Prep Time Efficiency - Advanced Training Debate Workshop: Week 3

0:01 hi everyone so welcome to this workshop uh which we're gonna cover prep time efficiency so prep time is especially difficult to nail and it's very difficult to also improve because of course your judges don't see how you prep and so you almost get virtually zero feedback on the efficiency of how you prep but note that a lot of debates are lost in one based on what happens in prep time so we thought it was really important to try to cover how to do prep time efficiently how to target the clashes and preempt what the debate is going to be about in a really almost like systematic and formulaic way so no matter what motion they hit you with you're prepared for any motion and you're basically guaranteed a baseline standard of performance no matter how uncomfortable emotion makes you yeah next slide so first what should you look out for for when

0:47 you think about prep time so note that a lot of mistakes that novices or even just like debaters who are reaching like that mid-tier level tend to make is that they just think prep time they go straight into talking about arguments um so if you're in proposition they go straight into thinking about government arguments that they can make in the debate um and if they're in closing they just think about even more arguments they can make they rarely think about whether or not these arguments are strategic to make in the first place or how to make them strategic so instead of thinking about prep time as just 15 minutes to think and brainstorm as many arguments as you possibly can and choosing the best sounding ones try to think about it in a more systematic formulaic way so prep time really about is about making accurate predictions about what

1:33 this debate is going to look like um and with that in mind what that what people are going to be saying this debate how do you correctly strategically position yourself such that your arguments are the most impactful and the most well-weighed or the more most robustly analyzed argument in the debate um and by like understanding how a debate is actually going to play out you can then generate kind of more comprehensive argumentation more comprehensive weighing more comprehensive rebuttals etc um so a debate should never ever just be about prepping one side and one case and arguments are insulated with what you preempt everyone is going to say um so this becomes slightly more clear later on so next slide please

2:19 so um this is what prep time roughly is going to look like and these are the ways that you can preempt what a debate is going to be about uh first you have to clarify that you and your partner actually know what the burdens of the debate are um so this is what we call initial clarifications um so this is where you look at things like wordings of the motion um so is that this house regrets motion is it this uh actor motion is it this tells believes that motion um and is there any kind of specific wording that you need to go through that kind of changes what what burdens debates debaters need to prove then secondly you can talk about the opposite side's case um so before you even think about um generating your own arguments you should roughly think about what the other side is going to say does this mean that you spend all the prep time thinking about what the other side is

3:05 going to say and not building any of your own arguments try no it's just like try to think about it in a more comprehensive and holistic view i rarely nowadays go into debates thinking about what arguments i'm going to make rather i think about what's broadly going to be said in the debate um and how therefore i can position myself strategically in that debate um thirdly you can identify contention so once you kind of know what the other side is going to say um then you can say like okay so what are the key points that we are actually going to disagree upon so note that debaters often agree on upon a lot of stuff so for example they tend to agree on a characterization of a problem so if it's something like this house believes that you should internet implement gender quotas um in stem subjects in university both

3:50 sides would tend to agree that the under-representation of women in stem subjects and at a higher level tends to be a problem um what they disagree upon for example is how you fix that whether or not emotion makes it better or worse how for example um men who are doing stem are likely going to respond to women that it could be a key contention how women themselves are likely going to internalize affirmative action and their self-esteem in response to that that's another contention um so try to really identify what key questions both sides are going to be disagreeing upon and what things they're not going to be disagreeing upon and therefore what time like what amount of time where time should be allocated most efficiently um and then the fourth one finally it's when you actually generate your argument so now you know what you need to prove

4:35 and what you what clashes and contentions you need to win then you can start making that really robust analysis that goes into proving those specific questions so the temptation is always to go talk about like to start start rambling like an answer but note that in order to ramble and answer you need to understand what the question is first so all three part first parts of prep time is understanding what the debate is asking of you and the last it's only the last part where you start to answer that question um so next slide please so initial clarifications so this is where you sort out the initial wording of the motion so a lot of debates are relatively straightforward in what they ask you to do so maybe it's like this house believes

5:21 that blah blah blah has done more harm than good it's pretty clear what the burdens are you just have to prove that it's more harm than good um but that this doesn't mean that all debates are really straightforward lots of debates require very specific burdens that loads of people always fail to understand so firstly type of motion um so some motions require very specific considerations uh is the screen meant to be black no it's not uh it i don't see like the screen is not black for me it's anyone else having that problem it's not black for me yeah screen is visible i think it's because tom's video feed is black and you may have talked you're me you may be watching tom's video feed yeah try to try to pin the pin the

6:07 screen share tell us if it keeps going on but anyway so yeah so some motions require really specific considerations so for example like uh if it's this house regrets debate you need need need to introduce a historical counterfact rule it is not a optional thing that you can do you can't believe how many times we have gone into debates and it's at this house regrets debate and we are the only we are the only team that introduced a counterfactual from closing opposition um and so you need to talk about a historical counter factual i.e what happens if this event never occurred um from the get-go as og or s-o-o um and so because of that like please remember the specific burdens that a specific type of motion implements on you so this

