Running Comparatives

Welcome to Debatable: Why Comparatives Matter Now Welcome back to another episode of Debatable with your host, Nina. That's me. I'm Nina. I'm here because I wanted to yap a little bit about comparatives. In the last episode, I talked a lot about framing and how that is basically one of the main tenets for persuasion. And now I kind of want to do a deep dive into how to be good at debate beyond your own speech. And this is where you have to actively start taking into consideration what everyone else is saying. I'm going to give a little bit of a background of why I decided to do this and I will put a timestam in case you just want to jum straight into the lesson ortion of this. But essentially for the past few months, I have been busy in preparation for upcoming tournaments for the Philippine National team. So if you're not aware, after many years of being in this industry, I have found myself in the position of being the team manager for the World Schools Philippine team or the national team. We are the official representatives to the global stage. Every country for the World schools to be championship can only send one team and I'm in charge of that one team. But I have not been doing the active coaching of it. I've been mostly doing the paperwork. I've been doing like the managing side of things. I do have a fabulous roster of coaches that allow me to just not think about that side of things. But I will be judging for the Asian Championships that are happening in Vietnam this June as the team tries to defend their championship this year. And we are going to join the World Schools Debate Championship, which is going to be hosted in Kenya this coming July. And in my progress and process of relearning what is good debate and how to judge those good debates, I have come to the realization that certain things have kind of slipped from the radar of the different debate circuits. Of course, this is just like my personal assessment. I don't claim to represent all of debating, nor do I claim to see all of the moving parts of it. But given how long I've been here, I have noticed the shift in trends, the, the shift in strategies and generally what we call a meta in debate. And I, I mean objectively, given how old I am, and I'm not going to do an age reveal right now, but I am old. I, I've been hearing that people consider me out of meta, which is valid to some extent. But at the same time, my hot take here is that you can never really truly be out of meta because meta is individual. I suppose it's also driven by the the culture of your debate circuit. So Philippine meta is different from the wider Asian meta. It's very different from East Asian meta. There's also different strategies and styles per country. And even if you zoom in, in the Philippines, there are also different ways people debate within their own region, within their own city, within their own debate institution, all that. But I do think there is something common that we need to start reintroducing and emphasizing again in the bid, which is a comparative. Why Modern Debate Neglects the Comparative Aspect In the last episode, we talked a lot about framing, and I still stand by that framing and how you introduce a topic and how you introduce an argument will make or break your speech. Similar to how marketing works where you have to first introduce a very compelling problem and then introduce use your solution in the form of a product. I do think that debate adds an additional layer. Like you're not just selling a product. In debate, you are selling a particular product AKA your side, but you are selling it in opposition to another person's product or another person's idea. Hence, debate is a very comparative sport. And since I'm training again to judge, I want to introduce or reintroduce what I think good comparatives ought to have or what good comparatives have. And these are things that I feel a lot of people need to emphasize a little bit more. The reason and, and this is not to, to say everyone is wrong and everyone's doing debate wrong, but I think due to how the debate circuits have evolved through the years and you know, everything's online or majority of the things are online. Trainings are online. We don't have a lot of the, the community aspect of it anymore besides joining competitions and maybe training with your own institution. But the, the strategies of people when they are training have shifted into like more individualized development and individualized training. And that means a lot of people focus on how to improve their arguments, how to make things sound more persuasive, how to pack more ideas into the same time that everyone is given. And while all those are well and good, I do think that it has kind of reduced our prioritization of comparatives and it has kind of, and let's say it, it's kind of made us forget that there is an opponent that we have to deal with. And that a lot of your speech will have to actively deal with what your opponents are saying. And as much as you can refine your preparation time, as much as you can refine how you are saying your speech and how fast you speak and how well phrased everything is. I, I, I think most of the debating actually happens in real time. Most of the debating cannot be prepared for because as much as you try to anticipate what your opponents will say, you still need to listen to what they are trying to say, what they are actively saying, and then adapt to that. So with comparatives, that means you are actively taking what your opponent is dishing out and you're either Co opting it so that it becomes your benefit, you're trying to negate what they are saying, or you're trying to compare both products like you are giving like a product review on a YouTube channel. Proving Unique Benefits Through Mutual Exclusivity So how does that work? I think in comparisons and comparatives, there are basically three things that you need to do. So let's give an example motion. Let's say your motion is like, I should have probably prepared this