Understanding Offense and Defense in Debate

So we know the basics of debate now, argumentation and refutation. The question that we now have to start building on top of that foundation is what types of arguments or what types of refutations do you want to be making? That's what this lecture is all about, learning strategically the difference between different types of arguments, knowing which types of arguments will generate offense, and what types of arguments will put up walls of defense. Knowing the difference between these two categories of arguments will really help in the long term in terms of thinking strategically about what types of arguments are best for a debate round. The best debaters are not just offering refutation and arguments just for the sake of putting out however many arguments that they can. The best types of debaters are like brilliant military generals who are thinking strategically about when to put roadblocks and defense and when to. put and went to have strong offense. That's why the sports analogy I think also helps here a lot. Some arguments are about scoring goals against your opponent, and some arguments are about defending goals from being scored on you. So let's just hop on in here to some definitions. It'll be hard to really comprehend what offense is until we learn the definition of defense as well, so just stick with me for now. So offense provides a reason for why your side of the resolution is actively good or why your opponent's side of the resolution is actively bad. So key words here are actively good or actively bad. Now what does it mean for something to be actively good or actively bad? It's about generating or solving for serious impacts. So if I say if you do this thing you will get a million dollars that is offense right because getting a million dollars is an good thing. It is a serious impact, a good impact, but a serious impact, right? Likewise, or conversely, if I were to say, if you do this thing, a thousand people will die. That would be a serious impact as well. It is something bad. It is actively bad and something that we wouldn't want to have happen. Here's an example of an offensive argument. Bananas are bad for people's health because they have so much sugar in them. Hopefully you can see here, right, something that is hurting your health is a impact, that is something that is actively bad, something that we would want to avoid, and so thus this is an offensive argument. Example number two, bananas are not the best tasting fruit, other fruits taste better. Hopefully you can see here, right, if my health is impacted, that could eventually lead me to die. Whereas number two is just bananas are not the best tasting fruit, other fruits taste better. This isn't causing something actively good or actively bad to happen. I'm just saying, hey, you know, bananas, they're not all that. Hopefully you can see here, going back to the sports analogy, how that first example by showing that bananas are causing something actively bad is like scoring a point against your opponent, right? Because you're giving a reason for me to actively reject the idea that I should be eating bananas. Whereas the second one is much more defensive in nature. It's not saying that bananas are actively bad. It's just saying, hey, you know, they're not the best tasting fruit. Other fruits taste better. Let's take a look at defense now. Once we have both of these definitions, I think it'll become a lot easier to understand this distinction here. Defense provides a reason why your opponent's arguments are less true or less good than they claim they are. So defense mitigates the severity of impacts. as opposed to generating impacts. Let's take a look at what I mean here, all right? Offense, the formula is X, whatever that variable is, whatever the topic being discussed is, causes something bad to happen or something good to happen, all right? Or X prevents something bad from happening or prevents something good from happening, okay? The formula for defense is X isn't that bad or X isn't that good. or X doesn't actually prevent something bad from happening, or X doesn't actually prevent something good from happening. So do you see, take a look, you might want to pause this to really think about it. The first one, offense, is saying X causes something bad to happen. There's an arrow between X and something bad or good. Defense is just saying, hey, you know that arrow between the X variable and some bad or good thing that would happen as a result actually isn't there. It actually isn't that bad. It isn't that good. It doesn't actually cause this to happen. The biggest misconception I would say I see about offense and defense from novice debaters is that offense is somehow about directly taking down your opponent's argument, whereas defense isn't. That could not be further from the truth. Both offense and defense are directly refuting your opponent's arguments. And there is a place for both of them, as I'll explain a little bit later in this lecture. Both are about directly tackling your opponent's arguments. They just do it in very different ways. Offense does it by showing that there is an actively bad or good thing that happens as a result of whatever that x variable is. Defense does it by just showing that that impact that the other team is probably trying to generate isn't really there. So offense is about making impacts more severe. Defense is about making impacts less severe. Okay, let's look at some examples. You can see here this is defensive. Studies have proven that vegetables on pizza have few health benefits. So notice the offensive version of this would say that the vegetables on pizza are actually actively dangerous to our health. But this isn't saying that the vegetables on pizza are actively bad. It's not causing anything actively bad, and it's not even causing anything actively good. You can imagine this is probably in response to the claim that pizza can be healthy thanks to all the vegetables on it. And this refutation is saying, actually, you know what? Vegetables on pizza have very few health benefits. You're not going to get healthy from eating pizza just by sprinkling some more vegetables on it. So notice it's following that formula that we see up above of us just saying X, the vegetables on pizza in this case, aren't that good. All right, they don't cause or prevent something actively bad from happening or cause something actively good to happen. Example