6:53 similarly this house would that means you have to be quite clear about what this policy is going to look like so for example if um it says like this house uh as the feminist movement would adopt the narrative that blah blah blah you need to make sure that you actually tell me what adopting this narrative actually looks like so if it's something like this house would as the feminist movement would adopt the narrative that you know uh men are equally harmed under patriarchy as women you need to actually tell me how they actually adopt this narrative so are they going to start saying this and all their feminist rallies is this the main message they're going to be pushing on social media um you know like do they get rid of all kind of contesting norms for example like

7:39 getting rid of just like uh you know like calling making fun of men slightly you know for being too sensitive or being snowflakes so like talk to me about what this actually looks like on the ground if it's at this house with motion this house as x um of course is an actor motion so be really clear about what the actor cares about and what their interests are and then show about show how you actually achieve or fulfill those interests um yeah and if it's a hypothetical movement assuming that technology exists or this house prefers a world in which um don't waste your time contesting or not whether or not this technology actually works um there have been some debates i've seen an out round where someone didn't read the motion and just said ah

8:24 this technology would never be able to to possibly exist because it violates the laws of physics like if the motion says assuming technology exists don't waste your time contesting about whether or not the technology can exist um so all types of motions have specific burdens and characterizations they like put onto you so being very clear about what they are secondly wording of the motion so pay attention to every word in that motion because they make slight changes to what you have to support so for example if something says this house would aggressively redistribute or this house would strongly condemn um and you're in government you can't just make generic arguments about why it's kind of a good idea to i don't know redistribute income or like condemn uh condemn certain actions

9:11 um because opposition could easily come up and say like look we are okay with calling out or condemning a little bit or we are okay with distributing to some extent but the government has failed that burden because they have to show us why they support aggressively redistributing or strongly condemning so be really clear when there is like an adjective or just like an extra word in the motion that you understand how that affects your team's position and how that affects the burdens you need to prove the last one new and weird policies so like if if okay so the problem with loads of cas nowadays is that they often think they're smarter than actual policy makers and will try to fix a real world problem with a new interesting policy they thought of in the shower um and so if they come at you with some

9:59 very strange weird policy um try to make like sometimes favorable to help you understand that motion and where they're coming from by like intuition popping or thinking about you know like an analogous situation when this has happened um so i'm going to use an example that i recently did which is like this house believes that you know kazakhstan should hold free and fair local elections um very unclear why kazakhstan would want to do this um especially when you know it wants to keep a stronghold um of control on the ground very unclear why you'd want to do this and of course real government we had to find some reason why they kazakhstan it was in the kazakhstani government's interest to actually hold free and fair local elections um and the way we did

10:46 this was analogized to another country that was kind of in a similar position that was doing the same thing so china was starting to like you know hold fee in fair local elections but it roughly had the same incentives as kazakhstan it's no but like by no means a democracy um but so why is it holding democratic elections and we knew from the china example that was uh because like local people are demanding more and more democratic free will and rights as their incomes have increased and their material well-being has increased um they're getting increasingly sick of local strongmen being corrupt and you know like all sorts of things so free and fair elections were a type of tool that the ccp offered to appease those local sentiments um and so by understanding what happened in china then i can say like oh okay i understand what the cas are getting at with this kazakhstan motion

11:31 now and a lot of the analysis becomes so much more intuitive um so if you're ever stuck on why you think a like a ca has set a new and weird policy to fix a real world solution a new a real world problem try to think about analogous situations um and that will really help your prep time process great i think yeah next slide yeah and so also try to problematize the motion so if you're ever struggling with emotion or you're just like struggling to think about why this motion is even being debated you can't really think about arguments for your side or the other side try to understand why was this motion set um so without going into any side's

12:17 arguments try to clarify with your partner what the motion is broadly about so loads and loads of motions will be about a problem that needs to be solved um so maybe it's things like sexism or racism or police brutality and they all try to seek a problem and try to show how this changes in a bad or better way with emotion um so when you're talking with your partner try to understand why has been said so question to ask is like what problem is the motion addressing or if it's an active based motion what are the broad interests of that actor so it's something like this house believes that it is in donald trump's interest to postpone the u.s elections um and you have no idea why he would ever want to postpone the u.s elections try to think about what his interests are um so just like you know probably

13:03 he's a business tycoon so probably wants his trump business dynasty to go well he probably wants to be reelected as the next u.s president to the extent that he's running so like by clarifying what the interests are of the actor involved if it's an active focus motion it becomes clear what kind of arguments you're supposed to be getting at um so for example this has believed that the mexican government should adopt measures that enable one cartel to monopolize the drug market you have no idea why the mexican government would just allow one cartel to just rule the drug market um try to think about just like okay so what does the maximum mexican government actually want probably wants less violence less people to die um less dangerous drugs maybe um yeah et cetera and so now you can know like okay maybe like having one

13:49 cartel monopolized a drug market will help reduce cartel violence um and so always understand what the i call it the metrics i know other people have different words for it but what are the impacts that people are trying to go for in this motion um and it could look like reducing violence reducing sexism or solving this real world problem or it could look like fulfilling an actor's specific interest if it is an active focused motion um yeah so that's how you know that you're on clash in a debate next slide yep lucy's turn okay cool uh yes i'll just take over over this so um yeah so after you have these initial qualifications done so after you know broadly what the wording of the motion

