Lincoln Douglas Round Analysis - NSDA Nationals 2019 Final Round

Proteus Debate Academy is a project by Sasan Kasravi and Paul Villa to increase equity in academic debate by providing high quality coaching resources for free.

0:00 - Intro
4:50 - Starting with a quote (and model-based instruction)
7:50 - Topic
8:24 - Kinds of resolutions
11:02 - Methods debate
15:30 - Burden of the Affirmative
17:58 - Value and Criterion (framework) strategy
28:27 - Traditional philosophy contentions
30:55 - Offense vs Defense in debate
37:55 - Definition of violence: who has what grounds?
42:40 - Implicit premises (assumptions) in debate
47:42 - Commit to your advocacy, provide evidence
49:40 - baiting concessions in Cross-ex
51:03 - Yes/no questions
52:05 - Effectively framing questions
53:20 - How debate styles/topics effect clash
57:48 - "Optics" vs logical consistency
1:01:03 - Don't show your hand in cross-ex
1:02:19 - "That's not what I would have said"
1:03:19 - Controlling time in cross-ex
1:05:55 - Balancing arguments in debate
1:07:48 - Look like you're winning cross-ex
1:12:30 - Your neg contstructive should be mostly prepped
1:13:24 - It takes a village to get good at debate
1:14:15 - Everything you say should lead to or prevent impacts
1:15:26 - Make your refutation specific
1:18:42 - Denying the antecedent
1:23:11 - False dichotomy of traditional vs progressive
1:24:11 - This neg's core strategy and utilizing it more clearly
1:27:55 - Missing key parts of the clash
1:33:04 - Stop Slow Stop Go
1:37:12 - Traditional debate is not great for closely examining evidence
1:39:21 - Controlling Time 2: Electric Boogaloo
1:40:48 - Getting your judge to ask themselves the right question
1:46:16 - "Don't ask questions you don't know the answer to"
1:49:10 - At what point is the neg winning? What can aff do? (+ arguments only get weaker as the debate goes on)
1:53:26 - DON'T SHOW YOUR HAND IN CROSS-EX
1:55:47 - Yes/No Questions 2: don't do your opponent's work for them
2:02:40 - The hardest speech in LD
2:05:30 - Types of Rounds 2: Dead Man's Chest
2:08:38 - A yikesy argument, solvency, and knowing the story you are telling
2:15:13 - Four-step refutation ("Therefore")
2:18:35 - Every argument needs a winning function
2:21:15 - More stuff on selling your story
2:24:30 - Denying the Antecedent 2: Kalabar's Revenge
2:26:07 - What should the negative rebuttal say?
2:35:08 - Pointing out vs reacting to contradictions
2:36:27 - Offense vs Defense 2: Cruise Control
2:39:50 - Over-sanitizing topics we talk about in debate
2:45:22 - Narrow down and simplify the judge's decision
2:47:40 - Using precedence as evidence ("The links have been tested")
2:48:52 - The rest of the neg rebuttal
2:52:20 - Can the aff still win?
2:54:48 - How I decide on an RFD
3:03:10 - Results
3:05:21 - Outro

[proteusdebateacademy]

Hey folks! Just a heads up. This video is not intended to be fully digested in one sitting. The video is meticulously split into a bunch of little chapters based on what I talk about. You can just skip around, or watch little segments and come back later.

If there's anything covered in this analysis that you would like a seperate video dedicated to, just let me know! Also let me know what other rounds you'd like to see an analysis for.

[daviddempsey]

Fantastic analysis. Another round I would be intrigued to hear you break down would be the 2022 NSDA final for Public Forum. There’s a lot of interesting strategy decisions that are made that I would love your perspective on.

[willryan]

Great analysis! I thought your musings on traditional debate were interesting. I am curious though-when you say that neither trad debate nor ultra techy K debate are your favorite "styles", what *is* your favorite style? To me, it seems like most debate falls along one of those two extremes, for better and for worse.

I'm also curious when you describe the arbitrary nature of trad rounds-I am a big trad shill so I feel compelled to weigh in when nobody asked me to-I would posit that tech rounds are equally arbitrary, just in a different way. There are physical limits and questions of ability that preclude people from speaking that quickly, resource barriers that prevent people from reading through the mountains of K literature that exist, and stylistic barriers that make tech rounds utterly inscrutable to some people. Moreover, the fast that a lot of tech rounds have equivalently weighted claims (you drop some part of Condo/T/etc therefore you lose) which presumably gets read on both sides means that sometimes decisions just come down to which norm the judge personally preferred on whatever theory shell was extended. Not often, mind you, but it absolutely can happen. Equivalently to the inverse, Trad rounds still can get decided on the flow, and still get evaluated on semi-objective metrics of the truth value of content, which is more than you can say for a lot of nuclear war scenarios in tech rounds. Obviously there are problems with a lot of trad debate, but that emphasis on narrative and strategy is its own kind of skill that I'd argue leads for just as high quality debates as tech rounds just on different metrics.