Proteus Debate - DVC Debate Lectures #4: What are Counterplans and How to Answer Them

next lecture oh my God we're on four lecture number four counter plants we're to talk about counter plant really fun counter plans make debate more fun they add a whole another dimension fantastic stuff we already know if you're the affirmative team and you're in a policy debate you have to read a plan the resolution says who should do what you explain what they do in the way we've talked about debate thus far and the way we do debate in my debate class the app says here's why it's a good idea the N says here's why it's a bad idea and that's where it ends but in the real world the negative has a whole another option which is saying N Dog let's do something else not let's do nothing let's do something but not what you said so you said increase the minimum wage to $5 n let's establish a universal basic income let's seize the means of production let's abolish money like whatever right like let's do something that's not your plan and that's called a counter plan all right it's where the negative reads their own plan but what we have to learn how do you read a legitimate counter plan what are the minimum requirements for a counter plan to be legit number one all counter plans must have a test which means in the same way you have to write the words of your plan like you have to say exactly we're going to increase the minimum wage is $5 $7 whatever counter plan also has to meet that standard you need a text that is that you can literally hand to the other person so that they can hold you to that for the rest of the pap that's what you're defending text secondarily they need competition and lastly they need theoretical legitimacy well expain what I mean competition competition on counter plans is what makes them interesting and exciting to win your counter plan you have to prove number one that it is better than doing the plan right because otherwise why would we do your counter plan if it's not as good as doing the plan it's not at least better why would we prefer it but number two you have to prove it is better than doing both or that doing both is impossible so let me write up an example on the board really quickly they the is increase minimum wage to $10 your cter plan your CP is increase min wage to $7 so we have to ask ourselves question can we do both of those at the same time no why not you can't increase it to 10 and increase it to seven because you've already increased it to 10 right it's not an increase if you went down to seven okay only increases 10 because of part one of this there are two things that make a counter plan uh well we'll come back I just I want to too fast um can't you both now strangely here's another C plan increase minum wage of $15 can we do both yes strangely kind of because increasing it to $15 includes increasing it to $10 because it is more this is much makes much more sense if you think about it not in terms of the minimum wage but think about it in terms of soldiers the plan is send 5,000 soldiers to Vietnam was a terrible idea by the way um send 5,000 soldiers to Vietnam the counter plan is send 7,000 soldiers to Vietnam there's no reason you can't send 7,000 like sending 7,000 includes sending 5,000 so it's just doing more counter plans that do the plan and more than the plan are not competitive they are not in opportunity cost of doing the plan what I mean by an opportunity cost is there's nothing stopping us from sending 5,000 soldiers because we already did we just s another 2,000 does that feel complicated and strange is that okay just so basically the plan proceedes their C you you are thinking considering sending 5,000 and so you can no longer so you can consider sending 5,000 and then additional 1,000 if a cter send but you can't say I want to send 5,000 and then no actually want to be 4,000 instead yes you can't go down and we'll talk about why right now um why can't why is that counter play a bad idea why is it not competitive because since the negative gets what are called counter plans these counter ades and they could theoretically say anything in the universe the plan could be send 5,000 troops to Iraq the counter plan could be five bu five puppies right those have nothing to each other the app has a type of response which is called a what trist I just went back de to me you're dead to me it's a permutation a permutation is where the a argues there is no opportunity cost for the counter plan we can do both we can do both there's no disadvantage to doing it there's no reason we can't do both at the same time and doing both at the same time doesn't make things any better or any worse okay so you can't do this and this because you can't have a $10 minimum W and a $7 minimum wage but you can do this in this because just doing this includes this and there's a reason for that the term this theoretical legitimacy thing is there are two things that make this legitimate and cheating basically which are Severance and intrinsicness what is sance Severance is not a rule but it's basically a rule that all your judges will know um Severance says once the affirmative team reads their plan they cannot change it they cannot remove it from the debate they cannot sever from their plan so second you said increase minim wage to $10 we must increase minimum wage to $10 at some point can't do that if we do $7 can do that if we do 15 cuz on the way to 15 includ 10 right can do that if it's 5,000 troops and 7,000 troops because there's no opportunity cost that's not SS intrinsicness says the affirmative cannot add things to the plan that were not a part of the counter plan or the original plan what here's the easiest thing in the world for you here's the plan we are going to get an AR Mark a bull and a cat at at the pet store that's the plan here's their counter plan get a fish question one can the affirmative perm this can they read a permutation and say do both can you get an artar bull cat and a fish yes yes it's totally possible okay cuz that is what we call Plan Plus it's just the plan and something else that's the reason all those other ones 5,000 becomes 7,000 10 becomes 15 that's why those apply you're just doing the plan and more how about this one their counter plan now is get a bull and get a c can you get an arar D and cap and also only get a bull in a c no what would the affirmative have to do to do this they would have to sever getting an artk they'd have to cheat by saying actually that thing we said we're going to do we're not going to do it anymore last one the counter plan is still this counter plan is get a fish and the a is great I've got a great permutation we are going to get an AR mark a bull a cat a dog and a fish can we have do this why can't the have do this which of those two rules do they just break did they get rid of something that was originally in their plan or did they add something that wasn't in either do we all see so what did they add what is the thing that was not in the plan or thought right that would be cheating if we why would it be a problem that the app in their later speeches get to go hey I know earlier we said we're only going to get an arar A bull and a cat we're also going to get a dalmati a magic dragon and 3bs it's like what how can I debate you if you just get to every time I point out that something was stupid about your argument you get to add new things that solve it or similarly how can I win the debate if I point out that getting an artmark is an incredibly dumb pet getting a bull is an incredibly dumb pet and then you come up and say great now we're only going to get a cat like that's obviously they would win the debate if they got to change their advocacy after they read it so the app can't do that but because of