Nice. Perfect. In that case, we can get started.
So first of all, thank you for the introduction, obviously, and for asking me to do the session. Briefly, before we start, I'll just go over the contents of this presentation. First of all, I'll go over the definition of what a counterfactual debate is and the specific rules provided by the Judge Manual of Worlds. Secondly, we're going to explain when you need to develop your counterfactual and how much time you ought to be spending on it.
Thirdly, we'll go through some common mistakes and how to avoid making them. And lastly, we will briefly explain the different types of motions in terms of how specific or generic they are and the best way to structure your analysis when debating these motions. If you have any questions for me at any point, please just put them in the chat.
I'll be keeping the chat box open and I'll be happy to take them. Also, what I will say is that what I will be covering today obviously will be applicable to other types of debates as well. For example, narrative debates. And very often these are some of the emotional topics that people tend to struggle with.
And I hope that people are able to get some useful advice out of this workshop. Before I start, also a special thanks to Kat and Jacqueline for giving me a hand with some of the content of the workshop. Okay, in that case, we can get started. So first of all, let's briefly discuss what the counterfactual is, and when you ought to be using it, and what the rules of it actually are.
So briefly, I think that like the term counterfactual is more scary than it ought to be, like it can be very hysteric, but like generally, The dictionary definition of it, in terms of philosophy, I think, is that it's thinking about what did not happen, but could have happened, or relating to this kind of thinking. When it comes to British parliamentary in specific, we use counterfactual to refer to usually two broad archetypes of debates. First of all, you have this house prefers the world motions, in which you're expected to basically debate a hypothetical world, which developed in a different way, based on a different path factor, like a different circumstance, I'll explain in a moment or secondly you have this house regrets motions would refer to a specific event or institution narrative which took place in the past in our world and you're asked to like imagine how our world would have developed in the absence of this event that were quite similar I've included a couple of examples here so for example you have the motion this house regards the rise of social media influencers which expects you to describe the world and the way to have developed without social media influencers existing so this presumably would have taken place in the last like 10 or 15 years And secondly, you have a motion like this, which prefers a world in which organized religion does not exist. With a motion like this, it's more like encompassing in the sense that you aren't limited in discussing the world as it is right now, but rather you'd be expected to discuss how like the absence of religion in this case would have changed things like, you know, societal norms, the way we interact with faith, with each other, and generally this has prefers a world of motions. tend to describe bigger changes, but obviously this is more of a rule of thumb and doesn't always have to be the case.
I think the important thing to remember throughout this workshop is that counterfactual debates are no different than any other debate, and that when we use the term counterfactual, what we're describing is how the world would be after a specific change. I think that the important thing to note is that this is no different than any other type of motion. For example, when you're like discussing a specific policy, Again, you're comparing the world before the policy and the world after the policy.
I think that the special thing about counterfactual debates is that it removes the burden on you to describe the transition between the two worlds or to how to describe a specific policy and basically tells you if it were the case that it was possible to reverse, you know, something that's happened in the past or, you know, change something very fundamental about the world, you're meant to compare how things will be before and after. I think that one of the main mistakes people usually make is that they like forget this and they forget to be like comparative when they make these arguments. So it's generally important to remember that you ought to be comparing these two worlds and to explain why yours is better than the same way you would in any other debate, in order to do well in them. So just briefly, I'll go over some of the rules that have to do with counterfactuals, as defined by the Judge Manual.
So, first of all, teams inside government have the burden to envision and argue in favour of this alternative world. and what this means that you're expected to provide a backwards looking characterization from a logical point of divergence onwards. What this means is that, like I said, in the motion, this house regrets the rise of social media influencers. you shouldn't be, you know, trying to argue that in the absence of social media influencers, the world would have somehow changed 100 or 200 years ago, given that social media and internet did not even exist then.
But rather, logically, you're expected to argue that the point of divergence in which our world and the world that you're comparing us with diverged probably happened quite recently. While like I like explained before, when it comes to emotion, like this house prefers a world in which organized religion does not exist. presumably this is something that took place quite far in the past and the arguments you make can be more encompassing and more wider than having to be specific to the modern day and you can talk about the broad ways in which it has affected society. The important thing which people very often forget is that you don't have any fiat when you make these arguments.