14:35 means and what it is very broadly about the second thing you want to do is to briefly discuss the upsides case and this might sound a bit intuitive because people are like if it's my practicum but my case like why should i talk about the other side and very often you see debaters just immediately jumping into their arguments especially they like know what the motion is about so like they really want to generate as much as possible but i think what is strategically much more useful is to spend the first part of the prep actually talking about the other side so why should you do this i think broadly three reasons that i just outlined here so the first one is it just allows to make your case more robust and less vulnerable to obvious attacks so what happens if you just go immediately into your case very often you miss the obvious rebuttals so what happens then is that your pm gives the speech hello gives a

15:22 very obvious rebuttal and then you spent in dpm three minutes having to rebuild the entire case once again now if you already at the start of your prep consider there is this very obvious response you can make the initial argument more robust so already it's preempted in dpm and all has to do much more work to actually land a rebuttal so that's the first reason the second reason is you do not spend time on analyzing claims that no one will contest so very often what happens is for example emotions like this household heavily subsidized female only tech companies is that even like really good themes on golf um give really good analysis about why it's really helpful to have women in like positions of power and women as ceos now the problem

16:08 with that is that while that analysis might be brilliant very few opt teams are going to stand up and are going to be like no we actually really don't want women on the position they'll be a bad idea what is more likely that op is going to say is things like there are xyz reasons why these companies are not going to be successful and it's actually going to hurt women instead of putting them into top positions and making them like influential so if you know that this is going to be the line of attack you can prioritize spending time analyzing things like why these companies are going to be successful so your impact actually land because once you get to those impacts no one is going to contest them they're going to contest whether you are getting that so the prioritization of the things that are going to win or lose you the debate are determined by you knowing where

16:54 exactly and to like to what parts of your case the attacks are going to come to the third reason is that it allows you to anticipate closing or backload so like in many cases you are going to be in a position like i think og is a clear example where you will just hear very few actually direct responses so if you are og you will just hear one speech you will just hear hello um you won't hear anyone else so if the only thing that you can re you will uh can i get it back please um if the only thing that you can respond to is the yellow speech there might be a bunch of other responses a bunch of other really strong cases that your case is not um is is not responsive to just yet and ceo can just really easily butt you with something very obvious so if you consider all potential up

17:40 cases you can kind of um defend yourself from a strong co even though you won't be able to engage with them directly so even if if lo is really weak you will still be able to have the case responsive to other op speakers that might be stronger so those are the reasons why you should do it i really recommend you do it at the start don't do it at the end if at the end you're going to be like oh like now what what can they say to this and you realize your whole case is kind of irrelevant um that's a bad idea so do it at the start so how to go about it um the first thing is outline is strongest and the obvious of claims so i think jacqueline already said this don't spend like 10 minutes constructing up case for them don't go into like biggest details don't think like what is this like really niche response they could give just think about the strongest obvious

18:27 smart claims they could reasonably give now after you do that think of what are your claims how are you going to be dealing with that and identify where exactly are going to be those contentions where are those sports whether debate can be worn or lost by one side so there are a couple of examples which i think are actually kind of exhaustive so it covers a lot of debates um in many debates it's a combination of bunch of them um but i think this is this should be quite exhaustive um how these contentions can look like so for example say both government and oppositions uh opposition are likely to agree on how the emotion placed in two different contexts so for example no one is going to contest that this is going to be a very positive motion in say the developed world and

19:12 none of the sites is going to contest this is going to be quite bad and negative in the developing world so the contention that is is sort of framing about which of those contacts is this motion more likely to be enacted or where the scale of these impacts would be bigger or more important so does it matter more that it's going to be bad in the develop developing world or would it matter more it's going to be positive in the developed world so that's why the contention is going to be everything else is basically agreed upon um second possibility um say both government and opposition agree on what impact is desirable um this is the case in like most say feminism or minority related emotions so that that and the impact is like we want to well help women or help minorities

19:58 it's like hardly ever anyone would try to contest that that's a good thing but then they disagree on whether the mechanism of that motion is effective or it's harmful so again the contention there is the the rigorous mechanistic analysis so it's is this mechanism good and effective or is it bad and detrimental but no one actually contests the impacts so your you want to prioritize the mechanistic analysis rather than describing the goodness of the impacts because obviously we agree um the third is when government and opposition actually disagree on which impact is more desirable so each of them arrive to different impacts probably agree that each of them derive to different impacts the question is just which one they think is good and which one is bad so for example in many social movement

20:43 debates you have one side saying the motion is going to lead to big mass mobilized movement of allies and the other side is going to say oh it's our side is going to lead to more like small but really committed movement so those are two very different impacts the contention that is weighing of which one of them is better which one of them is more important so again those are different types and if you identify correctly where the contention is going to be you can spend a lot of time doing specifically winning on that contention that ends up winning your debate and you de-prioritize the things that are not contentious um okay uh just the uh the question because i think this might be relevant um if we know based on

21:32 experience that co was the strongest team and we were og should we spend more time on the diagonal or just prep normally um so i don't think that so you're probably not going to be prepping like what am i going to say to you what am i going to say to all right you're going to be asking what's the op going to say it doesn't matter if all says it or ceo says it um you're just going to think of the strongest up cases and you're going to be responding or like you're going to be building your case to respond to the strongest possible up case it doesn't really matter if ceo or or gives it um so yeah uh i think it the difference probably comes whether you think it's co or cg so maybe if i'm having a stronger cg and i know the op bench is kind of weaker i might be spending more time like