ahead of time, but your motion is something like as the feminist movement, you will not allow sis, heck males in the discussions regarding what your strategies are. So this is a very classic motion. I've done this like a bajillion times when I was debating. It's still something that I actively teach to my younger students. But one of the main things that you can do right is as a proposition, you can give different reasons for why women need to be empowered in these spaces, why they would have better approximations of what the problem are. They would probably have better ideas of what the movement should do. And while all of those arguments are well and good, and you can even give like structural reasons for why that's the case, why women are the best people to talk about it. You can even give structural reasons for why men are not capable of that depth analysis given their exposure to the big patriarchy. Maybe you give your own structural reasons like their their culture they grew up with, the education they grew up with, maybe even religion if they come from a religious country, etcetera. But those aren't enough because you you still need to do these three things. The first thing you have to do is prove some level of mutual exclusivity. And if you've listened to older episodes of Debatable, I probably talked about this a lot, but to to give you like a basic refresher and a mutual exclusivity, it just means that this is something the other side cannot claim. This is like a unique benefit to your side. It means that when you are comparing the both versions of the world, this is something that you only have in your side. So when you're doing that comparative, that level of comparative, this is really where you have to highlight why your side has something and their side doesn't. So if you want to argue that women would be more likely to do better deep dives on the problems of feminism, you have to actively compare why that can't exist on the side of opposition. So it's not enough to just say that, you know, like men are there and they they're not good at it and they suck at it, etcetera. But a better way to do it is to prove that, you know, with the presence of men, as much as women are competent and capable of speaking their minds, there might be some things like self censoring. There might be things for instance, of women objectively having to share their speaking time with the men in the room, especially in meetings or areas where there are referenda, etcetera. So those are the things that you can highlight to emphasize that the mutually exclusive thing that we have at the very least is that women have more time in the spotlight. Women have more speaking time. They have more space to speak their minds, to express your problems. They do not have to take into account the feelings of the men in their vicinity. They don't need to actively go out of their way to reach out to the opinions of men and include them in the conversation. Because what's exclusive to your side is that you are going to be, or at least the women in your side of the motion are going to be in an environment where those levels of friction are actively reduced. And then here you have to make some concessions. Like obviously even within the feminist movements, there would still be debates. There is a spectrum of women and their prioritizations. There are conservative women, there are very progressive women. There are even extremist size of like feminism that exist, but you could argue like what's mutually exclusive is that those conversations are happening in the absence of men. That those conversations actively revolve around a baseline understanding of what women's issues are without having to accommodate actively the men that exist in your vicinity. And here I just want to like, interject. If you're not sure what mutually exclusive means, it just means like it's a, it's a concept in logic where two or more events cannot occur or exist at the same time, right? So they are mutually exclusive or disjoint events. So if something happens, the other can't happen. So you have to make an active effort to prove that having women speak up to this degree cannot exist in the world of your opponent, cannot exist in a world where men actively have to be in that space, whether they are allies, whether they are not good allies, all that. So that's Step 1. You have to prove some level of mutual exclusivity. The more exclusive you're able to prove it, the more analysis and reasoning and you can give for Y, then the better that you are doing in that first step. So that's the first thing I think the Step 2 that you can do. And here I want to give a disclaimer that I don't think this is a step you need to spend a lot of time on, but it has to be said just so you can cover all your bases. You have to engage and compare with the worst version of the world. So this is the part that a lot of people find easy, because this means you're going to emphasize why men are good allies or why they are likely to be disruptive. So here you are kind of allowed to highlight how things can go wrong, like actively going wrong. So you could say a lot of men for instance, will be antagonistic to certain claims that feminists will make. For instance, if a lot of these women will argue things like all men are trash, then even the best allies, or maybe not so good allies would hinder that conversation and actively block that conversation because they feel antagonized or they don't want to be lumped in with whatever women are pointing to as the problem. So here you can just emphasize how they can be actively disruptive, how they can actually prevent all of the positive things from your side from happening. So when you do that, you are basically finding the worst case version of the world. And again, I don't want you to rely on this second step. It's just there so that you can cover your bases and highlight how all of these possibilities can exist because we really don't know how things are going to turn out. Men can be good, men can be bad. If men are