What this means is that the team in open government does not get to define what the new world is going to be but rather they're expected to provide analytical reasons about why this is likely to be the way the world would have have been in the absence of what the motion. is removing or adding. So what this means is that if opening government provide a definition, but they assert it, then opening opposition can basically analyze a definition that's more favorable for them.
And if they analyze it better than opening government does, then that means that the panel will accept the definition opening opposition provides. And therefore it's important to always analyze the definition and the cutoff actually you're providing for these debates. Also, like we said, these are not motions. where you're going from one world to a different world. So like what this means is that it's not the case that we're suddenly going to make organized religions disappear today, but rather you're expected to imagine two distinct worlds that don't interact with each other, and therefore, for example, arguments about backlash at the removal of the church would not be very persuasive in a debate like this, exactly because it's not the case that you're making the church disappear, but rather you're being asked to envision what the world would would be like if the church never existed.
Finally, opposition. is expected to defend the status quo. The world as it is right now, so you don't get to basically try to propose a different world of your own, but you have to defend the current world rather than anything else. So these are the basic rules that define what you're allowed and what you aren't allowed to do with counterfactuals.
We can then move to part one then, which is developing being counterfactual when they're useful and what you do with them. The first common question is how much time you have to spend on the counterfactual, right? I think the important thing to remember is that in debates like this, counterfactuals usually can be considered as a special type of framing. As in, it can be a powerful piece of analysis that can help you and your team, but it's not always the case that you ought to be doing this over other types of analysis that can be more helpful toward your ability to end the debate. What I mean by this is that, like, given that you only have seven minutes to, like, speak in BP, and, like, especially when you get, like, the hang of it, very often you'll find out that these are just not enough to get in everything you want.
It's important to consider the trade-off of how much detail and how much time you want to spend characterizing the counterfactual versus using this time to do something else. Like, you know, because every minute or every half a minute you spend analyzing the counterfactual, this time you could have spent doing things like, you know, providing responses, doing more analysis, or, like, having a more well-substantiated point for your side of the case. So I think that the important thing to do then, first of all, is to characterize the parts of the world that will plausibly and non-trivially change. What this means is that you don't have to basically characterize every single part of the world that's likely to change just a bit, but you should focus on the parts that your case and the case of the opposition you think is likely to affect. So you remain on a classroom in the debate and so you're not wasting your time, basically.
what I think this means is that you should be aiming for changes and impacts which you think you can plausibly prove within your speech. And generally, this is something you want to do at the very top. The rule of thumb here is that the more advantageous your counterfactual is for your side, the more likely the other side is to contest it.
And what this means is that you should spend more time proving it than you would otherwise. Like, the thing is, when it comes to British parliamentary, the way judges decide whether a claim is asserted or whether it's proven very often depends on whether teams are able to agree on it. Like, for example, if I were to derive an argument and the base premise of it is that the sky is blue, this is not something that I need to prove at the point at which no other team is probably going to call me out and say that this is wrong.
However, if in this case, as an explorator, you're attempting to prove a counterfactual is significantly skewed towards your side in a way, like, you know, a counterfactual usually puts a position on the back foot in which you're likely to try to provide an alternative to, this usually means that you have to spend more time analyzing it, exactly because the fact that it's not favorable to them. just makes it much more likely that they will spend time, A, rebutting you on it and B, doing like, you know, parallel analysis. And therefore, if your side of the debate isn't robust or analyzed enough, it's very likely to be the case that they'll be able to beat you on that. And therefore, it's very important to spend time in prep time thinking how much time you want to spend on it, what the reasons are about why it's true, and to make sure you give it proper thought at the start of your speech.
In debates where the counterfactual sounds trivial, like I think that the one about social media influencers is like quite clear, like, for example, the counterfactual there presumably is like, okay, it's probably never the case that people pick up on things like, you know, following people that promote products or like, you know, advertisers lifestyle. It's very often the case that other teams are not going to try to contest this exactly because the definition is agreed on, but rather what you're going to be debating is the merits and harms of that specific definition, rather than the definition in the first place. I think the important thing to note, though, is that you should always be charitable to the other side. What I mean by this is not that you should be conceding all of their points or you should be giving them leeway, but rather always try to provide a fair definition that allows for the debate to happen in the first place.
This doesn't mean that your definition should not be favorable to your side, but it shouldn't be something that's like either squirreling the motion or something, which is basically not plausible in the eyes of the average informed voter. Basically, make sure the definition you're providing is always within reason for these debates. Okay.