number two, this is now offensive. The amount of fat and carbs in pizza has negative health effects. So I know this seems like a subtle difference, but it has profound implications. This second one is offensive because it's showing that the X variable, pizza, actually directly leads to something bad happening, our health being damaged. So even though these seem not too far apart, they actually have huge implications for the strategy in the round. In general, you always need some way to generate offense in a debate round. Not on every argument, as I'm about to show you through some more examples. there are actually some moments where you'll need to have strong defensive arguments where you won't be able to generate offense. And that's okay. Being able to mitigate or to block your opponent's offense to make it so that their offense cannot score goals on you and make it so that you, meanwhile, are generating offense and you are scoring goals on them is all about the strategy of debate. Because you can imagine, right? Let's say, you know, should I buy this chocolate bar? And you say, if you buy this chocolate bar, it actually has the Willy Wonka golden ticket inside of it, and you will win $6 trillion. And the other team says, well, don't get that chocolate bar because chocolate has some sugar in it, and so it might affect your health. You can imagine, right, winning $6 trillion is going to be a much stronger form of offense than however much sugar is in one single chocolate bar. And so what you want to do in a debate round is to make sure that your opponent's offense, that their impact. are not substantially larger than your own impacts, all right? You want to have greater offense be scoring more points than them. But again, this difference between offense and defense is not the difference between directly tackling your opponent's arguments or not directly refuting your opponent's arguments. Both are about refuting your opponent's arguments. If you're doing offensive argumentation and defensive argumentation correctly, you are directly engaging and refuting your opponent's arguments. It's about how you do it. Are you putting up a wall to block your opponent's shots, or are you trying to take shots on your own? And just like a sports team, it's important to have both and to know when you need strong defense and when you need strong offense. Let's start looking at some examples. You should be asking yourself, and I recommend pausing the video after each of these examples to try it on your own. If you're just a passive observer through all the examples I'm about to go through, you're really missing out on an opportunity to learn and practice and test. whether you're really understanding this or not. And if you get them wrong, listen to my explanation afterwards of why it is offensive or defensive. So first, example one, letting in more high-skilled working immigrants. So just quick pause. A high-skilled working immigrant is a category of immigrant that, you know, is an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer, an immigrant with a very specialized skill, typically after years of schooling, right? So letting in more high-skilled working immigrants. would not impact the U.S. economy in any major way. So pause the video and answer, is this offense or defense? And more importantly, why? Okay, the answer to this is defense. And here's why. Whenever I have students do this in class, typically, I force them to articulate, all right, why is it offense? Why is it defense? And to get to that, you have to define what offense does or what defense does with impacts. And so if you remember, offense generates impacts, all right? It says something actively good or actively bad is happening. It is making impacts more severe. Defense is about lessening impact. about showing that something is not as bad or not as good as the other team would probably claim it to be. It's mitigating or lessening the severity of impacts. And you can see here, this is not saying high-skilled immigrants coming to the United States would be actively good or actively bad for the U.S. economy. It's just saying it wouldn't have much of an impact, which is another way of saying it's not as good or not as bad as the other team would have you believe. So this is putting up a—this is blocking a shot. that the other team would try to be scoring here. Example number two, same thing. Letting in more high-skilled working immigrants would directly hurt the wages of U.S. workers. So pause the video, ask yourself, is this offense or defense? Okay, this is offense. The reason this is offense is because you can see here this X variable of letting in high-skilled working immigrants is directly leading to something bad happening. lowering the wages of U.S. workers. That is a concrete impact that is bad in most people's minds, right? And so this would be an offensive argument. Again, the way you have to think about this is not, is this directly refuting my opponent's argument? Is this taking my opponent's argument down? No. This is a question of what is going on with the impact level of the argument. Offensive arguments are generating off. impact saying something actively good or actively bad is happening. Defensive arguments are lessening impact saying that they're not as good or not as bad as we'd have as the other team would have you believe. Let's keep going through some more examples. We're back to the oranges and bananas. So this is just a signpost. All right. My opponent's first argument is that everyone should eat bananas instead of oranges because they contain potassium. There are three reasons why they are wrong. Alright, so that was just the signpost level of a refutation. Now let's go through the three specific counterclaims, the three refutations, and you should be asking yourself for each of them, is this offensive or is this defensive? First, bananas are actively bad for people's health because they have so much sugar and starch in them. This means that urging people to eat bananas every day would be actively dangerous to their health. While they think they would be eating a healthy snack, they would actually be eating a sugar-filled one that could raise their blood sugar levels. Pause the video and ask yourself, is this offense or is this defense? All right, hopefully you came to the conclusion that this is offense. Because you can see here, this is generating an impact. It even uses the language of actively bad for your health. That's