bad, it is actively bad and actually detrimental to the space of feminism and might even hurt women in the process. Again, don't argue to the extent that like they're going to abuse the women, whatever. I feel like that's a little bit too far, but you can drop it as a possibility. And if your opponent spends time or too much time saying that's the only thing you argued, then that's their fault. But don't be afraid to highlight or emphasize or at least bring up the possibility of these extreme cases from happening because they they can happen and they sometimes do happen. But again, don't make it your whole case. And if your opponent does bring this up, try not to engage with it too much because you are just going to distract yourself and you're going to limit just how good the debate can be. But that's an important step, step to engaging with the worst case. Dissecting Opponent's Best Case: Principle, Pragmatics, Long-Term The last step is actively engaging with their best case situation. And I think under this third step, there are micro steps that you can actually do and like some steps that you can do further. But let's start with the simple explanation of what it means to engage with the best case scenario. So let's imagine what the opposition side is likely to argue. Why they want women to involve men in conversations on feminism. So they could talk about two things. They could probably talk about how actively leaving men out could be harmful to the conception of feminism, meaning there's going to be backlash, which is a very basic argument, but still true and still strong in its own right. Or they could argue that it actively limits what the conversation could be because feminism is also against the patriarchy. Men are also victims of the patriarchy. They have the right to be there. They have to have a say. All that. So if you look at their arguments through this reasonable light, you'd actually be forced to engage with what they are trying to say. So when you're engaging with their best case, you as a first micro step. So this is like Step 3, point A. You have to 1st engage with their principal. Is it correct that men are also victims here? You have to concede a little bit. Yeah, they are victims, but now you have to engage. Are they victims to the same degree? So you're engaging with the best case. You are admitting and conceding that they are victims of the patriarchy. They are also people that feminism is trying to cater to. But are they affected to the same degree? The answer is basically no. And then you can give explanations to as to why, and then you can even throw them a bone and say they are still allowed to have these conversations. We would just rather as the feminist movement, they don't talk about it in our spaces first because we're trying to figure out our problems with the patriarchy. We're trying to figure out how to support our vulnerable members and they can have their conversations about how they can cater to their men, how they can use feminism to help their things. But the reason why we don't want them in the spaces or having those conversations at the same time is because even when you are the best of allies, there is still some level of power that you have that you can't just like, throw away. Women, for instance, will still recoil upon the presence of men, no matter how much they recognize that you are an ally. There's some level of hesitation before they speak up about certain issues. Men also have a particular barrier to understanding just the gravity and severity of the problems women are pointing out. So here you're saying even the best of men, even if we accept that these men are really educating themselves, they are trying so hard. We 1 cannot expect them to be perfect allies. And two, we cannot, we cannot expect that power asymmetry to just stop existing just because everyone agrees that they are feminist. So you could argue like even engaging in their best case, there are things that they cannot just easily ignore, which is the existence of that, like historical power that men have, the existence of let's say even the way they are brought up gives them more confidence in speaking up. They are more likely, for instance, to overstep their bounds or more likely to speak over women. And even if that is called out and corrected in the best of spaces, it does affect how women will participate in that space because even if you are an ally, they don't know that. So there's a level of hesitation. So you know, those are just example things that you can say. Of course, if this was like a formal speech, I would probably say that way better and more eloquently, but I'm just yapping right now. That's the first thing, right? Like Step 3, point A is what was that again, I should really write these things on, but basically you are engaging with why there are active hindrances to them. Actually getting that best case scenario, you're engaging with the principal, right? Like they are, you know, no matter what they do deserve to be there, but it does not reduce or take away the fact that there is a level of power that they have that they can't just ignore. 3 point B after engaging with the principle of it and like really like dissecting the nitty gritty of what the differences are in terms of the principle and the degree of vulnerability of these actors. You can also then explain why on a like pragmatic sense, the best case scenario is still actively limited in comparison to your side. So let's say all of these men are perfect allies. Let's say that they are able to throw away their privilege in that meeting or in that conversation. They are able to like, actively integrate themselves and listen to the women, right? And this is like the ultimate best case that men are there and they are basically functioning the way we would want them to. Like, there's no backlash. There's no, like, hesitation. They are not trying to, like, debate on the women. They are doing the rest to pay attention and learn from these conversation. Now you can introduce another problem