Next up we're going to talk about the role of counterfactuals in top half and then back half. So first of all in top half they do a few things. First of all it just prevents your closing from like trying to vertically extend on you by saying that you did not have like a counterfactual therefore this is a missing link because your case is not comparative between the two worlds. Like very often when it comes to the way your case is presented and structured it's very good at the start of the PM speech for example to have a clear counterfactual which you're able to structure it on and push through throughout the debate.
I think that this takes like a similar role to the type of start of speech framing you'd see in many PM speeches in the sense that very often this can be very rhetorical and you can make the counterfactual seem very plausible and obvious to the judges if you're able to make it sound good and reasonable. This is very often a way like that you can sneak in analysis in a way that like won't be registered as analysis by the other teams they may not be as likely to engage with you exactly because they're more likely to you know like subliminally accept the shoe for example. And it's a very strong way to start your case because you basically tell the judges a story about what the alternative world is likely to be. And there's something which is cemented at the very start of the debate.
What this means is you can set up a very strong frame for your team that all the other teams will have to contend with throughout the debate. And if you're able to do this well, if they don't effectively respond to you, even if they are able to do better analysis, that you have been able to outframe with like your counterfactual, it's the case that they will still be losing to you. And therefore, this is a good skill to master, especially when giving first speeches.
I think that there are many good workshops out there in both framing and PM speeches, and many of those scales apply to those debates in specific, exactly because framing is very important to make arguments comparative. Also, you can use counterfactuals to preempt what you expect the other side to touch on. If you are able to predict in prep time what the other side is likely to contend and bring as arguments, it suggests that you can try to tailor counterfactual to try to mitigate or flip some of the points you're likely to bring, as we will see later.
and this can be a very powerful tool to start. In terms of opening a position, it's very useful in terms of being able to outframe OG, for example, and that if they don't prove a counterfactual, you can use this to make a big part of their case what to call uncomparative, or to prove that many of the harms they want to talk about likely transfer over to their counterfactual as well. And you can also use it to basically draw attention to specific groups which are likely to be harmed better or worse by the specific change between the two worlds. Like this also applies in the same way you do like in many other debates, but like especially with counterfactuals when teams like, you know, miss the burden of making their case comparative and unique. It's very often a good way to attack them by presenting like your own strong frame of the world, the same way the PM could have.
And very often clashing with them on this can be a good way to put yourself in a good spot to win the round. In terms of back half, I think that in many ways, everything you just said applies to back half as well. However, there are a few things to keep in mind.
First of all, you should make sure that your counterfactual is compatible with the analysis your opening team has brought. And like the standard rules and contradictions apply here, meaning that, for example, if we have the motion, you know, what was it before? One sec.
This house regrets the rise of social media influencers and open government says that they think that the alternative is that like, you know, people probably wouldn't subscribe to, you know, things like Instagram or like, you know, follow viral trends on the internet and closing government. can get up and say uh people would probably still follow these trends even if they aren't like you know personified in specific individuals seeing as there will be tension between the two cases so generally make sure that the uh if you're trying to reframe the debate for back half either you're not like you know contradicting the opening uh because if you do that judges just won't credit what you're saying um secondly if you do want to redirect the debate away from what your opening government has done or your opening position effectively it's very useful to use even if it's because they don't count as contradictions. So basically, if you think you have a way to make your case be more in clash with what opening opposition is saying, for example, if you're in closed government, then you can use even if to try to like dance around what your opening government has said. But generally. avoid contradicting your opening theme.
It doesn't lead to good results. Finally, when you're trying to out-frame top half, or trying to change what the counterfactual is, make sure you spend time to engage with the other side to avoid falling out of the debate. Falling out isn't really something which applies when people are judging properly, but very often judges may sometimes tell you that your case was not as relevant, especially by the frame you're bringing. And very often, you want to make sure that your case doesn't hinge on this one specific.
