The Tech Over Truth Paradigm
Evaluating Debates
Introduction
“Tech over truth” is the idea that a judge should make their decision based exclusively on the arguments presented in a round, regardless of their quality, presentation, or other external influence.
The Burden for a Warrant
There are an array of “tech over truth” edge cases—things that polarize the community over whether they’d vote on something:
“Lack of agent specification is a voting issue—the sky is blue.”
“This is a flow check—vote negative if they drop it.”
An “elections DA” from 2016.
I feel as though you have to vote on all three, primarily because of arbitrariness. If you polled judges and asked whether they’d vote on “lack of agent specification is a voting issue—neg ground,” many are quite likely to say yes. Alternatively, “lack of agent specification is a voting issue—the sky is blue” receives far fewer votes. Both of these seem to suffer the same issue—neither contain an explicit connection between claim and warrant. The negative hasn’t explained why lack of agent specification is bad for neg ground, or why the sky being blue makes it a voting issue.
Any line drawn between these two examples is arbitrary. There’s no objective boundary that separates clearly unreasonable warrants from reasonable ones.
Additionally, warrants are often claims themselves. If a card is tagged “warming causes extinction” and lists reasons such as “ocean acidification,” “sea level rise,” “resource wars,” or others, it’d still lack reasons for why those things are concerns. Even if the card explained why each caused extinction, I could treat all of those explanations as claims themselves that need warrants.
The three examples presented above could be zeroed with less than a sentence, but I feel that it’s incorrect not to vote on any of them. The burden for a response is so low that it honestly feels like the opposing team’s fault for failing to answer these arguments.
They are detailed enough to give judges enough instruction to determine what to do with the argument. The “flow check” says to “vote negative if they drop it,” agent specification says the words “voting issue,” and the 2016 elections DA ought not to be treated differently from any other position. Even though I know it’s not 2016, it’s the affirmative team’s burden to point that out.
Understanding of Language
Consider this scenario: You’re on a panel. An entire debate occurs in Mandarin, a language you know zero words of. The other two judges understand Mandarin. You end up sitting against them, because you’re clueless as to what happened in the debate.
Did you make the wrong decision?
In my opinion, certainly not. You would have evaluated the debate to the best of your ability, based on your understanding of what was said. The same applies to the scenario in which debaters use a word that a judge doesn’t understand. Should they look it up, or try to figure out what it means based on context and their previous understanding?
When we try to understand language, we subconsciously attempt to determine what words and phrases mean based on their context. There’s a “most predictable” meaning of a particular word or phrase, but that could be dependent on your subject position or previous knowledge.
That means that different judges can have different interpretations of what was said in a debate round, and both can be correct.
I feel that this resolves another “tech over truth” dilemma:
Imagine a 2AC said “this argument is wrong” on every flow, and nothing more. Would that allow new 1AR extrapolation of that 2AC phrase?
I think that a judge would determine what their personal, most predictable interpretation of that phrase is given the context. That means that the 1AR would only be allowed whichever arguments the judge thought of, because others would be new. That’s why we specify and explain arguments in debate at all—to ensure that judges’ subjective understandings have little impact on their decision. Some form of intervention is inevitable but can be limited by specificity in debating.
Judges Must (and are Allowed to) Have Predispositions
Judges need some default mode for evaluating rounds if neither team has said a word about a particular subject. These could be as simple as understanding language. How does the judge know that they ought to vote affirmative to affirm their plan text or advocacy? How do they know which direction presumption flips, or how they should compare impacts? Why reject new 2AR arguments? All judges have some understanding of debate that would frame their default assumptions.
But, of course, if a team says something to challenge one of those assumptions, a judge should always prefer what a team says over one of their assumptions.
What Happens Under Truth Over Tech?
Under a “truth over tech” model of debate, you’d vote negative every round. Judges would not consider the arguments made in the round at all, and instead would make a “truthful” evaluation of the topic statement.
The burden for voting affirmative would be proving that a particular affirmative was the best way to solve some impacts. That’s likely impossible—since there nearly always exists a thousand-plank advantage counterplan that might be slightly better.
When judges say “truth over tech,” they usually don’t mean this model, but instead something in between. It could potentially refer to a model that refuses to vote on arguments like “hidden ASPEC” or the “flow check,” but also could be one that defers towards “more correct” arguments even if debated poorly.
That model is pretty difficult to engage in. The ideal “truth over tech” paradigm would make an actual, objective judgment—but this “middle-ground” maximizes intervention of a judge’s personal biases. The grounds on which a judge will intervene aren’t predictable for either team. That makes debate unfair.
The “tech over truth” paradigm would actually disincentive arguments like the “flow check” or “hidden ASPEC” in the long-run, because they’re bad arguments that will lose if answered. Teams would spend their time reading more substantive positions, and would make sure to rigorously check for voting issues.