22:18 really really dumping but i think like in general like if you know if it's between c o and o then it doesn't matter which op brings it you just prep against the best possible strongest possible up cool i hope that makes sense uh yeah can i have the next slide okay um so basically what we want to do right now is uh we want to illustrate how approximately that prep can look like uh why are kind of going with you through an actual motion and illustrating um what exactly would we be doing with the thought process be so i hope that was um clear about identifying the contentions then obviously you would go and like analyze exactly contentions that's what we're going to do as an example within the exercise

23:04 so um the motion we want to center the exercise around is the motion um oh can i open the child somewhere yes um the this house believes it is in the interest of dominant organized religion for their leaders to declare more progressive interpretations of traditional dogma so eg on dietary and pilgrimage requirements or the acceptability of contraception or same-sex relationships um so i hope that motion is somewhat clear cool um so i just want to go through the basically the entire prep and how that prep would look like i'm going to be asking some questions like uh later jaclyn will also be asking some questions please try to answer just by like i'm muting yourself oh uh yeah would be

23:50 great if we didn't have to talk to like empty zoom because that would be awkward for everyone um so in terms of the initial clarifications um so as we said you're going to be asking yourself are you going to look at the motion and kind of consider different questions about it so first i'm gonna look and i'm gonna ask myself is there anything in particular to considering regarding the emotion type i look i see it says it's in the interest of dominant organized religions i know that i'm gonna be talking about where it's good or bad for the organized religion so probably any like arguments about this will be good or bad for like the world in general uh are probably not particularly relevant second i'm gonna ask is there anything in particular to consider about the wording of this motion so i think the main thing to to think about it here is for example

24:36 what can i expect to be meant by more progressive interpretations of traditional dogma so do we mean like a big shift do we mean like very small is it going to be gradual um is there some way we can like think about how to analyze which one it's going to be so i'm going to like question what like com give some examples so both me and my partner kind of understand so like my partner doesn't think that it's going to be about legalization of gay adoption whilst i'm going to be thinking it's about like vaguely stating that like gay people might not be sinners um so i kind of clarified it with my partner um and then i'm gonna ask why was this motion set so what problem is the motion trying to address or what are the broad interests of the actor um so yeah i'm gonna test it this

25:21 actually works uh anyone has an idea when you look at this motion um what could potentially be the problem that this motion is trying to address both if you just see a problem or if you can think of what for example dominant organized religions might be caring about very broadly maybe for like modern day um followers of religion who are unsure about like modern problems and what that religion would have like suggested especially if they believe so firmly in their advice okay so yeah so like modern like your religions following uh yeah and and james is saying in the chat in terms of decline of religion so that's probably the similar things so i think both of you are correct right so

26:07 probably what the motion is trying to be about and what both sides are going to be trying to address is the decline of religion um on what side we kind of get more following more influence etc so this is obvious but it's very useful to state this with your partner so you say yeah obviously this is going to be about um declining religion where we get more followers um yeah cool can i hit next slide right okay um so this is a big bowl of text uh i'm gonna try to um work through it so um through this i'm gonna kind of illustrate the thought process that would go in both considering the golf case and

26:52 then kind of coming up with the broad lines say if i'm in opening opposition so like i'm going to be doing this from perspective if if i'm all um so the first thing i would do is i have this motion and i'm going to think okay what is gov going to say so we already correctly identified that this is gonna be probably something about the decline of religion or where we get more followers so the idea i'm gonna have is look goth is probably gonna say something like a they're going to frame that these societal values are becoming more and more progressive so they say that the problem that currently exists is that many people are alienated by conservative religions which is why the decline is happening as we correctly identified the second thing they can do is they say by becoming more progressive you are

27:38 able to attract more young people or prevent young people who say grew up in religious household from leaving um say in favor of uh secular secularism so how we pronounce it probably yeah and thirdly then they can say that larger following is desirable for religions and gives some reasons as to why so if you look at the uh broadly at the the structure the first bit is the kind of framing characterization the second is the main mechanism they have the third would be like impacting so once i have this and i know that this is going to be the outline of case i'm going to ask okay so what am i going to say that's gonna um specifically um that is that that can um actually interact with that how can we beat it

28:24 so the first thing i can ask regarding the framing is i'm gonna ask is this actually true is this the correct characterization so probably in the west i can't really claim that societal values are not becoming more progressive that's probably going to be not really contestable but i can ask is this true everywhere and that's where i can have a case right i can say look in the majority of the world you still have quite conservative values and in that context you would probably not attract many new followers instead you would probably alienate it more of more of existing ones so given that again this is the example that i gave before so both of us agree that this might be perhaps positive in the west i can contest it later but say we agree it's positive in the west but negative in the developing world

29:09 the contention is does it matter to organize religion how the what the outcome is in the west or does it matter more what the outcome is in the developing world so that's the first contention and then we're going to walk through it later um the second i can engage with that mechanism so i can say even if we talking about the context of the west is it we i can say it's actually unlikely that even if religion becomes more progressive it can anyway provide more value for young people which is why they are likely to leave anyway this is not going to change much so this is not like flipping or destroying the argument not that it's just mitigating it but it can be very very clever and clear mitigation which makes that case like very very marginal so again to win on that mitigation i

