die hard consequentialist myself, I don't exactly bemoan the absence of non-consequentialist impacts. I have never, ever seen a good deontological debate. That being said, the problems I pointed out earlier preclude even the possibility of a good deontological framework. Is it bad to break a promise? Of course. It that an impact that will be relevant in a debate round? I doubt it. And since there is a moral framework that a significant portion of the world subscribes to but is automatically excluded by our predetermined notions of what constitutes an impact, we should probably consider what counts as an impact. To assume that a deontological framework prevents the weighing of "impacts" is terribly short sighted. Deontologists have to decide between competing courses of action all the time and they have a comprehensive, coherent framework for deciding how to act. Any inability on behalf of the debate community to acknowledge this is a serious moral failing on our part.

[Jeffro]

Is this a moral failing of the debate community that you feel could influence your decision in a debate which becomes primarily about a comparison between a small but intrinsic impact vs. a large, less probable impact? Would debaters who attempt to access only big stick impacts see a detriment to their speaker points?

These are admittedly practical concerns for Ian and I, as well as I imagine several others competing at Mile High this weekend.

[ultravires]

Originally Posted by Mr. Notlob

I think there are two separate problems that we need to distinguish between. The first is that the magnitude of death and dehumanization makes them the most competitively advantageous impacts to go for since their magnitude makes all other impacts meaningless. The second is coaches and judges not accepting impacts other than death or dehum because they aren't "termanalized." The first problem is easy enough to solve since there are a lot of really good arguments for why we should prefer small but probable impacts to large but improbable impacts. The second problem is a lot more difficult to overcome since we have to consciously evaluate and change the way a lot of coaches and judges approach debate.

I disagree that it is usually easier to impact out to death than non-death impacts. The scenario for why economic decline leads to nuclear resource wars is a lot longer and more complicated then why economic decline leads to unemployment and unemployment is bad. Unemployment is one of the most immediate, probable, and widespread impacts of economic decline. If debaters are having a hard time explaining why economic decline leads to unemployment and why that is bad then there is something seriously wrong with our activity.

On Kyle's point- as a die hard consequentialist myself, I don't exactly bemoan the absence of non-consequentialist impacts. I have never, ever seen a good deontological debate. That being said, the problems I pointed out earlier preclude even the possibility of a good deontological framework. Is it bad to break a promise? Of course. It that an impact that will be relevant in a debate round? I doubt it. And since there is a moral framework that a significant portion of the world subscribes to but is automatically excluded by our predetermined notions of what constitutes an impact, we should probably consider what counts as an impact. To assume that a deontological framework prevents the weighing of "impacts" is terribly short sighted. Deontologists have to decide between competing courses of action all the time and they have a comprehensive, coherent framework for deciding how to act. Any inability on behalf of the debate community to acknowledge this is a serious moral failing on our part.

wrong half of berkeley KS, but otherwise i agree. i'll make my undertitle "not kyle kimball" to clarify.

[Mr. Notlob]

Originally Posted by Jeffro

Is this a moral failing of the debate community that you feel could influence your decision in a debate which becomes primarily about a comparison between a small but intrinsic impact vs. a large, less probable impact? Would debaters who attempt to access only big stick impacts see a detriment to their speaker points?

These are admittedly practical concerns for Ian and I, as well as I imagine several others competing at Mile High this weekend.

I don't dock speaker points for running big stick impacts. I am not less inclined to vote for a team merely because they went for big stick impacts. I am, however, very receptive to arguments about why I should prefer small but probable impacts to large but improbable impacts. But absence that weighing, I will probably find myself voting for nuke war or extinction.

[Mr. T]

What I think happens a lot of the time is that people make the sensical arguments that seem more probable and common-sense in the internal link work of the impact. It's difficult to explain the terminal impact of "sucks to not have a job" beyond that phrase... so debaters will often describe that state of being as "dehumanization". I actually think this is probably the best way for that to take place, because dehumanization doesn't really seem to mean a particular thing. The jump to war and death impacts also makes sense, because most opposition teams are lazy and don't do enough case debate to explain how unlikely that is. It takes a [small] working knowledge of how the economy operates to out-debate economic downturn causes X impact claims, but it's work that most debaters don't know how to do [not excluding myself] but is certainly required in a world where many of the impacts Alec discusses are understood/accepted by most debaters and judges.