about as impactful as you can get. We're saying that bananas are going to actively lead to your health being detrimentally affected because of the sugar and starch in them. This is not... mitigating an impact. It's not saying bananas are not as good for your health as the other team would have you believe. This isn't saying bananas are not as bad for your health as the other team would have you believe. It's saying the X variable here, bananas, directly lead to something actively good, or sorry, actively bad happening, i.e. your health being affected. And so that's a problem. Next. Second, oranges are much healthier. They are full of vitamin C, have very few calories, especially compared to bananas. In fact, there are so many health benefits of oranges that a 428-page report called the Health Benefits of Citrus Fruits from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Group found that oranges reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, and strokes. That means that people should prefer eating oranges rather than bananas due to the health benefits. So pause the video and try to come to a determination for yourself, is this offense or defense? So this argument is actually offense. And here's why. It is saying that oranges, the X variable, cause something actively good to happen. Again, if I say you buy that chocolate bar and you get $6 trillion as a result, that's a direct impact. If I say if you buy that chocolate bar, it's not gonna have any real, it's not gonna make any real difference in your life, that's defense, right? But here we're linking the X variable, oranges, to a directly good impact. which is you will be healthier. And you can see here it's saying that it will prevent bad things from happening, which is another way to think about impacts. The X variable oranges prevent you from having heart disease, cancer, and strokes. So obviously heart disease, cancer, and strokes, or just bad health in general, are impacts we want to avoid. And so saying that oranges prevent us from doing that is good. Imagine if I said, if you don't buy this chocolate bar, you will lose six trillion dollars. Well, that would be another way of saying, all right, I need to buy this chocolate bar, right? Let's keep going. Third one. Bananas do not even have potassium in them, or do not even have much potassium in them, especially compared to other foods. Sweet potatoes, white potatoes, tomato sauce, watermelon, spinach, and chard all have more potassium. That means that the main health benefit of bananas, potassium, can be accessed through many other and healthier foods. So pause the video. Is this argument, this third refutation, offense or defense? All right, so if you've been learning the way that we've been approaching these arguments, the way that you should try to answer this question is asking, all right, is this third refutation generating impacts? Is this saying bananas actively cause something bad or good to happen? Or is this defensive? Is this just saying it's not as bad or it's not as good as they would have you believe? And hopefully you can see here from the structure of the argument saying bananas do not have that much potassium in them, which means that the main health benefit of bananas isn't that great. This is clearly defensive. This isn't saying bananas are actively bad or actively good. It's just saying, you know, bananas, they're not as good as the other team would have you believe, right? And so hopefully you can see here this is blocking a shot. All right, your opponent in this debate is going to be trying to prove that bananas are great for health because of potassium. And They're going to try to score that point on you and say, look, we got to eat bananas because of the potassium because ultimately this causes something actively good to happen. It's good for our health. You're blocking that shot with this potassium point here, right? By saying that, no, they actually don't have that much potassium. They don't have that great of health benefits. And then your other two arguments are trying to score points against your opponent by saying, look, but meanwhile, the starch and sugar in bananas makes them actively bad for your health. So that's an impact, that's offense. And then you're saying, and oranges are really healthy for you because of the vitamin C, and that reduces heart disease, cancer, and strokes, and that's scoring another goal against your opponent. So hopefully you can see here the difference between offense and defense for arguments. Let's take a look at some more examples. Again, ask yourself, is this offense or is this defense? The United States federal government should be allowed to spy on its own citizens through the NSA. the National Security Agency. You probably heard of it through the Edward Snowden stuff back in the day. Because without that surveillance, we would be unable to prevent terrorist attacks, which could result in the deaths of American citizens. So pause the video, offense or defense? The answer here is clearly offense. This is about generating an impact. You can see here that NSA surveillance Or I guess the lack of NSA surveillance directly leads to terrorist attacks, which kills American citizens. In terms of impacts, dollars and dead bodies are about as severe as you can get. All right. So if you can show that something leads to the death of people, we are almost always at an offensive place. If this was just saying that the National Security Agency isn't that great at preventing American citizens from dying, then we're at a defensive place. But you can see here the X variable, the NSA, or the lack of the NSA surveillance, is directly causing something good to happen. Or I guess the lack of it is causing something bad to happen or would cause something bad to happen. And the existence of the NSA is preventing something actively bad from happening. So this is offense. There is an impact here that is being generated. Next, the economic consequences of coronavirus on the United States will not be as bad as many fear. Once a vaccine is developed, the economy will quickly return to its previous levels. Pause the video, ask yourself offense or defense. All right, hopefully this is getting easier now as we keep moving through examples. Again, the question, is this generating impacts or is this making impacts less severe? Is this making an impact worse? Is this saying something actively good or bad is happening and thus it's offense? Or is