claim that the judges have to buy about how the world changes so by engaging with the frame that you know top half has already had you're making it more likely that they will credit you because you show them that like even if they don't fully believe what you're analyzing for them you're still engaging and possibly beating the other teams for example opening a position within their own frame as well and therefore this makes your case more powerful and this is an important thing to remember than just like you know uh tunnel visioning on your own side of the debate. At this point we'll move on to the second part and discuss some of the most common mistakes people usually make in these debates and what the best way is to avoid them in the future to do better in them. So first of all a very common mistake that people make is asserting the counterfactual on their side of the debate even though it's very likely to be contested. For example, and this was a motion that was set recently in March, if we have the motion discussed regrets the perception of the soldiers are heroes and the prime minister says in our world people will obviously still treat veterans well, we also have access to significantly more resources to investigate war crimes and that provides reasons about why this is good. This is not a sufficient counterfactual to the extent that like the prime minister is basically making two assertions already which are one that people are still going to treat veterans well but also two that you're going to have the political capital to you know do things like you know launch investigations which opening a position or closing a position are able to challenge quite briefly Like for example, You can say that people who don't have any contact with the military, for example, are likely to not understand what those people have been through, and that in the absence of this narrative they're likely to treat them quite badly because they see them as killers or the national heroes, for example.
Or in terms of the second argument, opposition could perhaps say that very often governments have incentives not to want war crimes to be revealed in the first place, exactly because it reflects badly on them. I know this very often means that if you don't provide reasons about why your benefits are true or why your credit factual issue, the other side is very likely to be able to flip them quite easily. So especially when you're like, you know, forwarding contentious arguments like this, you want to make sure you provide analytical reasons for why they're true in the first place to make sure that don't just get basically taken down in about half a minute each.
The second common mistake is people pushing on fair burdens in debates like this. What this looks like is, if we take one of the standard US motions, this House regrets the trend of central banks setting extremely low interest rates after the 2008 financial crisis. Let's say we have a prime minister's speech that spends the analytical portion of their speech explaining why low interest rates lead to bad economic practices, and the general opposition gets up and says the prime minister did not provide the country factual, therefore government has to stand by central banks not setting interest rates at all, which would be very disastrous for the economy.
What opening opposition says, if it were, you know, like, allowed within the debate, would probably be true, as in not setting interest rates is probably quite bad. But this claim is quite problematic in two ways. First of all, it's not a very plausible counterfactual in that, like, even if the prime minister has not explicitly said this, deputy prime minister or closing half may say this, and the panel may also not find it plausible, and that the likely alternative is that, you know, central banks either said, like, you know, average interest rates as they did before the crisis or you know like not as low interest rate for example which is a plausible alternative and even if it's not explicitly contested there is a chance that judges may not buy what you're saying to them but secondly um especially if you're in top half or in a position where you know you don't get to interact with the entirety of the debate it's very easy for you to you know get outframed if you're providing a very like non-fair uncharitable definition of the debate so always make sure that you're like debating um the motion as it was given to you.
And obviously when you have a motion like this, the comparative probably isn't going to be like, you know, central banks doing nothing. Very often this is a matter of common sense. Basically, don't try to like choose too much of the definition of the team across from you isn't providing one, but rather try to be sensible and give them credit for what they have proven or what they can prove and try to beat them based on that just to be safe. The third common mistake is asserting that the counterfactual is favorable or preferable on your side. What this looks like is an emotion like this house regrets the ideological dominance of the left in the feminist movement.
The prime minister could like give some analysis and reach a conclusion that we will therefore now have a more inclusive movement and just leave it at that. I think there is like a couple of issues with this. First of all.
In this case, the prime minister has not explained why inclusivity is important in itself and this analysis you have to provide. And very often this becomes more powerful if you talk about the impacts it has on specific actors and specific vulnerable individuals, which means that in the end you can give judges a reason about why they ought to value it and credit it highly. But secondly, the issue is that very often teams in the debate, like, for example, side opposition, are likely to try to prove like... why the counterfactual involves like a watered-down version of the feminist movement that's not as able to you know like advocate for its members or to advocate for things that are beneficial for women so like very often in order to get to make your case more powerful you need to explain why inclusivity here for example is something that we value and something that we value more than what you expect opposition to prove or what they have already argued so basically like in every other the break basically Don't forget to impact and weigh your arguments just because it's a counterfactual motion. There's some people very often forget exactly because they see, you know, like a shiny type of motion.
They just forget to provide their side is better because they just think it's obvious. But it very often isn't, especially to the judge. So especially when you're like, you know, in better rooms, it's the case that you shouldn't forget to do these things.