29:56 the the contention is which of these scenarios is more likely are young people going to come to religion if it becomes more progressive or are they not going to be are their minds are not going to be changed so that can be about questions about what values actually like what's what's the value of religion that it can provide like what are the psychological mechanisms young people have so the second convention the third thing is my own kind of constructive harm so i can say there are many reasons as to why more devout followers if this shift happened are likely to be alienated of that from that religion so for example because the dietary and pilgrimage requirements and like observing those things that gave them a sense of community that they really care about and now it's lost or because those sacrifices were

30:42 something that they personally really valued i know they are being told that it actually didn't matter um so for all those reasons they are likely to become less devout and they are likely to be eliminated which is uh detrimental for religions you don't want to lose your devout following so the contention here with the impacting of government is that assuming that both teams prove that impact so golf does get more young people but i lose more devout followers which one of these impacts is more important so is it more desirable to have large following of young people or would it be more desirable to have maybe smaller uh but full of the um the devout people that would be more more committed so them i'm going to be weighing off

31:28 these impacts so that's the third contention called does this make sense uh anyone if anyone has any question or anyone wants to clarify anything just tell me i know this is like a lot of material and it's my thought process so like if anyone doesn't get it like it's completely fine i'm happy to clarify cool then it was either really clear or really unclear um cool so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna go through the contentions uh hopefully together um if you continue being active like you were um and jacqueline's gonna take over and we figure out how exactly you can go and analyze those contentions next slide hi everyone so first is the contention of framing and characterization

32:13 so again this is what we went through we kind of briefly touched upon before uh which is that you know their religion is supposedly everywhere in the world um and so there are two kind of broad contexts in which you can frame this motion interview so there's you know the western developed world um in which you know like society is looking much more progressive and you know religion is in decline and then there's a developing world context um so the proposition might say like in the western context you know like because society is becoming far more um progressive we need to attract more people to religions especially young people um and then in opposition they say like look um these progressive values that this motion asks you to espouse maybe they conform with secular progressive values in the west

33:00 but maybe like most likely a lot of these progressive values will seem quite radical in lots of places in a developing world that right now are more politically conservative and are more socially conservative um so actually what you're going to be doing and when you say like things like it's very okay to for example be lgbt or you say things like you no longer really have to follow all these strict dietary guidelines um even if you live in a country which is for example like a theocracy um what you could end up doing is that you push a load of people away from this religion in the developing world so if you're on proposition what would you say in order to try to prove to the judge that the western context is more important so let's start with that first anyone have any ideas

33:54 okay so just like so broadly i the ideas that i have is just that for example like a lot of western followers maybe you can say like it's more important to get western followers um in the western world because that's maybe like western followers have a lot more capital to devote in the first place so maybe a lot of western followers give large sums that keep your church upright um yusuf says like a lot of religions often get a lot of income from charitable donations investment followers yep exactly right um so for example the west has a lot of money that he could give you that keeps your organization alive and you need to tell me that my money is more important for than for example getting a huge followership um and then you can what more can you say you know like i think similarly to

34:39 economic capital the the west tends to have a lot of political and cultural capital as well so they for example tend to also dictate what norms should be like should be um in the developing world so for example loads of multinational like multinational like charities development organizations attempt to push things like human rights and progressive values onto the developing world it's very likely that in the long term a lot of these developing world countries are also increa rapidly progressive like becoming more progressive as well um because of things like rapid globalization and globalization and context where the west determines what universal cultural values are so for example when it's mostly western media it's mostly western political culture that loads of people consume and they think it's important

35:25 probably this means that the developing world will rapidly become more like the west in the future so maybe you can outweigh it that by saying like look in the short term developing world may be um slightly more conservative now but what we see especially on lots of metropolitan areas in the emerg in emerging markets like indonesia they're becoming more and more indistinguishable than for example new york right um and george says it's more difficult to push followers away with changes in interpretation than it is to gain followers yeah you can say that you can say like after you've committed your entire life uh in your entire like culture and country is based on following a specific religion and so anything you've known probably a change in interpretation won't push you away um because that's the only life that you have ever known um

36:11 and then you can say just probably because of this we have nothing to lose when you're trying to gain these important western followers yeah really good i think i really like that now let's do the other side which is like probably i think that it's slightly more intuitive so why do we care more about the developing world if we're in opposition and trying to prove that the developing world outweighs or is more important as a context in the west cannot need yourself so well yeah a lot of developing world countries aren't like like western countries in which we have like a separation of like religion and state like a lot of um countries have religious law as their law as opposed to um like just a general

36:59 law so it would be like to so to look at law as religion in those countries would be how you'd have to look at it in a lot of places yeah so you can say just like in a lot of places for example some places in the middle east have a lot of religious scripture built into their laws and so to for example completely contradict laws would be an incredible offense so just like the degree of the offense is probably much deeper so progressive values maybe you can say like if you're an opposition like maybe saying that you know being gay is okay that would maybe mildly appeal to a young person um who's going on buzzfeed but it would greatly offend uh someone whose laws contradict that right um and so you could say that like the the intensity of of of the appeal versus