this saying the impact isn't as bad as people say it is and thus it's defense? Clearly, this is the latter, right? This is defense. It's not saying that coronavirus is actively bad for the U.S. economy, and it's not saying coronavirus is actively good for the economy. It's just saying it's not as bad as a lot of people are saying it's going to be. Now, this is an example in my mind of where if you were, so imagine, right, your opponent stands up, says the coronavirus is devastating the U.S. economy. You're not going to be able to stand up and make an offensive argument against that claim. You're not going to be able to say, you know what, the coronavirus is actually really good for the U.S. economy. It's going to gain us trillions of dollars. You're just not going to be able to win that. That argument doesn't make any sense at all, and you would have no support for that claim. But this is a point where having really strong defense on this part of the debate would be really important because you could win this defensive claim that the economic consequences actually won't be as terrible as some people are saying. Still, it's going to be a debate to be had, right? But at least you can have some defense here to try to block their shot on the impacts with the coronavirus in terms of the U.S. economy. And then you can try to generate offense in a different part of the debate. Next. The coronavirus pandemic will devastate the U.S. economy for decades to come due to the huge rates of unemployment, the loss of consumer confidence, and the shrinking of international trade. So pause the video, offense or defense? Hopefully pretty straightforward. This one is offense. You can see here the X variable coronavirus is actively causing something bad to happen. It is generating an impact and thus it is offense. It is saying coronavirus leads to U.S. economy being devastated. It's not saying the coronavirus isn't that bad or the coronavirus isn't that good for the U.S. economy, it's saying coronavirus directly leads to something bad. That makes it offense. Next, renewable energy is not as effective at combating climate change as its supporters claim. They simply are not reliable at producing a steady flow of energy, which means we would still rely heavily on fossil fuels. Is this offense or is this defense? This is defense. You can see here, right, renewable energy is not as effective at combating climate change. It is trying to lessen the severity of the good things the other team will say comes as a result of implementing renewable energy. You can imagine the other team is saying renewable energy prevents the worst effects of climate change. Climate change, it will kill millions of people or whatever. This team is saying, no, even if climate change is bad, renewable energy won't ultimately prevent it. And so that's a way of mitigating the good impacts or, you know, the big impacts the other team is trying to solve for. And that can be very, very effective as a team. So this is a defensive argument, all right? Renewable energy is not as effective at combating climate change. It's saying renewable energy is not as good as the other team would have you believe. Next. Renewable energy is necessary to prevent the worst effects of climate change, which will result in increased flooding, more hurricanes, wildfires, and heat waves. all of which will cause thousands, if not millions of deaths. Okay, hopefully you're getting the hang of this. This is clear textbook offense, okay? Renewable energy is the X variable, and the impact, the actively bad thing that would happen if we don't have renewable energy is climate change, which kills millions, right? Which causes thousands, if not millions of deaths. That's how you know it's an impact. There's an impact being generated here. So thus, it is offense. Okay, so what you should do now is work on generating one offensive argument and one defensive argument for both sides of the resolution that we've been working with so far, that colleges and universities should not consider standardized tests and undergraduate admissions decisions. So you're going to have four arguments total following the claim warrant impact structure that we were practicing in the first lecture here. So you What you'll need is one offensive argument, so something that generates an impact for why colleges should not have standardized tests. So you'll probably want to say standardized tests cause something bad to happen or prevent something good from happening. You will need one defensive argument, probably in response to presumably what the other side would say, right? Saying that, you know, losing standardized tests or colleges not having standardized tests would not be as bad as the other team would probably have you believe. Then on the inverse side, right, you'll need reasons why standardized tests are either actively good, or why colleges not having standardized tests would be actively bad. So that'd be for the negative side. And then you would need a defensive argument that says that colleges having standardized tests is not as bad as the other team would have you believe or colleges using standardized tests or that standardized tests themselves are not as bad as the other team would have you believe or That colleges having standardized tests or sorry, sorry, using alternative methods and standardized tests would not be as good as the other team would have you believe. So that might have been a little bit confusing. You can kind of rewind the video to hear what I just said. The bottom line is have one offensive argument, one defensive argument for both sides of the resolution. Four arguments total. Two of them will be offensive. Two of them will be defensive. One for each side of the resolution. Hopefully by the end of this video, we now have a better understanding of offense and defense. Trust me, if you're feeling if your brain's hurting a little bit right here, this was a little bit hard. I always find that novice debaters struggle with this at first. But trust me, once you get it, it will become very straightforward and it will be immensely useful for strategy and debate rounds. It's really important to remember this, especially once we really start learning about the debate event itself. And the structure of a debate round, and you start thinking about, all right, what arguments do I want to read in a debate round? What's my strategy going to be? How do I think about, you know, implementation?