Otherwise, if your case has no end point, you're not likely to do very well in them. Next up, we have assuming that the counterfactual world is too different from the world in the city school, which just very often just makes the motions undebatable in a way. For example, if we have the motion, this house prefers a world where people believe in determinism over one where people believe in free will. This was said at the Doxbridge Worlds last January, I think.
And. the leader of opposition gets up and says if people no longer believe in free will, people who feel they have no agency, therefore they will no longer be incentivized to work for anything or maintain any relationships, society would fall apart. I think that while they have like why the opposition has wrote like a very high impact argument, I think that the issue of this counterfactual is that it's just not very plausible or easy to prove. You know most motions will very often not involve such a huge change to the world but rather as we discussed earlier will expect you to focus down your analysis about how the world changes on specific parts of it.
So you're able to, you know, like give plausibility analysis and not have to, you know, like debate something that's completely different and which will very often just basically descend into assertions. So generally you should be assuming that the world is roughly similar to your current world. So you're not dismissed as implausible and you should be trying to basically find the specific tipping point that and the way in which the motion affects people. that you're able to argue for realistically within like seven and 14 minutes into speeches, basically. In this scenario, the leader of opposition's argument can be taken down quite easily by another team saying that even if people don't believe they have agency, they presumably still have other incentives to seek out things like security and material wealth, because presumably it makes them feel good and they want to provide it for themselves and their family.
But also, the leader of opposition in this case has not proven why it's the case that... agencies particularly important to the individual or the way in which they act. So much like other debates, you should be providing individual analysis for each actor and stakeholder and explain why they are likely to react in a specific way.
And I think I'd like you know the short version of this slide is basically the very stereotypical piece of feedback which is give likelihood analysis for the points you're making in order for them to be credit to the debate. Finally, And this is very common. You have people saying that they're winning just because they have a counterfactual.
For example, GovWeb saying we were the only team in this debate to provide a counterfactual, therefore we beat all the other teams, which is just not true at the point at which a counterfactual helps your case become more comparative and basically unique and more persuasive. But it doesn't mean that the counterfactual is what is winning the debate for you. So what this means is that especially when you're a second speaker, you're like strategically place in your team. you should still engage with the other sides and the analysis they bring, even if they don't have a counterfactual, and make sure you still try to reach like, you know, concrete end impacts, and you outweigh the metrics brought by other teams in order to win, to make sure that the judges specifically understand how your case has contributed to the debate and for them to credit this highly. Okay, finally, we have part three, where I will briefly talk about how to structure arguments like this, and what the best way to bring analysis for counterfactuals is. and also to chat through a couple of examples.
The first thing I want to discuss is what is called linear flow. This is a concept from the Manchester Advanced Training Workshops which are available for free on YouTube and are very good. I've also included the link here and if people are looking for more material I would highly recommend them as they go into quite a bit of depth on many topics. I think there are about 20 of them but I think that like this method of analysis is very often useful to keep in mind in debates like this, which is that you should first of all start by framing the problem.
And secondly, you should be identifying why the problem uniquely arises and what the mechanisms for change are as a result of the motion. I think where people very often are lacking when it comes to counterfactual motions is because they don't have like, you know, a concrete mechanism per se. As in, you're not trying to implement a specific policy. People sometimes forget or struggle to come up with specific mechanisms for change, which very often makes these debates a bit washy, basically, because neither side is providing any reasons about why the arguments are bringing you like to happen.
or why they aren't going to happen on both sides of the debate. So this is usually one of the most important parts to focus on in debates like this, if there's something you're struggling with. So in terms of the types of motions you have, I think there are like broadly three types, going from most specific to most generic.
First of all, you have counterfactual motions that are focusing on specific events. For example, this House regrets the selection of Joe Biden as the as the Democratic nominee for the 2020 election. These very often, as you focus on a specific event in the past or a specific institution, they're very often going to be quite narrow and set in a specific moment in time, and it should be quite clear what you're being expected to debate.
I'll then jump onto the third one, which is narrative debates. These lie on the other end of the spectrum. These tend to be the most generic ones.
For example, this House regrets narrative of hookup culture. With a motion like this you can like infer that this is meant to take place you know in the last you know, 30, 40 years, maybe a bit longer. But like very often, these are going to be more vague and not set in a specific timeframe and you're going to be expected to argue them on a more generic level.