So... the answer to what qualifies as an impact is the work that each debater puts in to explain an argument as an impact. Maybe dehumanization shouldn't be used to describe "general shitty situation/state of being" but it does help organize those types of arguments into something that judges feel comfortable voting on [as opposed to... wouldn't it goddamn suck if people had to cancel ESPN-U absent the plan]. More specific analysis is always good, of course.

[SoCalian]

Originally Posted by Mr. T

Maybe dehumanization shouldn't be used to describe "general shitty situation/state of being"

I seriously can't be the only former LDer that remembers the phrase "Quality of Life".

[cheesewright]

i think a lot of this has to do with the work that judges do for debaters.

for example, what are the reasons that absent impact calculus to the contrary, it is assumed that magnitude is more important than probability (a stance which you, alec, make explicit). there is no reason why this is truth, but the debate community at large seems to have accepted it.

not that most folks who read this would ever have me as a judge, but absent impact calculus to the contrary, i assume probability is much more important than magnitude. also, creativity is better than predictability.

see, we have a bunch of nonsensical beliefs about the world that have been brought to us by debate. we often ignore the nonsense because we have created elaborate systems of jargon to disguise the implicit arguments that allow us to speak in that jargon.

in the united states, all argument be enthymeme.

[GiantsFan]

Originally Posted by cheesewright

not that most folks who read this would ever have me as a judge, but absent impact calculus to the contrary, i assume probability is much more important than magnitude. also, creativity is better than predictability.

And the key part is this:

Originally Posted by cheesewright

but absent impact calculus to the contrary

The debates I see tend to be poorly weighed, and I tell teams that once I have to create an impact calculus, they don't get to be mad at me for my decision.

[lyonessrampant]

I would like to weigh in and say that I rarely see any analysis in the rebuttals about why probability or timeframe should be weighed as equally important to OR more important than magnitude. Especially if the justification for NB and policy is because policy emulates real world policy making, than probability and timeframe ought to be way more important than who gets to checkmate faster in a game of nuclear chess. As a critic, I would be far more inclined to listen to impact calculus that preferences probability and tells me why it is the most important factor in weighing the round. I also think that it is possible to terminalize impacts about unemployment etc. in ways that quantify what it might mean to not be able to afford money to go to the doctor or buy a prescription. How do these things affect (lack of) preventative care? There are lots of stats that correlate preventative care to cost and death (okay so maybe I just ended up at death. . .but in a logical, probable, incremental way rather than the death of keystone species, ocean acidification, etc.). I think that teams (and judges!) in the interest of wanting impact calculus default to the easiest way to do this. . magnitude, resulting in a veritable race to the bottom.

[ultravires]

i agree, but i think it's important to emphasize that the same would apply if debaters made "magnitude first" arguments, and there are plenty of good ones (precautionary principle; bigger impacts cause downstream effects a la "rivets on a plane"; bigger impacts are often harder to reverse; etc.)

[lyonessrampant]

Sure. I just never really hear a justification for why I as a critic should prioritize something. I would say, however, that in spite of telling my own teams to do this for near on a year now, I STILL don't hear justification or sufficient comparison args. I think this is partly a beast that is just well inculcated in current parli debaters, though I'd love to see that changed up a bit. I should add this to my philosophy. Sigh.

[Mr. Notlob]

Originally Posted by ultravires

i agree, but i think it's important to emphasize that the same would apply if debaters made "magnitude first" arguments, and there are plenty of good ones (precautionary principle; bigger impacts cause downstream effects a la "rivets on a plane"; bigger impacts are often harder to reverse; etc.)

