Module 2: Clashes and prioritization by Enting Lee - YouTube

Hi I'm Enting and the Korea WUDC team has asked me to film a short video on

clashes and prioritization. I want to start by explaining what I think a clash

is and why we should judge debates based on clashes. A clash is essentially an

issue that multiple teams are trying to contest and win. As an example, if we take

the motion "This House would ban all drugs", one clash might be the necessity

of a ban, another clash might be its effectiveness. As mentioned in the

introduction video, BP debating is judged comparatively. The analysis provided by

teams cannot be evaluated in a vacuum. Arguments need to be judged against each other.

I'm sure you've all heard the saying

"apples and oranges" so it is often extremely difficult to compare two

arguments about completely different issues. Sorting arguments into clashes

helps provide a structured framework to first compare arguments about the same

issue without bringing in confounding factors like which issue is more

important. This thus makes it easier to judge the debate. Additionally, without

clashes judges might risk missing team contributions and important points which

would then also make judging more difficult. So how do you identify and

sort arguments into clashes? Well ideally, teams will do this for you. They will

save something along the lines of "these are the main clashes of the round" and

then they'll analyze what each team managed to prove within the clash.

But teams don't always do this. Most of the time, they just make arguments. The judge

should then identify the broad themes that the arguments are coalescing around

that would generally be at least two or three in every debate. A rule of thumb

might be to look for claims that are being substantively disputed by teams

across a large portion of the debate. Judging clashes doesn't mean counting up

arguments within each clash or counting the absolute number of clashes won.

To evaluate who won a particular clash judges should look closely at the

analysis provided by teams, including implicit and preemptive material.

They should evaluate the logical links, mechanisms, examples and

explanations of impacts provided to see if the argument was proven to a greater

degree than the opposing teams argument. In addition judges should consider the

extent to which arguments are refuted. Rebuttal will be covered in significantly

more detail in the next video but broadly speaking it can do two things.

First, a rebuttal to an argument can mitigate the scale and scope of an

arguments impact or provide reasons to believe it is untrue or leads to harmful

outcomes. A Rebuttal can also offer competing claims to an argument which

may weaken be persuasiveness of the original argument and strengthen the

case of the opposing team. The judge should then determine to what extent the

rebuttal has succeeded in minimizing the original argument, considering of course

preemptive argumentative material that interacts with this rebuttal, as well as

any direct responses from the original team to the rebuttal.

Crucially, an argument being responded to does not mean that it is defeated.

The response may have been weak or may have only tackled one portion of the argument.

Judges should therefore evaluate how much of the analysis is left standing

after the rebuttal has been made and after responses to the rebuttal have been

given. Since British parliamentary is a four team format, there are two things to

note here. The first is that judges, when making direct comparisons between two

teams should not bring in contributions from a third team. For example, when deciding

between Opening Government and Opening Opposition, a judge shouldn't say well

but CG respondent to OO by giving this rebuttal, so OO's case is now weaker

which means OG wins over them. No, when you are comparing two teams you should

keep the comparison to those issues brought up by those two teams, because it

is extremely unfair if one team ends up being defeated by two other teams solely

on the basis of a single other team's response, so really try to be very

specific when you are comparing clashes. Try not to, in fact, don't bring in

arguments from a third team when you are doing direct head-to-head comparison.

Second, when evaluating two teams on the same bench, consider how significant each

team's contributions were. You would consider for instance, whether the one

teams arguments provided key logical links without which the other teams

arguments do not apply or whether one team has provided convincing reasons for

their argument being more significant. Most debates will revolve around more

than one clash which may result in a situation where different teams have won

different clashes. Again this does not necessarily mean that a team that has

won more clashes wins by default. We do not judge by counting clashes. After all

one team may have won the most important clash in the round while the other team

could have won multiple clashes there were more trivial and less contributors

to the round as a whole. For example, even if a team narrowly proves that a

particular outcome is likely, another team may be able to successfully show

that this outcome while likely is actually not going to be particularly

harmful, thus taken as a whole even if the team has one big clash on the

probability of something happening what they have ultimately managed to do is

just to show that it's very likely that a not very bad thing will happen, so

taken against each other you probably would say that they haven't made a huge

impact on the round by the end of this clash. So judges should first determine

who won each clash and then evaluate the impact and the significance of each

clash in comparison with each other. In determining which clash is more

meaningful judges should judge based on metrics provided by the teams. So the

following is going to be a ranked list of steps to follow in deciding how to

prioritize issues that are brought up within the debate. As far as possible you

must judge the debate using metrics provided by the teams. If you are very

very lucky all the teams in the round will have explicitly agreed on a metric

for what is important in the round. For instance, perhaps all teams have

explicitly agreed that the most important thing in the round is to

maximize the number of lives saved and if this is the case then the judge

should consider which team best achieves this goal. If this does not happen

meaning teams don't give you an explicit metric for the round then judges should

derive the criteria from what all teams implicitly consider to be imported.

So even if teams do not explicitly agree on a criteria they may still implicitly

agree, for instance if all the analysis by teams is about maximizing the number

of lives saved that is the criteria of the round even if no one says out loud

that this is the goal. If no team agrees on which clash is the most important

either implicitly or explicitly and all teams assert differently then judges

should consider which team has most successfully proven their metric. Teams

should give plausible reasons to believe that what they say is important. They

should not just be asserting that this is the most important thing in the round

without providing some form of explanation for why this is true. Most

persuasive reasons are not too divorced from reality. They will tend to mirror

what we see in the real world. So if a team says that a clash is important, you

should be giving a number of reasons for it and most of those reasons should be

because of what the real world will look like. If none of these apply, meaning

there is no explicit agreement between, teams there is no implicit agreement

between teams and in teams argumentation and there is no team that has

successfully proven a metric to be true then as a last resort judges should

prioritize clashes based on what the average reasonable person would take to

be important. This does not mean making a random judgement this instead means that

you should weigh clashes based on your intuitions about what the real world

will be like and in many cases good judges will be in agreement on what

those intuitions should be. This will be covered in greater detail in the

workshop on Goldilocks interventions so please watch that video as well. Last

there are some situations where arguments are claimed by teams to be off

clash. A team claiming that an argument is off clash doesn't automatically

win, just by making that assertion. They do need to justify why they believe the

other teams argument is irrelevant to the clash or to the round. They cannot

just assert that this is the case. If they provide justifications for that

claim then these justifications should be evaluated in the manner discussed

earlier, both in this video and in the introductory video which discusses how

to evaluate analysis and consider various kinds of material. So this has

been the introduction on how to identify, evaluate and weigh clashes. Thank you for

your attention and good luck.