Difference between revisions of "Structure of a Shell"

Competing interpretations (often shortened to competing interps or CI) and reasonability are ways that the judge should evaluate the theory debate.  

Under competing interps, arguments are evaluated under an offense-defense paradigm – the side running the shell must prove that their norm is good for debate, and the side responding must prove that their counter-norm is good for debate. The winner of the theory debate is whoever’s norm is best for the round. However, under reasonability, the side who is responding just needs to prove that their model is sufficient enough to use in the round – it is “reasonable.” The winner of the theory debate is whether the defending debater’s actions were reasonable. If they were, the shell is dropped, and if they weren’t, they lose.  

Typically, reasonability requires what is known as a “brightline.” Brightlines are a threshold that arguments must meet to be sufficient. Brightlines help make reasonability less arbitrary – they quantify exactly what it means to be reasonable in the first place. That way, instead of the judge randomly deciding if they think that the norm the defending debater defends is sufficient, they have a metric to evaluate by.

Some examples of reasonability brightlines include “reasonability with a brightline of sufficient defense,” “reasonability with a brightline of link and impact turn ground,” and “reasonability if the education lost on substance outweighs the abuse rectified by voting on the shell.” It is important to note that under competing interps, a brightline is not needed.  

In the context of theory, abuse refers to the negative consequences of the other debater’s actions on the round. For example, if you run a conditional advocacy and I ran theory on you, the abuse could be that conditional advocacies skewed my time. This is often referred to as an abuse story – the “loss” that one debater suffers.  

An example of when reasonability is useful is for the following shell: “Interp: Debaters must not wear formal clothing.” The standards for that shell are that formal clothing affects judgement and is inaccessible to less-privileged debaters. However, it’s obvious that this shell is frivolous – it’s impossible to find a clear distinction between “formal” and “informal” clothing and at some tournaments formal clothing is expected.  

Under competing interps, the debater who wore formal clothing would actively have to prove an offensive reason why wearing formal clothing (a reason why you are good for the debate round = offense, while a reason why you shouldn’t lose for not meeting their norm = defense) is good.  

Under reasonability, however, the burden is less severe – all the defending debater must do is prove that it is okay to wear formal clothing, that the theory shell would sacrifice more debate than it would help, or any other form of a brightline. For example, under the brightline “reasonability with a brightline of sufficient defense,” valid arguments would include “formal clothing is expected,” “I can’t know what formal is,” amongst others.   

If the judge uses competing interps, the winner of the theory debate will be who has proved that formal clothing is good or bad. If the judge uses reasonability, the winner of the theory debate will be whether the defending debater meets the brightline they set and if that brightline is good.

   

CI – Reasonability incentivizes a race to the bottom of judge intervention – people can push the brightline for what is reasonable lower and lower until it hits rock bottom.  

CI – Reasonability is arbitrary – nobody knows what a judge considers reasonable which allows for infinite judge intervention.

CI – Norm setting – only competing interps can set models for debater because it allows for us to find the best models.

Reasonability – competing interps incentivizes people to run as many frivolous shells as they want because they know that I’ll need to prove offense.

Reasonability – competing interps allows for over punishing because you’ll vote on even the smallest amounts of abuse.  

Reasonability – substance tradeoff – you’ll always choose a more marginal interpretation of what is good for debate because it can win you rounds, but that means we never get to talk about the topic if you’re always running theory.