37:46 the offense is completely asymmetric so that's one side um then they can say like yeah religion is a key social security and developing world so you can just say like yeah like maybe you can say like you know religion has a duty towards helping people in developing world pushing people away and having people go out of the the grip of religion means they no longer get that really valuable charity um you can say what else uh you can say western state destruction yeah yeah yeah yeah so i think we already covered what vicky said um more people yeah and so you can say like uh probably you want max number of people so i think this is what i was trying to get out of developing world just like really simply you don't have to go like galaxy brain in this kind of way just

38:33 say like look developing world bigger than the west um the west is the us and maybe like some parts of europe right um the developing world is everything besides that um so because of that there are more people who live in the developing world or what we constitute as the developing world than the developed world so the degree of which you're going to like push people away that's the scales of people you're gonna push away it's gonna be much greater than whatever my new to following you might get in the west because of this you're going to be losing on mass huge amounts of followers um so yeah you can talk about why that's really harmful as well um so you can do things like scale way ups um you could argue if you're making a claim that followers are what about in developed world and development yeah you can also yeah

39:19 you can also just say like uh like really like people who have been more devoted to you deserve to have more of their religious beliefs respected so what i want to hit upon with what joe and tom has said um so tom says that religion is a key source of charity in developing world um and then joe has said um the people who follow religion in the developing world tend to be more devout and therefore deserve to have their religious beliefs more respected and more reflected in what dog the interpretation of dogma is um and so be careful when you say stuff like this because if you could go on the previous slide tom um yeah so note the motion says this house believes it is in the interest of

40:04 dominant organized religions so try to be really careful so if you're going to tell me oops i got groceries coming okay so if you're going to tell me that like oh people deserve to have their religious beliefs and spouses are reflected in religious dogma or like religious charity helps followers you need to tell me why this is in the interest of dominant organized religions so dominant organized religions are not equivalent to their followers um you gotta tell me why it is in the interest of the church or the interest in like the the people who lead the muslim community to actually do this not just stuff like that is generally good for religious people um cool um so i have to pop off slightly um lucy's gonna be taking over all right see you guys soon uh cool yeah can i just uh yeah uh so

40:52 i'm just gonna i'm just gonna one i think this was enough of a um oh so not any interest or followers but of the of the organization yeah so to specify them given that emotion says in the in the interest of specifically the organized religions it usually means that specifically organizations very often it's that you can explain why like followers matters as well in for those organizations but it's specifically should be the leaders in the organization so i think that was probably enough in terms of the two different way ups i will just once again uh walk through the strategic purpose of this um just to make clear like if we win this convention on either side why did it matter so strategic purpose of this is that if you manage to prove

41:38 that the developing world matters more even if goth would achieve all their impacts both getting young people in the west etc etc they will lose to you unless uh let me just accept the yeah and they still lose the debate unless they then go and engage with you in the developing world context as well like once you prove it's more important nothing that they say is going to matter and they will have to beat you in developing world otherwise they can cool can i have the next slide okay um so then we have the second contention so the second convention was in terms of the analysis so on goff's side you want to say that young people would be attracted to religion if it became more progressive

42:24 and they would be likely to join or less likely to leave or on op you want to say young people would not be interested in religion anyway and that trend would just stay that way so they would leave in either side so the question we are asking is which of these scenarios is more likely so um let's start with um why would young people be interested in religion had it become more progressive so think about what values or what things can religion offer to young people um that it doesn't when it's super conservative and it would if it became more progressive um yeah feel free to army type maybe people who feel like their religion is

43:09 like counteract like contradicting their cultural values or um like for example lgbt that's not a choice so if they feel like their religion isn't accepting of them that's who they are they might be more likely to leave and if they are being accepting of that then they feel like they can actually stay yeah yeah uh yeah i think that is i think that is uh a good one uh that ricardo says in the in the chat yeah because it's another community uh that they would be able to relate to it this is especially important for young people so i think this is also really smart so you can say young people are just interested in having some communities and it's really helpful to have something where you can relate to now it becomes more progressive so

43:54 it's more aligned with your values so you don't feel the conflict between like for example supporting your lgbt friends and being religious this is something that is a community that is accessible and that you can get the benefit of of having someone to feel uh related to yeah um is there anything else about like religions religions can offer besides just being a community that you can relate to maybe also that they feel like they have guidance with their life right now as opposed to advice that belongs to a context like thousands of years ago which they feel doesn't really apply to them now yeah no

44:40 definitely um so yeah so in terms of guidance and what you should be saying in the chat sort of greater purpose or meaning i think those are all very smart so what you want to say in on gotham is that firstly what was said at the start now right now you have the conflict between um supporting your progressive friends so holding to progressive values of the society versus religion now when that conflict disappears religion is still very valuable for you because of the greater purpose and the meaning or because of the fact that it provides you community which is why um young people would be happy to join it because it does still give them a lot of meaning cool um so if we are on the opposite side and we want to claim that that would not happen and on either side young people will be just leaving religions um how would you do that

45:27 so how would you rebut the previous claim young people wouldn't be so quick to suddenly accept the change without wanting to know more about why this has suddenly become a thing why people have been hammering down on these issues for so long they're suddenly changing their minds and they might not be willing to suddenly believe that um all of a sudden these people have been accepting when they haven't been in the past yeah i think i think that's one option um any other i think when people start uh response to this uh movement by the organized religion when a counter movement starts they'll have with more research like thousands of years of proof they're wrong so it will uh it