that might exist even in that best case scenario. And in a practical sense, we could say that there's just too many conversations happening at the same time. That by mixing the women's problems with the patriarchy with the men's problem with the patriarchy, you're basically bloating up the problem, which makes it harder to address specifically how we deal with these things, because if we try to deal with it as a collective, we might miss out on particular nuances. So for example, if we're trying to deep deal with rape culture, which objectively does affect both parties, regardless of what their gender is, we might be missing a lot of like specific cultural nuances that exist for how, you know, sorry, trigger warning, by the way, like how these grievances affect women in comparison to men. Or we like you could even argue in the best case, right? They face the problem differently. They might face it to the same degree. Like even if we can see that they are affected in the same exact way, like the severity of it, the trauma that comes with it, it manifests differently. It manifests differently for women. We could argue women are kind of forced to to hide their traumatic events. It becomes a very like internalized. They process it through very covert means. They mask a lot of their concerns. Men, let's say a lot of them do also isolate themselves, but a lot of them turn violent. A lot of them like are told by culture to express their rage differently. They address the problems in a different way. Women are more community oriented. Men, for instance, with the male loneliness epidemic, as much as they would like to reach out to community, they don't have those avenues as accessible to them. So with these things, right, you can highlight in a world and in comparison to provocations world, if we were to have men and women engage in the same conversation, even if they had that conversation very productively, it, it, it, it's not easy for them to come up with a solution because we are now like engaging with with two different problems through the facet of one or through the label of just identifying it as one problem. As opposed to if women were to have that conversation separately without men involved, they would still reach that same conclusion, but they would probably come up with different solutions. And then the men, if they were to engage in that conversation in a different space, let's say they're still feminist, but they're not involved with the women in that conversation, they will also come up with their own solutions or their own analysis or dissection of what the problem is. And then you can even spin this right in your speech and say this makes the fact finding and the solution finding process way better because now you have two groups recognizing that there are nuanced ways in which the problem is faced, and therefore they come up with more nuanced solutions to those problems. And when those two parties eventually meet to kind of brainstorm together, at least there is a better formation of what to do as opposed to trying to find a mutual solution together when we haven't even figured out if those problems are exactly the same for both genders. So that's the basically like point Step 3, point B where you are also engaging the best case scenario on a pragmatic level. So recap, you are engaging best case scenario on a principal level and then on a pragmatic level. And then you can even do a lasting, which is, let's say 3 Point C, which is engaging in the best case scenario and proving why even then it won't be enough. So let's say everyone was able to come up with an excellent solution. It addresses all the problems. People were able to identify the nuances together. You can highlight or prove why in the long term it's not going to be enough that the process itself actively hinders our ability to execute what we want to happen in the long run. So I'm just going to spit ball here. Like what I can imagine in this particular debate is perhaps if you are on proposition and you are arguing against opposition's ideal world where everyone is able to collaborate together actively. I think you can point out that because these conversations happened alongside feminist, even the men will have issue executing on their side of the bargain. They're going to have a hard time convincing men that they need to care about these issues, especially conservative men, especially men who are not feminists. Because once those men figure out or realize that these were solutions that were made in conjunction with women, they might not be as receptive. As opposed to when men like, muse on it on their own and then try to communicate it on their own right outside of the sphere of feminism, it might be more productive. And of course you have to give structural reasons for why this is the case. A lot of conservative men view women in a negative life. They don't see feminism as a very productive conversation. They view a lot of feminist allies as soy boys or what do you call them these days? Like they're, they're like betas or whatever the term is like they don't, they don't want to listen to you because they feel like you are a compromised individual. So now we are extending, right? Like even in the, the space of the, of the feminist circles, let's say, even in the absolute best case that we are able to come up with an idea together. Will that idea grow? And this is where you can make the comparative that no, it will not, at least on our side. If the conversation happens separately and we we like if we take their frame on off that men are progressive and they can come up with their own solutions and they can recognize the plights of women, then you can say they don't need to do that in this space. If men were truly as good as you point them out to be, then we don't have to do that or they don't have to do that with us. They can do that on their own. If they were really good allies. And in fact, they would probably more be more productive with their conversation because they they'd be more likely to get