that that means the counter plan needs to prove doing only the counter plan is better than doing the plan or the plan and the counter plan because if you can do both there's no reason not to do both unless there's some disadvantage to it okay so there were competition there are two kinds of competition okay this is what all this is coming back to accounted plan is either competitive because it is mutually exclusive or demonstrates an opportunity cost what do I mean by that what's Mutual exclusive P you want to know this Ruth me you can't do both at once you just can't do both at once it's not possible it's not possible to do artar bull cap and just bull cap they're mutually exclusive they can't exist in the same world can't do both of ones opportunity cost means you prove that even though we could do both that is worse than just doing the counter plan there's some opportunity cost and what would that be a disadvantage when you read your counter plan you read a disadvantage that only applies to the plan and the inclusion of the plan and doesn't apply to the counter plan so let me give you an example simplify we're going to go to dinner okay and we're trying to decide where to go to dinner and uh I'm like let's go to Chipotle and you're like counter plan let's go to McDonald's that's all you say technically like I can let's do both we'll go to McDonald's and we'll go to Chipotle or we'll go to Chipotle then we'll go to McDonald's whatever but if you instead said okay uh Paul says let's go to Chipotle and you say let's go to McDonald's and you say because every time we get Chipotle you have diarrhea now any inclusion of Chip l in our dinner has an opportunity cost to it has a downside to it right it's no longer net beneficial cuz now there's diarrhea and that's bad okay so your counter plan must prove it is better than doing that now there's other things you'll learn eventually right now other reasons why you could argue a counter plan is not legitimate okay other reasons you could argue that it is legitimate um let me give you an example of some common counter plans the plan is the United States should I don't know uh the United States should significantly increase counterterrorism in the Persian Gulf okay the United States should fight terrorism in the Persian goals a very common Talent plan could be no the United Kingdom should do it instead if you were the team arguing the United Kingdom should do this not the United States what are the possible reasons you would say that there's basically two most of their arguments are probably going to be why it's beneficial to have the counterterrorism you're still like so most of their stuff what's all they all AF counterterrorism is awesome it's really good to kill terrorists blah blah blah blah blah right and when you say United Kingdom does it you get all that ground you get to steal you get to drink their milk right you get to steal all the ground and say yeah we do [Music] counterterrorism but if you both to counter terrorism you haven't proven You've Won yet cuz now you're just even so what would you need to say as the side defending the United Kingdom to prove not only are we even I'm winning there's two options you could say the United States sucks or you could say the United Kingdom is really good you could say the reason have the United Kingdom do it is because they better at counterterrorism in the United States United States has all these problems they result in increases in terrorism we've seen this historically in the Taliban we've seen this in Iraq we've seen this all over the world not a problem for the United Kingdom now obviously they're going to try to argue that the United States B the bottom line is you can do the exact same thing with different actors doing it if you want or you can have the same actor do a different thing we're not going to do counterterrorism we're just going to Nuke them right and then your arguments aren going to be about the same thing I mean sure you get rid of terrorism kind of it's just a very different way but there's downsides to that there's benefits to that why I tell you about counter plans it's possible you'll run into a team that reads a counter plan and you're going to be like oh God I have no idea what I'm supposed to do so now we know how to read cter plan which is read a text explain why it competes why it's legitimate question is how do you answer a counter plan and there's kind of a tried and true formula here number one you read a permutation you explain how we can do both now importantly a legitimate permutation just has to include 100% of the plan and any% of the counter plan so earlier we said you can do arvar cat fish I mean which dog here dog right you can do those five but if you think dogs are bad if you have arguments about why getting a dog is bad you could just steal this instead you could say just do these4 and then read arguments about why dogs are stupid or you can do the opposite you could steal dog and say fish are stupid or you can steal both all of those are legitimate because they include 100% of the plan and some per of the C plan so you read your permutation you then need to say why is it net beneficial which is to say why is doing both or some combin combination of them better than just doing the counter CL and then lastly if you're a nerd and if you're in a good debate you want to explain that you're not either of these things that your permutation does not include Severance does not include intrinsic Miss you're not cheating but that doesn't come up very often about us okay we about to stop here we've set the table okay you now know how to write arguments in general in fact debate value debate and policy debate you know the names of those positions you know roughly their structures you also know that in a policy style debate the negative could be de count and you also know that the affirmative can respond to it by trying to steal it or some part of it but there's limits to that that is going to represent no exaggeration 90 plus% of all the makes ever like if that's all you know you could like you couldn't quite win Nationals but you could get pretty deep right like you could almost win the national championship with just that information there is one last thing we will briefly talk about next time I don't want to keep being longer today um there's one last thing we'll talk about next time which is called topicality and topicality is defense against the dark artist topicality is a position you read that says you're a cheater that's not what the Topic's about you should lose good sir okay and once you know that that's that's everything that is everything you need to win a community college national championship there's nothing else there is outside of most of what we do here a whole another secret Universe world of debate called critical debate with criticism and we're going to see some cool about that cuz it's like the coolest debate in a lot of ways but you will probably this year hi to guess assuming you make it to Varsity in debate like the whole year you might see one or did you debate any KS last year you debated the whole year you went to the national championship and we elimination rounds did not see a k you saw like two actually hilarious Tristan's first day I made him read K kid had been to like one practice and then he had to go to a tournament with our like one of our barley debaters and I was just like hey you're not going to know what any of this means just read this sh know the funny thing too he said he kept saying in these exact lectures never going to be a k guess what first tournament there were three k there was only one that none of you were in Varsity though he he had to just you know jump in the pond okay folks go ahead and hit the video