46:14 will further cause problems yeah so i i think that's i think that's also true i think it may be uh realized more to the next question about how it affects slightly more devout people but i think for example way to mitigate what gov says is just saying things like like look the reason why religion is something that is uh desirable what people go for there's a specific like unique i would say competitive advantage if you want to say it in economic terms but things like um oh yeah before i go a change in an overall religion traditional views might not actually translate to followers you parents might still hold um traditional views yeah so that is that is that is also

47:00 definitely true um so it doesn't suddenly become acceptable like it's like acceptable for young people and desirable for young people to join uh just because the leaders say something if the if if parents are still like promoting the same so religion still appears conservative to young people regardless um i think that's also good or you can say things on the other way um that um religion has the competitive advantage of for example things like having the common observations of the specific like rituals or or observing the dietary requirements or observing specific festivals um that are really important for people in the sense of community and that is lost if you do not have these things anymore so like even young people there's no

47:46 reason why young people will be attracted to religion if like the competitive advantage or the reason that makes religion unique reflect those traditional things is suddenly disappearing because then religion basically becomes secular and there's no reason why a young person would like want to be religious if they can just be secular at the point where it becomes basically the same thing so that's a way where you can it doesn't destroy think of arguments but it mitigates how much how impactful it is and how many people are actually going to be joining as a result of it um yeah so the strategic purpose of this just to um yeah would you be able to argue with the progressive claims entirely address um yeah so also it depends how

48:32 mechanizes it right so for example if goff tries to go really soft and they say something like oh we're gonna be like slightly changing the shift like we're gonna say oh like like gay people are not sinners but we obviously not gonna do like really big shifts you can exploit it and you can be like yeah in that case that impacts are also not going to happen uh because um like young people probably want significantly more and then at the point where you're interested if you address all those things and you actually make a massive shift and religion basically becomes the same as the secular ideology in which case again it has no like actual temptation for anyone to join yeah um so just to uh reiterate the strategic purpose of what we just done uh before i give it back to jacqueline um so if you mitigate that claim

49:17 of about young people you can win much more decisively because you will be comparing a very marginal benefit on both sides so just a few people are going to join versus a substantial harm on ours once we explain why you're going to be losing a lot of the developed followers cool um yeah uh jacqueline you can take the next slide hey i'm back i'm back from putting away my groceries all right uh so the last contention um that lucy mentioned um in the breakdown of arguments is this way up arguments so one side says ah more people young people are going to join and then um the other side says ah but devoted followers are going to be more alienated by these progressive interpretations and they're either going to be less committed or they're just going to be leaving um and so assuming that the scale is symmetric on both sides so an

50:03 equal amount of young people join as les the number of you know devout followers are going to be more alienated um how do you exactly weigh up which of these impacts um the judge should value more so any ideas about you know why young people are more valuable or following to have in the first place if you're arguing from side government is this arguing assumed based on the fact that divided our followers would definitely leave the way like is that yeah this is like the even yeah so this is the even if so when you're in government and you're saying like here are a couple of responses to what opposition have said and you know it's just like okay even if like they prove that loads of default people are going to go let's say like

50:49 the same number of devout people are going to go as the young people we're going to get on our side that's still preferable you can just say like i'll be stoker for that um and so why would you still prefer prefer that so you can say so ricardo says because there's a strategic play in the long run because old people die this is a very legitimate response which is to say like look um probably young people are more important because all people are eventually gonna die and then you'll have zero followers because you didn't play in the long term um so that's a very valid way up and it's often quite used actually quite frequently um when you're like weighing off young people versus old people um religious often believe that they have to actively save lives by converting non-believers um so you can say yeah so you can maybe say like we want to save maximum number of souls um and so you try to convert as many

51:36 non-believers as possible you can say that you have to define what the group offers and people could revive a fallen movement um the devout followers may have a deeper understanding of a religion so you can say like okay yeah so i think try to be a little bit more specific here um so building on what joe has said in the chat he said that young people could revive a fallen movement but devout foes will have a deeper understanding of the religion um so young people what does it mean when they revive a fall movement does it mean that they make it hip modern modern interpretations for example like you know they make it they're going to build it in all that pop culture they're going to make memes about it um you can say like this is really strategic in the long run if we're going to have a sustainable retention um and recruitment of new people in the following um and then if you're an opposition you can say just like uh the more devout people have i guess a

52:22 more authentic interpretation of their religion they'll be more devout in how they follow that religion how much time they commit to it for example um and looking illinois if young people become followers it's more likely that they pass it on to the next generation and the original continue in the future yep um so i think it's built on that last idea right so if young more young people join they will be more likely to pass it on to their children um but you have to be very careful here so if the older generation you know if they were religious um and they attempted to pass it on to their kids but the framing says the kids aren't into it anymore because they all woke into too progressive you have to then justify in the future when the children of the children are going to be even more progressive why would intergenerational

53:09 intergenerational passing or religion necessarily work so try to be a little bit more careful um young people are being religious increases the church's prominence in society as they become older yeah you can say that you know these young people are eventually going to age and they're going to become you know new community leaders new political leaders and this is really important if you want to maintain relevance in the modern era you can see historically trying to fight progressivism has always historically backfired because progressives have more reach this sounds like a bit of an assertion um so try to justify why progressivism always wins especially if i can point to a counterfactual which is like obviously right now we're regressing back into the stone ages where we don't respect science uh and we don't respect decency in politics so obviously progressivism doesn't always win