Knowing the difference between these two categories of arguments will really help in the long term in terms of thinking strategically about what types of arguments are best for a debate round. The best debaters are not just offering refutation and arguments just for the sake of putting out however many arguments that they can. The best types of debaters are like brilliant military generals who are thinking strategically about when to put roadblocks and defense and when to.

put and went to have strong offense. That's why the sports analogy I think also helps here a lot. Some arguments are about scoring goals against your opponent, and some arguments are about defending goals from being scored on you.

So let's just hop on in here to some definitions. It'll be hard to really comprehend what offense is until we learn the definition of defense as well, so just stick with me for now. So offense provides a reason for why your side of the resolution is actively good or why your opponent's side of the resolution is actively bad. So key words here are actively good or actively bad.

Now what does it mean for something to be actively good or actively bad? It's about generating or solving for serious impacts. So if I say if you do this thing you will get a million dollars that is offense right because getting a million dollars is an good thing. It is a serious impact, a good impact, but a serious impact, right? Likewise, or conversely, if I were to say, if you do this thing, a thousand people will die.

That would be a serious impact as well. It is something bad. It is actively bad and something that we wouldn't want to have happen. Here's an example of an offensive argument.

Bananas are bad for people's health because they have so much sugar in them. Hopefully you can see here, right, something that is hurting your health is a impact, that is something that is actively bad, something that we would want to avoid, and so thus this is an offensive argument. Example number two, bananas are not the best tasting fruit, other fruits taste better. Hopefully you can see here, right, if my health is impacted, that could eventually lead me to die.

Whereas number two is just bananas are not the best tasting fruit, other fruits taste better. This isn't causing something actively good or actively bad to happen. I'm just saying, hey, you know, bananas, they're not all that. Hopefully you can see here, going back to the sports analogy, how that first example by showing that bananas are causing something actively bad is like scoring a point against your opponent, right?

Because you're giving a reason for me to actively reject the idea that I should be eating bananas. Whereas the second one is much more defensive in nature. It's not saying that bananas are actively bad. It's just saying, hey, you know, they're not the best tasting fruit.

Other fruits taste better. Let's take a look at defense now. Once we have both of these definitions, I think it'll become a lot easier to understand this distinction here.

Defense provides a reason why your opponent's arguments are less true or less good than they claim they are. So defense mitigates the severity of impacts. as opposed to generating impacts.

Let's take a look at what I mean here, all right? Offense, the formula is X, whatever that variable is, whatever the topic being discussed is, causes something bad to happen or something good to happen, all right? Or X prevents something bad from happening or prevents something good from happening, okay?

The formula for defense is X isn't that bad or X isn't that good. or X doesn't actually prevent something bad from happening, or X doesn't actually prevent something good from happening. So do you see, take a look, you might want to pause this to really think about it.

The first one, offense, is saying X causes something bad to happen. There's an arrow between X and something bad or good. Defense is just saying, hey, you know that arrow between the X variable and some bad or good thing that would happen as a result actually isn't there.

It actually isn't that bad. It isn't that good. It doesn't actually cause this to happen.

The biggest misconception I would say I see about offense and defense from novice debaters is that offense is somehow about directly taking down your opponent's argument, whereas defense isn't. That could not be further from the truth. Both offense and defense are directly refuting your opponent's arguments. And there is a place for both of them, as I'll explain a little bit later in this lecture. Both are about directly tackling your opponent's arguments.

They just do it in very different ways. Offense does it by showing that there is an actively bad or good thing that happens as a result of whatever that x variable is. Defense does it by just showing that that impact that the other team is probably trying to generate isn't really there. So offense is about making impacts more severe.

Defense is about making impacts less severe. Okay, let's look at some examples. You can see here this is defensive. Studies have proven that vegetables on pizza have few health benefits. So notice the offensive version of this would say that the vegetables on pizza are actually actively dangerous to our health.

But this isn't saying that the vegetables on pizza are actively bad. It's not causing anything actively bad, and it's not even causing anything actively good. You can imagine this is probably in response to the claim that pizza can be healthy thanks to all the vegetables on it. And this refutation is saying, actually, you know what?

Vegetables on pizza have very few health benefits. You're not going to get healthy from eating pizza just by sprinkling some more vegetables on it. So notice it's following that formula that we see up above of us just saying X, the vegetables on pizza in this case, aren't that good.

All right, they don't cause or prevent something actively bad from happening or cause something actively good to happen. Example number two, this is now offensive. The amount of fat and carbs in pizza has negative health effects. So I know this seems like a subtle difference, but it has profound implications. This second one is offensive because it's showing that the X variable, pizza, actually directly leads to something bad happening, our health being damaged.