other men, other conservative men involved if they do that outside the scope of the feminist movement. So those are examples of how debating becomes very, very different if you actively keep in mind that there is a competing argument or there's a competing side that you have to deal with. So basically, in summary, right, the three steps are one, you prove mutual exclusivity #2 you highlight the worst case scenario that can happen on their side in comparison to yours. And then Step 3 is engage with their best case, engage with their best case principle, engage with their best case, pragmatic and engage with their best, best case and blow it up to either a long term timeline or to involve more actors and see how it will interact in that sense. Recap: The Three Steps to Effective Comparative Debating So that's how I would do comparatives. And I just gave a motion to kind of highlight how that would work. Of course, if this were going to be a debate, like I mentioned, this is going to actively shift based on what people are arguing, but do make it a practice that you're thinking in terms of their best case. You don't want to actively or always antagonize your opponent because one that is like very basic, right, It's it's very, it's too easy to just try to argue on who's worse, like who will get their benefit, who will not get their benefit. But I think the game becomes much more fun when you actively throw bones and you're trying to trying to see where there might be alignment. You're, you're trying to see every point in which their argument can go wrong. And not just stopping at the first level, but trying to see how deep you can get into their model and their frame and point out all the areas it can go wrong in terms of like the flow charting, which I did like a few episodes back. It means like at every point of their argumentation, you're going to point out why it could go wrong. And you're not just saying like, oh, it will never happen. You're proving why even if step one happens, Step 2 can't happen. Even if step one and two happens, Step 3 can't happen. What is step 1-2 and three happen? Why can't Step 4 happen? So you're trying to identify the roadblocks that exist on every possible point of their case. And when you do that, one, you are being comparative, but two, it is showing that you are making active efforts to actually deepen the discussion of the debate. That you don't just want to stop it on like one line of analysis that you're like reaching out to their side. You are actually entering their frame and then showing why they can't win on that. Debatable's Future: Consistency, Live Streams, and Community So yeah, that's, that's the, that's the lesson. That's the app I wanted to do so I, you know, the main episodes done. I do want to say that I know I haven't been consistent and that's because debatable is not like a business to me anymore. I have long given up on my business dreams. So it really just is a platform for me to share. Like I get nothing from this but I do want to be more consistent because I do genuinely enjoy doing things like this and it keeps my brain sharp. Especially since as a team manager for the national team, I I expect I'm going to be here for a longer period of time. I'm probably going to stay in the debate industry for a while longer. And while that happens, I want to keep myself sharp. I want to evolve my ideas. I want to share my ideas. I want to get corrected on my ideas. I want to see where people are changing their ideas. Because whatever my next step is, whether I enter politics or enter like the business world or corporate, or if I, I don't know if I become a nomad, I'm pretty sure that everything I learned here will still be useful to me to some degree. So anyway, I'm trying to be more consistent with episodes. I'm trying to figure out how I can do that given my busy schedule. And I think one, I will probably just record more voice notes. I think the, the rise of short form content and like video content and the fact that Spotify allows videos now has really pressured me to be on camera all the time. When I realized that as a podcast, people have still been listening to me regardless of whether they've seen my face or my Co host face or the people I've interviewed face, right. So I'm, I'm trying to like, not allow the perfectionism and the complexity to boggle me down, but it, it's really hard to do that given, you know, like it does reflect in the numbers that if there's a video people are going to watch, the algorithm will kind of promote it and reward it a bit more. But that idea I had, which I wanted to share was I was thinking if I had like a live stream recording session once a week, let's say like Friday nights, I'm going to turn on like a Zoom call or a Discord call and people are just allowed to join in and chat with me while I record my episode. And hopefully that will motivate me to record more consistently. And it's a way for me to also know what people want me to talk about. Because if you're actively chatting with me, that means I get to actively engage and I get to kind of have a better vision of what people want to hear, what people want to learn, what people want me to do. So for instance, people have asked me to do more case builds, but I don't know what motions are relevant or what people want me to case build about. So hopefully with that kind of setup, it can be more interactive and we can re revive the debatable community. Because I remember before there were quite a lot of you on my discord server, but now like most discord servers that exist in the world and there's just a lot of like spam bots that are selling like only fans don't do that. I mean I know you guys don't do that, but it's kind of hard to maintain the server. But let me know if that's an idea that interests you, if you would like to be part of that, or if you think that would like get you excited to hear episodes again. But anyway, that is it for today's episode of Debatable. Thank you for listening and I will see you in the next one. Bye bye.