But also they don't make it clear who the actors or the people acting in the motion are. And somewhere in the middle, you have like, you know, transmotions, which very often do happen concurrently in the present. Like for example, this house regards to the friend of central banks, the motion we saw before.
and these are going to be a bit like both are going to be somewhere in the middle. What we're going to do now is we're going to go through some tips for dealing with specific and generic motions and we're going to work through a couple of these examples as well. So first of all, specific motions, like we said, they usually are about a specific trend or event and very often in order to do that you should try to identify the specific tipping point between the two worlds which you're describing which lead to the changes which you want because the other side will very often practice that what you're arguing is likely to happen anyway.
So make sure you're explaining the uniqueness of your argument and provide specific impacts and outcomes resulting from this tipping point in a way that's like analytically robust, just so the other side can try to basically make your arguments a wash and try to win based on that. We will quickly work our way to an example, which is the one on the previous slide as well, which is this House regrets the selection of Joe Biden as a Democratic nominee for the 2020 election. I want to make like a brief strategic note here as well, which is like very often you'll also have to decide which counterfactual you want to push for. Like, for example, as you can see on the screen here, when it comes to the Joe Biden motion, it's the case that you can either argue in open government that the alternative would be, you know, like a more radical nominee like Bernie Sanders, or you could also make the argument that the alternative is likely to be someone else that is also a moderate. And you can make good arguments based on like either counterfactual inside government.
Like, for example, you can argue that... people would be likely to vote for the Democrats regardless, exactly because they were afraid that Trump would win the re-election, and therefore it's the case that even if the alternative was someone more radical like Bernie Sanders, people would still come out and vote for Bernie and therefore you still have a president, and then you could argue why Bernie would likely forward better policy. Or from opening government you could also argue that the Democratic Party and the establishment usually favors more moderate candidates that are able to attract more votes and more donations and that therefore the alternative would be someone who is also moderate like Biden, but someone who's like, you know, less tainted in terms of their past actions and like, you know, for example, the controversy that surrounds like, you know, things like, you know, past opinions held by Biden or like, you know, some racist beliefs that have been revealed by the media, for example.
And like very often you can make arguments using either one of these counterfactuals. However, do remember that you're not allowed to do both of these, like you have to pick one and if you're in closing you have to go by what your opening has said um next up we'll briefly talk about generic emotions um as i said it's usually addressed on this like more broad and vague like a narrative or a norm that takes place over time um and very often in these you want to consider how these emotions affect the average individual exactly because very often it will be difficult and not very clear what the impacts are on people and very often the mistake people make is that they impact their arguments by saying that this leads to more discourse or that this you know leads to more empowerment without like specifically describing how this affects people's lives uh for example when making an empowerment claim very often you want to link this back to people being able to access better opportunities or to feel more inspired you know um push for more things that the other ways and things are capable of and very often you want to try to describe the specific way in which your argument affects individuals given that this is going to be more persuasive in the eyes of the judge secondly though um especially when the motion is more generic it's going to be more difficult for you to have a clear tipping point there are a few things you want to consider first of all what other narratives exist that also affect people in a similar way like uh because what very often happens is that you can make an argument and And then like the other side is going to get up and say. ah, but there is this countervailing narrative that is pushing people toward the other way or toward the other extreme. And therefore, they'll try to prove why this narrative is necessary to be able to maintain a balance, for example.
So very often, you want to make sure you're considerate of all the different pressures that apply on individuals and to think why the argument you're bringing is likely to be unique. Secondly, you want to identify what we very often call the hidden actor. For example, if we take one of the HWS motions from this year, which is about, I think, something like this house supports the cult of productivity or something similar. When dealing with narratives like that, very often there's a hidden actor which you need to identify. So what you have to ask yourself here is who is it that propagates the narrative in the first place?
Why do they do this? And how are they likely to act in the absence of this narrative? Right.
Like so, for example, in the cult of productivity motion, you can identify that presumably the people who are likely to be pushing, you know, people to be productive in their lives at work. are going to be the people who you know very often some profit from this side you know like the people running the companies uh who want to have you know like an efficient workforce and you can very often derive arguments by considering how they're likely to act uh in the case or like you know uh this narrative doesn't exist for example or like you know in debates that have to do with like you know public consciousness uh public conscience excuse me and public morality it's the case of you know very often uh actors like the media or the government like the education system. are going to have a big influence over how people perceive the world around them. And very often you can make nuanced arguments that are going to be quite persuasive if you take the time to consider those actors. Finally, very often the way to be able to find a tipping point in these motions that are specific and clear is to think, who are the people who are the most likely to subscribe to these narratives in the first place?