I would LOVE it if debaters made those arguments. A large part of the problem is that debaters just don't weigh impacts at all. Telling me that your impacts are more probable or larger or happen sooner isn't weighing. I still need to be told why I would prefer magnitude to probability as a weighing calculus. I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with the rush to death and dehum if debaters provided me with some meta-analysis for why the biggest impacts are the most important rather than just assuming that is the case.

Though the issue isn't only debaters going for large and improbable impacts over smaller and more probable ones, it is impacts other than death and dehumanization not being considered impacts in the first place. Until we expand what is considered an impact there aren't even any small but probable impacts to go for in the first place.

[boredguy8]

Impact calculus is often weak in our format because people start too late. But they start too late because they're forced to do so.

The MG can't over-invest in weighing because of time limits/coverage concerns and the dangerous implications for the block.

In other debate formats the coverage issue is countered in part by the role weighing will play in rebuttals. In our format, however, a smart MO will concede impact prioritization from the MG and use the rest of the block to win that prioritized impact. Really, every MO will be conceding one of two lines of argument: either conceding an internal link story and aim for impact prioritization, or concede an impact prioritization and aim for the internal link win. Most of the time the conceded impact priority is the better route to the win because there are more routes to an impact (i.e. more opponent flexibility on impact discussion) than there is flexibility on internal links. This is because scenarios tend to be more readily accessible and with more attendant 'signaling' of strategy. So the effective MO strategist will limit opponent maneuverability by restricting, when possible, surprising impact prioritization. Knowing the MO will exploit this prioritization, the MG tends to avoid making "x is the most important impact in the round," arguments. Unfortunately this risk has led to the near abandonment of all MG impact analysis. Without strong MG analysis, the first time you hear impact analysis (if you're lucky) is in the MO. That means literally two speeches of impact development at best.

One response to the dilemma above is for the MG to label everything as critically important / a voting impact. While the nuance of how this is done matters, most of the time it's a bad strategy. The idea is that such 'rampant prioritization' preserves PMR maneuverability. However, the MO can concede one of these claims and you're functionally in the same position as outline above. That, or the PMR has to try and argue why that's not really a voter/impact - a difficult proposition, usually.

The better response to the dilemma is to use the MG to prioritize an impact you don't think the neg can achieve. This forces the MO to either try to achieve that impact or prioritize a different impact. While a better strategy than calling everything an impact, it's still a risky strategy in that the MO has an easy win if they can access that impact.

[RSwanson]

The onus should be on the LOCs and MGs to make very easy and obvious impact defense args if they don't want the PMRs and LORs to be going for silly, hyperbolic impacts. Maybe once people realize the importance of impact defense our shells will include various levels of impacts, some more probable and others crazy like death and dehum. I don't blame any debaters for reading ridiculous impacts; they're just being strategic. Want debate to be more reflective of real world arguments? Don't drill into young debaters' heads that offensive args are the only useful ones.

[John Henry]

like jeff I find this discussion pretty relevant. i've spent time recently messing around with various pmc approaches and invested in a framework that endorsed a deontological round evaluation

but i also think its interesting that most of the people posting here are coaches/judges (maybe most people on net benefits are coaches/judges, i don't know)

i don't want to project the way i think about debate onto other people, but i think that despite the predominant vector in favor of speed and technical capability, which results in a lot of jokes being cracked about more conventional approaches to debate, there is nagging fear that occasionally surfaces: that the negative layman reaction to our event might have some merit, and that trends in our community might be undercutting intellectual value. I'm not someone who thinks that faster = dumber, but I feel like coaches and judges probably have more inclination to worry about things like this, both because they are closer to the real world and because they still have to listen to ridiculous assertions about nuke war without being able to directly employ them to win rounds.