So even though these seem not too far apart, they actually have huge implications for the strategy in the round. In general, you always need some way to generate offense in a debate round. Not on every argument, as I'm about to show you through some more examples.

there are actually some moments where you'll need to have strong defensive arguments where you won't be able to generate offense. And that's okay. Being able to mitigate or to block your opponent's offense to make it so that their offense cannot score goals on you and make it so that you, meanwhile, are generating offense and you are scoring goals on them is all about the strategy of debate. Because you can imagine, right?

Let's say, you know, should I buy this chocolate bar? And you say, if you buy this chocolate bar, it actually has the Willy Wonka golden ticket inside of it, and you will win $6 trillion. And the other team says, well, don't get that chocolate bar because chocolate has some sugar in it, and so it might affect your health.

You can imagine, right, winning $6 trillion is going to be a much stronger form of offense than however much sugar is in one single chocolate bar. And so what you want to do in a debate round is to make sure that your opponent's offense, that their impact. are not substantially larger than your own impacts, all right?

You want to have greater offense be scoring more points than them. But again, this difference between offense and defense is not the difference between directly tackling your opponent's arguments or not directly refuting your opponent's arguments. Both are about refuting your opponent's arguments. If you're doing offensive argumentation and defensive argumentation correctly, you are directly engaging and refuting your opponent's arguments.

It's about how you do it. Are you putting up a wall to block your opponent's shots, or are you trying to take shots on your own? And just like a sports team, it's important to have both and to know when you need strong defense and when you need strong offense.

Let's start looking at some examples. You should be asking yourself, and I recommend pausing the video after each of these examples to try it on your own. If you're just a passive observer through all the examples I'm about to go through, you're really missing out on an opportunity to learn and practice and test. whether you're really understanding this or not. And if you get them wrong, listen to my explanation afterwards of why it is offensive or defensive.

So first, example one, letting in more high-skilled working immigrants. So just quick pause. A high-skilled working immigrant is a category of immigrant that, you know, is an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer, an immigrant with a very specialized skill, typically after years of schooling, right?

So letting in more high-skilled working immigrants. would not impact the U.S. economy in any major way. So pause the video and answer, is this offense or defense?

And more importantly, why? Okay, the answer to this is defense. And here's why. Whenever I have students do this in class, typically, I force them to articulate, all right, why is it offense? Why is it defense?

And to get to that, you have to define what offense does or what defense does with impacts. And so if you remember, offense generates impacts, all right? It says something actively good or actively bad is happening.

It is making impacts more severe. Defense is about lessening impact. about showing that something is not as bad or not as good as the other team would probably claim it to be. It's mitigating or lessening the severity of impacts. And you can see here, this is not saying high-skilled immigrants coming to the United States would be actively good or actively bad for the U.S. economy.

It's just saying it wouldn't have much of an impact, which is another way of saying it's not as good or not as bad as the other team would have you believe. So this is putting up a—this is blocking a shot. that the other team would try to be scoring here. Example number two, same thing.

Letting in more high-skilled working immigrants would directly hurt the wages of U.S. workers. So pause the video, ask yourself, is this offense or defense? Okay, this is offense.

The reason this is offense is because you can see here this X variable of letting in high-skilled working immigrants is directly leading to something bad happening. lowering the wages of U.S. workers. That is a concrete impact that is bad in most people's minds, right? And so this would be an offensive argument.

Again, the way you have to think about this is not, is this directly refuting my opponent's argument? Is this taking my opponent's argument down? No. This is a question of what is going on with the impact level of the argument.

Offensive arguments are generating off. impact saying something actively good or actively bad is happening. Defensive arguments are lessening impact saying that they're not as good or not as bad as we'd have as the other team would have you believe. Let's keep going through some more examples. We're back to the oranges and bananas.

So this is just a signpost. All right. My opponent's first argument is that everyone should eat bananas instead of oranges because they contain potassium.

There are three reasons why they are wrong. Alright, so that was just the signpost level of a refutation. Now let's go through the three specific counterclaims, the three refutations, and you should be asking yourself for each of them, is this offensive or is this defensive?

First, bananas are actively bad for people's health because they have so much sugar and starch in them. This means that urging people to eat bananas every day would be actively dangerous to their health. While they think they would be eating a healthy snack, they would actually be eating a sugar-filled one that could raise their blood sugar levels. Pause the video and ask yourself, is this offense or is this defense? All right, hopefully you came to the conclusion that this is offense.

Because you can see here, this is generating an impact. It even uses the language of actively bad for your health. That's about as impactful as you can get.

We're saying that bananas are going to actively lead to your health being detrimentally affected because of the sugar and starch in them. This is not... mitigating an impact. It's not saying bananas are not as good for your health as the other team would have you believe. This isn't saying bananas are not as bad for your health as the other team would have you believe.