Like, for example, if you can identify an actor who's more naive or more likely to believe in this narrative in the first place. you can basically identify why for that actor in specific, it's likely to be overpowering as opposed to any of the other narratives mentioned before and therefore this can very often provide some much needed clarity in these debates which can sometimes tend to be more vague and leave judges confused about trying to find impacts and compare teams. So by trying to be more solid about the impact you bring and making your case unique, you're more likely to perform well in these. so to speak you know like soft and fluffy emotions basically um just to go through the example that they had on the previous slide so this house regrets narrative of a folk-up culture uh what she could do here in open government in order to try to you know uh outframe of the bad the opposition claim that you know uh people are no longer going to be able to enjoy relationships on a casual basis as you can say that like you know given that contraception is likely to exist on either side of the house and people you know do fall in love um in their lives it's not the case that you know side government has to stand by people not being able to enter like you know short-term relationships before marriage but it's the case that inside government it's likely to be the alternative that people are more likely to enter like you know dating and short-term relationships uh rather than like you know having hookups which you can then proceed to analyze why does it tend to be more short-term and toxic and worse for the individual um i think the important thing to note here is that like when it comes to these motions that basically um change uh the world from the Pass.
you can very often use this to characterize how people are likely to perceive these things differently. So what you could say is that while in the state this is called, people aren't as willing to look into things like, you know, short-term dating, exactly because hookup culture exists and people don't tend to date when they're looking for something long-term, exactly because they don't really want to commit time to it. You can say that, you know, in the absence of hookup culture that exists in the world right now, it's more likely to be the case that people will be more open to like, you know, short-term dating, meaning like any opposition argument about people not being willing to do this is not going to be as persuasive in this debate. So very often, especially because we're not talking about, you know, like a immediate change or an immediate policy, and you're talking about, you know, constructing an entire new world, it's a case where you can formulate better arguments about the ways in which this is going to change people's outlook on life and toward these attitudes.
And very often, these can be powerful framing tools to take out arguments made by other sides, other teams in the debate. And finally, seeing as I'm a second speaker, I do have a brief slide on how you can use these in terms of like, you know, strategy and rebuttal. I think the first of these notes I'd like to know, after everything I said. It should still be the case that you're going through the standard practice, which you always do in second speeches, meaning that you should be engaging with the arguments made by the other side.
And you should not just be trying to purely win the debate by outframing other teams, but others should always be engaging with them as a safety mechanism in case the judge is doing what you're bringing to them. But very often, you can still attack the truth of the argument the other side is bringing, or even the fact show you can mitigate it. You can try to flip the end in back. You can do all these other things. But also, it's very often good to try to exploit the common mistakes which we went through before.
So teams very often either don't prove the uniqueness of their arguments, and you can very often just try to provide other reasons about why the harms they want to bring are going to happen, despite of what they're saying, which can very often be very effective, exactly because government does not have fiat in these debates, and they don't get to define the policy. So very often, especially when things are a bit wishy-washy, you can make it seem like, you know, the other side hasn't necessarily proven what they want to prove. Secondly, teams very often tunnel vision. They very often either have, you know, like a counterfactual that's like explicitly favorable for them that isn't analyzed as much or very often aren't like reasonably engaging with you. And therefore, in those cases, you can very easily call them out.
And by engaging with them and like better proving your case, you will be able to take them down exactly because engagement does very often to be either very messy or minimal in debates like this. But also thirdly, teams very often just assert the counterfactual and you can just easily outframe them. by speaking after them and providing reasons against it.
So very often these debates can be a bit tricky and treacherous. So if you have your strategic spider-sense, so to speak, you can very often find ways to take out the arguments brought by these themes, which can very often save you time compared to having to go through the material line by line, basically. But yeah, this is a bit of a short workshop, but I don't think there's much more to be said about counterfactual motions given that they're just a specific subcategory of motion, though they do tend to be a bit tricky sometimes. Does anyone have any questions on the material or anything else? Can I stop the recording or shall we let it go on?
Yeah, I think you can stop it.