53:55 um and so um to summarize some of the really good points that we had all people die yeah young people tend to be able to have more modern interpretations and can make it more lastingly relevant for future generations by building it into culture um building it into modern media et cetera um yeah cool and i think another one that people hasn't haven't really mentioned is bit that maybe like young people um like especially like if they're part of mainstream society rather than devout committed followers who maybe operate on the fringes of society maybe they're more politically important to loads of politicians so if loads of politicians see that a bunch of new york young people are now super religious this could really make a difference to how relevant you are in for example mainstream politics

54:40 um and so this could mean like you know mainstream political parties now back you because they see that their voters are becoming more religious and want to pander to that religious sentiment um cool and so what if you're in opposition now i'd rather like you'd rather have more devout committed followers like the people um who live in really tight-knit religious communities you want to keep them on board any ideas so far yeah so you can say just like so ricardo says like as soon as you try to reinvest in young people you're going to have to do this over and over and over again as values become more and more

55:25 progressive so you seem to always always be changing a traditional dogma in order to maintain that influence of young people as generations change so you can say like this is not a very sustainable solution if you constantly have to do it rather you would rather have one consistent dogma that people like like note that committed followers don't don't necessarily mean old followers they just been you know committed religious followers so it could just mean that you want to have one traditional one consistent dogma that maybe transcends generational like generational gaps um that you know people from all generations as long as they live within a religious household the religious community will be able to buy into maybe that's a more sustainable strategy um they're more likely to donate that very true so for example the very devout the intensity of that devotion is

56:11 probably going to be asymmetric on both sides so if you're recruiting new blood new young people unlikely going to be as intense about this new religion that they found to go to church every sunday to devote to donate large sums of their income to the church so you can say like look devout followers um who believe and really care about religion they're the ones who are going to be willing to give us money willing to devote their time to us um to campaign for our interests in politics et cetera so we'd much rather back them um committed yep so ricardo says the same thing um yeah and so you suppose it says the same thing so like though the more committed followers are willing to give you that time political capital and money um that you need to sustain your religion um so yeah so i think the opposition way up was really good

56:58 yeah and you can say yeah and omar says sex equally you can say like young people don't really have a lot of stability to influence politicians of politics and people maybe don't vote as much they're not engaged in politics what we'd rather have is like really committed political pressure groups for example like if you live in the bible belt and you have loads of religious communities who are super devout willing to write to them like local representative show up to like local caucuses to speak speak on religious behalf religions behalf like you'd much rather have that than kind of a lukewarm young people who aren't super engaged in in politics or religion yeah control of the currency yeah yes the obligation yeah you have more of an obligation to current followers um yeah so like again like i don't like

57:43 it may not be so strategic to try to introduce like the idea of obligations into this debate even though you can do stuff like that and then this house believes that it is in the interest or an active focus debate um obligations tend to be really hard to prove um when one site just says like look we prove that we get more followers or we prove that we get the more important followers all the gay like stuff like you have more of an obligation to your current followers and new ones it's kind of hard to weigh up um a prove why it matters more than you know getting more politically impactful young people or something like that um yeah cool uh i think that's the end of the workshop i think this i think people were really good at doing the way up actually cool and final part is just to be flexible so what we went through is just one motion

58:30 and as you can see there's loads to impact there and there's loads um there was loads of preempt and those loads to discuss um but every emotion will not be like the motion that we just did each motion will require different amounts of work put into different parts of prop so we try to do a motion which covers all three like different parts of analysis different parts of framing different parts of impact but each motion will you know concentrate on one of these three more than the other two um so try to be flexible in trying to understand what an emotion requires more secondly also note that you don't always go through prep time at the same person so lots of different partnerships have different dynamics and you need to be very flexible to that um so loads of successful partnerships try to have the yin and yang so one

59:15 person may be dumb like not dominates but like maybe leads discussion a little bit more and the other person asks like leading questions so maybe one person is saying like oh i think these are three main clashes and i think this is what our arguments are going to be um the other person would just be like yeah but you need to prove why this is true you need to prove to me why this impact matters more so they kind of ask complimenting questions to make that analysis even more robust um and some you know some some the debate partnerships are 50 50 completely down the middle um and so you need to be very aware of how that dynamic works and how to make it work between you two so try to be flexible um try to complement each other rather than butt heads yeah and finally check and question each other so this is kind of what i talked about before um a lot of times you just need to sign

1:00:02 and detract from these prep times because 15 minutes in things are really intense you want to generate arguments as fast as possible it's really good to have one person preferably both people remembering that you need to ask really specific questions and be really critical of your case so it sounds really terrible to have but it's good to have a devil's advocate in the room while you're discussing your case um to ask things like like for example if one person is saying here is our argument this is the framing this is the analysis and this is the impact one person to just be like yeah but why is this framing important why is this why isn't the developing world just important um or they can just be like yeah but i don't get why young people would want to draw in your religion just because you're more progressive or just like in the impact i don't know why young people even matter in the first place so

1:00:47 like maybe probably said a little bit less annoyingly than that or gradingly

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