It's saying the X variable here, bananas, directly lead to something actively good, or sorry, actively bad happening, i.e. your health being affected. And so that's a problem. Next. Second, oranges are much healthier. They are full of vitamin C, have very few calories, especially compared to bananas.

In fact, there are so many health benefits of oranges that a 428-page report called the Health Benefits of Citrus Fruits from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Group found that oranges reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, and strokes. That means that people should prefer eating oranges rather than bananas due to the health benefits. So pause the video and try to come to a determination for yourself, is this offense or defense? So this argument is actually offense.

And here's why. It is saying that oranges, the X variable, cause something actively good to happen. Again, if I say you buy that chocolate bar and you get $6 trillion as a result, that's a direct impact. If I say if you buy that chocolate bar, it's not gonna have any real, it's not gonna make any real difference in your life, that's defense, right? But here we're linking the X variable, oranges, to a directly good impact.

which is you will be healthier. And you can see here it's saying that it will prevent bad things from happening, which is another way to think about impacts. The X variable oranges prevent you from having heart disease, cancer, and strokes. So obviously heart disease, cancer, and strokes, or just bad health in general, are impacts we want to avoid. And so saying that oranges prevent us from doing that is good.

Imagine if I said, if you don't buy this chocolate bar, you will lose six trillion dollars. Well, that would be another way of saying, all right, I need to buy this chocolate bar, right? Let's keep going.

Third one. Bananas do not even have potassium in them, or do not even have much potassium in them, especially compared to other foods. Sweet potatoes, white potatoes, tomato sauce, watermelon, spinach, and chard all have more potassium. That means that the main health benefit of bananas, potassium, can be accessed through many other and healthier foods. So pause the video.

Is this argument, this third refutation, offense or defense? All right, so if you've been learning the way that we've been approaching these arguments, the way that you should try to answer this question is asking, all right, is this third refutation generating impacts? Is this saying bananas actively cause something bad or good to happen? Or is this defensive? Is this just saying it's not as bad or it's not as good as they would have you believe?

And hopefully you can see here from the structure of the argument saying bananas do not have that much potassium in them, which means that the main health benefit of bananas isn't that great. This is clearly defensive. This isn't saying bananas are actively bad or actively good.

It's just saying, you know, bananas, they're not as good as the other team would have you believe, right? And so hopefully you can see here this is blocking a shot. All right, your opponent in this debate is going to be trying to prove that bananas are great for health because of potassium. And They're going to try to score that point on you and say, look, we got to eat bananas because of the potassium because ultimately this causes something actively good to happen.

It's good for our health. You're blocking that shot with this potassium point here, right? By saying that, no, they actually don't have that much potassium.

They don't have that great of health benefits. And then your other two arguments are trying to score points against your opponent by saying, look, but meanwhile, the starch and sugar in bananas makes them actively bad for your health. So that's an impact, that's offense. And then you're saying, and oranges are really healthy for you because of the vitamin C, and that reduces heart disease, cancer, and strokes, and that's scoring another goal against your opponent.

So hopefully you can see here the difference between offense and defense for arguments. Let's take a look at some more examples. Again, ask yourself, is this offense or is this defense?

The United States federal government should be allowed to spy on its own citizens through the NSA. the National Security Agency. You probably heard of it through the Edward Snowden stuff back in the day. Because without that surveillance, we would be unable to prevent terrorist attacks, which could result in the deaths of American citizens. So pause the video, offense or defense?

The answer here is clearly offense. This is about generating an impact. You can see here that NSA surveillance Or I guess the lack of NSA surveillance directly leads to terrorist attacks, which kills American citizens. In terms of impacts, dollars and dead bodies are about as severe as you can get. All right.

So if you can show that something leads to the death of people, we are almost always at an offensive place. If this was just saying that the National Security Agency isn't that great at preventing American citizens from dying, then we're at a defensive place. But you can see here the X variable, the NSA, or the lack of the NSA surveillance, is directly causing something good to happen.

Or I guess the lack of it is causing something bad to happen or would cause something bad to happen. And the existence of the NSA is preventing something actively bad from happening. So this is offense.

There is an impact here that is being generated. Next, the economic consequences of coronavirus on the United States will not be as bad as many fear. Once a vaccine is developed, the economy will quickly return to its previous levels. Pause the video, ask yourself offense or defense.

All right, hopefully this is getting easier now as we keep moving through examples. Again, the question, is this generating impacts or is this making impacts less severe? Is this making an impact worse?

Is this saying something actively good or bad is happening and thus it's offense? Or is this saying the impact isn't as bad as people say it is and thus it's defense? Clearly, this is the latter, right?