I think there are two practical reasons preventing the transition to more realistic impact analysis. One is that despite all the endorsements of "deep impact calculus" that you read about in judging philosophies, I'm not convinced that its necessarily a good strategic choice. Most of the impact defense you do hear comes out as flacid and underdeveloped as the original impact. To make the kind of analysis on a DisAd with 2 or 3 monster impacts that will actually appeal to all the judges clamoring for impact calc, you're probably going to have to spend a significant amount of time on each of them. Not only that, but your team is going to have to win a significant proportion of that impact analysis on each impact in order for the judge to discount the magnitude claim. I'm a big believer in terminal defense and I love when I hear an mg respond with "group these arguments, they're just defense, moving on..." But isn't it going to be more efficient to read 5 smart link turns, any one of which if dropped could knock out a position, then to read 3 smart blocks of impact defense, any one of which you could win and still lose the position.

More importantly, I think that most debaters, more so even than coaches, are primarily motivated by winning and securing the social benefits that come with that. As such, the examples set by successful teams are paramount in deciding community norms. With that in mind, if we're going to see deviation from dehum and death some very good teams are going to have to lose some rounds because they went for nuke war outweighing unemployment in the mississipi and despite the fact that they won a decent (by current standards) risk of nuke war. I think there are a lot of judges who would understandably feel pretty uncomfortable voting that way in a high profile round.

I'd still like to run my deontology framework but i'm finding it hard convince my coach or myself (both of us enjoy winning) that its competitively advantageous.

And i understand why judges want to vent their frustrations about "debaters these days" (no one is totally happy about the chess match with an inevitable endgame of extinction) but I guess I want to point out that if the status quo is going to change its going to require some dramatic judge involvement.

[RSwanson]

Yeah, sure, if you have 5 smart link turns, then you should read those before your impact defense. But rarely are there enough good link turns to a good disad to preclude some good impact defense. Also, it's not like reading good impact defense takes a ton of time, especially when the impacts you're answering aren't constructed very well in the first place.

[WWU-Steve]

A lot of this has to do with the mini-max fallacy: "My nuclear war has a .0000000001% chance of occurring, but its impact is infinite, whereas your 10,000 people who lose out on college may be 99% but, hey its only 10K people versus ULTIMATE ARMAGEDDON!"

No one in the real world is really compelled by this on a regular basis, oh OK, the people who spout "9-11!" at everything seem pretty succesful in using the minimax to their advantege, but on a real life decision making on a daily basis no one does this.

Unfortunately, the way impacts are weighed seems to favor size over certainty. Also qualitative impacts are completely ignored in favor or quantative. Why privacy always loses out to security.

The challenge we have is increasing our fluency and articulation of the sub-armageddon impact. Debate tends to desensitize people to real suffering and quality of life issues. Perhaps the tenor of public rhetoric in politics also reflects this--"*uck Healthcare, I'm gonna have an armed rev-o-lution!"

Here is a place where debate training can really help those that participate in the future of public debate by working on being articulate advocates that can express harms and suffering at something other than mass extinction levels. Of course there are many mass extinction scenarios that shouldn't be ignored to be sure, but even a species loss at something other than complete ecosystem collapse can be made meaningful.

Does this mean complete immersion into deontology? I think not. Deontological claims are incredibly enthymematic, and often contrary to public policy goals and the public good. Not that deontology should be out of hand dismissed either, it is certainly relevant in many circumstances where outcomes may be unknown.

A combination of habit, expectation, and to a certain degree judge and debater intellectual laziness contributes to the big impact game. We are all complicit to some degree, but a discussion about the issue is a great idea. Perhaps these ideas will find their ways into actual debates!

Steve

[Mr. Notlob]

Originally Posted by John Henry

But isn't it going to be more efficient to read 5 smart link turns, any one of which if dropped could knock out a position, then to read 3 smart blocks of impact defense, any one of which you could win and still lose the position.

This is a trap a lot of debaters fall into. Unless you have 8 minutes of non-uniques and link turns you are probably going to have to make some defensive arguments. A proper response to a position should include non-uniques, link turns, and defense at the link and impact levels. Defensive arguments are also competitively advantageous because most debaters are terrible at responding to defensive arguments (especially on case).

Also, at the upper levels of debate debaters shouldn't be employing strategies that rely on their opponents making significant errors like dropping like link turns to work. Against good debaters who don't drop arguments defense on the impact level becomes a lot more important.