This is defense. It's not saying that coronavirus is actively bad for the U.S. economy, and it's not saying coronavirus is actively good for the economy. It's just saying it's not as bad as a lot of people are saying it's going to be. Now, this is an example in my mind of where if you were, so imagine, right, your opponent stands up, says the coronavirus is devastating the U.S. economy. You're not going to be able to stand up and make an offensive argument against that claim.

You're not going to be able to say, you know what, the coronavirus is actually really good for the U.S. economy. It's going to gain us trillions of dollars. You're just not going to be able to win that. That argument doesn't make any sense at all, and you would have no support for that claim. But this is a point where having really strong defense on this part of the debate would be really important because you could win this defensive claim that the economic consequences actually won't be as terrible as some people are saying.

Still, it's going to be a debate to be had, right? But at least you can have some defense here to try to block their shot on the impacts with the coronavirus in terms of the U.S. economy. And then you can try to generate offense in a different part of the debate. Next.

The coronavirus pandemic will devastate the U.S. economy for decades to come due to the huge rates of unemployment, the loss of consumer confidence, and the shrinking of international trade. So pause the video, offense or defense? Hopefully pretty straightforward. This one is offense.

You can see here the X variable coronavirus is actively causing something bad to happen. It is generating an impact and thus it is offense. It is saying coronavirus leads to U.S. economy being devastated.

It's not saying the coronavirus isn't that bad or the coronavirus isn't that good for the U.S. economy, it's saying coronavirus directly leads to something bad. That makes it offense. Next, renewable energy is not as effective at combating climate change as its supporters claim. They simply are not reliable at producing a steady flow of energy, which means we would still rely heavily on fossil fuels. Is this offense or is this defense?

This is defense. You can see here, right, renewable energy is not as effective at combating climate change. It is trying to lessen the severity of the good things the other team will say comes as a result of implementing renewable energy.

You can imagine the other team is saying renewable energy prevents the worst effects of climate change. Climate change, it will kill millions of people or whatever. This team is saying, no, even if climate change is bad, renewable energy won't ultimately prevent it. And so that's a way of mitigating the good impacts or, you know, the big impacts the other team is trying to solve for.

And that can be very, very effective as a team. So this is a defensive argument, all right? Renewable energy is not as effective at combating climate change. It's saying renewable energy is not as good as the other team would have you believe.

Next. Renewable energy is necessary to prevent the worst effects of climate change, which will result in increased flooding, more hurricanes, wildfires, and heat waves. all of which will cause thousands, if not millions of deaths. Okay, hopefully you're getting the hang of this.

This is clear textbook offense, okay? Renewable energy is the X variable, and the impact, the actively bad thing that would happen if we don't have renewable energy is climate change, which kills millions, right? Which causes thousands, if not millions of deaths. That's how you know it's an impact. There's an impact being generated here.

So thus, it is offense. Okay, so what you should do now is work on generating one offensive argument and one defensive argument for both sides of the resolution that we've been working with so far, that colleges and universities should not consider standardized tests and undergraduate admissions decisions. So you're going to have four arguments total following the claim warrant impact structure that we were practicing in the first lecture here. So you What you'll need is one offensive argument, so something that generates an impact for why colleges should not have standardized tests.

So you'll probably want to say standardized tests cause something bad to happen or prevent something good from happening. You will need one defensive argument, probably in response to presumably what the other side would say, right? Saying that, you know, losing standardized tests or colleges not having standardized tests would not be as bad as the other team would probably have you believe. Then on the inverse side, right, you'll need reasons why standardized tests are either actively good, or why colleges not having standardized tests would be actively bad. So that'd be for the negative side.

And then you would need a defensive argument that says that colleges having standardized tests is not as bad as the other team would have you believe or colleges using standardized tests or that standardized tests themselves are not as bad as the other team would have you believe or That colleges having standardized tests or sorry, sorry, using alternative methods and standardized tests would not be as good as the other team would have you believe. So that might have been a little bit confusing. You can kind of rewind the video to hear what I just said.

The bottom line is have one offensive argument, one defensive argument for both sides of the resolution. Four arguments total. Two of them will be offensive.

Two of them will be defensive. One for each side of the resolution. Hopefully by the end of this video, we now have a better understanding of offense and defense.

Trust me, if you're feeling if your brain's hurting a little bit right here, this was a little bit hard. I always find that novice debaters struggle with this at first. But trust me, once you get it, it will become very straightforward and it will be immensely useful for strategy and debate rounds.

It's really important to remember this, especially once we really start learning about the debate event itself. And the structure of a debate round, and you start thinking about, all right, what arguments do I want to read in a debate round? What's my strategy going to be?

How do I think about, you know, implementation?

Transcript for:Understanding Offense and Defense in Debate

Transcript for:
Understanding Offense and Defense in Debate