[CC Weaver]

I disagree. If you read non-uniques and link turns, internal link/impact defense just gives them easy outs of the turns. The whole point of the straight turn is that each part is defense and the combination is offense.

And an argument doesn't have to be dropped to win. At the upper levels, uniqueness/link claims are evaluated and compared with competing uniqueness/link claims.

[RSwanson]

Some people on this thread seem to be indicating that debaters should just not read humongous low-probability impacts. I think this is a huge mistake. As an academic/educational activity, part of our goal should be to encourage the testing of all different arguments (outside of the most extremely offensive arguments like rape good). Only the best arguments should survive in this Darwinian process. We should not exclude arguments just because we don't like them or we don't think they are similar to what we think is good in a real world sense. Debate allows us to think outside of normal political solutions and attempt to arrive at good policy goals. When arguments that we don't think are good arguments are proliferating, that should be a clue that either 1) these are good arguments, or 2) we are doing a terrible job of answering them. I think #2 is most likely the case here. While our real world intuitions tell us that these huge impacts are low-probability, they don't become low-probability until someone makes impact defense arguments in response. Any judge who automatically assigns them a low probability is intervening, something I think we should discourage in our event, as it is a forum for testing ideas. In sum, please read these arguments, as ridiculous as they are. If they actually are ridiculous (and I am convinced that they generally are), then instead of criticizing them, answer them so people stop making those arguments.

[boredguy8]

Originally Posted by RSwanson

Only the best arguments should survive in this Darwinian process.

I'm sorry--what?

Best "in winning debate rounds" will survive this Darwinian process. "Best" as in "most rigorous" or "most academically robust" won't even come close.

[oleary]

Originally Posted by WWU-Steve

The challenge we have is increasing our fluency and articulation of the sub-armageddon impact.

The subsequent decision-making process of competing sub-armageddon impacts is unlikely a story we are prepared to hear, much less want to hear. (We can insert Joey's point of the current framework of decisions [namely, 1 win, 1 loss, and no other option] here.) BUT the real problem is, and our age is, imo, primarily defined by the dawning of this realization: words are not up to the task (however vaguely) articulated here. (So I feel you, Alec--it certainly does feel like judging debates is just playing unceasing language games--but what I'd stress: it feels that way, because it is that way, and, even more important, it can be no other way.*** It is precisely this insight that is a better check against armed rev-o-lutions, imo, Steve.)

"She spun me a real good story, never let the truth get in the way"
--You Am I

"They made a movie about me and you, they made it half good and half true"
--The Hold Steady

"Why do we prefer the truth over the lie?"
--Michel Foucault

*** Not wholly sure about this, but the alternative will not be a firmer ground or more objective state of affairs. So it's all good above.

k.

[boredguy8]

Originally Posted by oleary

BUT the real problem is, and our age is, imo, primarily defined by the dawning of this realization: words are not up to the task

Pretty sure every post I make, makes that point

that is: COPY ME MORE MKAY OLEARY?



Or something

[boredguy8]

Actually, if I can more seriously riff a little:

The Tempo rubato of debate fails to give the freedom it could.

"Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play."

The "playing" of debate is so serious it's heartbreaking.

Like, for real.

[GiantsFan]

Mavity is dropping acid again...

[boredguy8]

Originally Posted by GiantsFan

Mavity is dropping acid again...

Kevin made me do it

[oleary]

To wit:

ST. PAUL, Minn. – A sports bar owner in Minnesota is showing his support for the Green Bay Packers in this weekend's game against the Chicago Bears in a very literal way — by roasting a bear.

Blake Montpetit, the co-owner of Tiffany Sports Lounge in St. Paul, says he plans to cook a 180-pound black bear in a pig-roaster over hickory and charcoal on Sunday. He says his cousin shot it in northern Wisconsin during bear hunting season, which runs in September and October, and then froze it.

Montpetit says he planned to serve the meat to customers, but the state health department rejected the plan because the meat is unprocessed. Instead, customers can take photos with the roasting bear.

After the game, the meat will go his cousin's party in Somerset, Wis.