Pre-Fiat Disadvantages?

[CausticAutist]

I've never heard of anything like this before, but I wonder whether a pre-fiat disadvantage is theoretically legitimate. When I say "pre-fiat disadvantage" I mean a disadvantage (not a kritik) whose link is based on in-round conditions instead of the theoretical effects of passing the plan. . .

Example:
Uniqueness -
a) You haven't voted us down yet
b) We have no other extracurricular involvement

Link - Voting us down

Internal Links -
a) This prevents us from breaking in this tournament
b) Which would be key to college admissions

Impact - Without college education we will earn far less money and have substantially higher risk of suicide and drug abuse

[Jon Arbuckle]

Not a thing... and as the aff in this situation I would argue non-unique, people who would run this argument are too stupid to get into college.

And I guess the closest thing to a pre-fiat disadvantage would be some kind of theory argument, but that's not really a disad in the traditional sense. There aren't really anyways I can think of doing this that aren't discourse based/very critical.

[CausticAutist]

Originally Posted by Madness's Method

Not a thing... and as the aff in this situation I would argue non-unique, people who would run this argument are too stupid to get into college.

And I guess the closest thing to a pre-fiat disadvantage would be some kind of theory argument, but that's not really a disad in the traditional sense. There aren't really anyways I can think of doing this that aren't discourse based/very critical.

Okay. My initial question was if there were any obvious theoretical objections to the concept (the example given was intended to be humorous). The distinction between this and a theory argument or kritik is that the impacts and link are event-driven, quantifiable, and non-philosophical. The argument doesn't say "reject the aff for complicity in capitalism" or "reject the neg because of abuse," it says "if you vote aff, I'll fart!"

Theoretically, if not practically, does the idea of forging pre-fiat disadvantage links make any sense?

[Ankur]

First off, there is no such thing as "pre-fiat" or "post-fiat" because that would imply that fiat is an action which actually happens. Its not. Its an assumption that we make in round to avoid a double-bind created by the competitive rules of debate.

Second, why would you want to? Its not likely to give you any strategic advantage and the premise of the disad is likely to be comical at best and unsupported by anything of value.

Third, its more likely going to be turned faster than you can read it. In your loss --> denial of admissions example, the same would then be true of the aff. And while you might not care whether the aff gets into college, quite plainly the judge will see then that someone will lose and that the disad is therefore inevitable. If its inevitable, then there is no reason to evaluate it for one team or the other. More likely than not, if for some god forsaken reason the round came down to this hokey disad, the judge will then give the win to the better team to avoid having them miss out on the college of their choice - and that team wont be you because the argument is only likely to annoy the other team and judge.

[Chaos]

I can see something like this kind of working, but no good judge would ever vote on it.

Example:

1AC: Plan: USFG should save some babies!

1NC: Edelman + No Solvency

2AC: Nope, we are morally obligated to save babies and even the smallest amount of risk justifies our attempt to save babies.

2NC: Vote for me or I'll kill my baby brother.

[topspeaker70]

Originally Posted by Ankur

First off, there is no such thing as "pre-fiat" or "post-fiat" because that would imply that fiat is an action which actually happens. Its not. Its an assumption that we make in round to avoid a double-bind created by the competitive rules of debate.

Word. And I am taking the liberty of making a copy of this post so that people (especially in Parli debate, of all places) will stop telling me that my interpretation of fiat is either nonsensical and/or antiquated.

[Ankur]

Originally Posted by topspeaker70

Word. And I am taking the liberty of making a copy of this post so that people (especially in Parli debate, of all places) will stop telling me that my interpretation of fiat is either nonsensical and/or antiquated.

I've been saying this for years and years. I even have a mathematical model proving such.

[Spark]

Originally Posted by Ankur

First off, there is no such thing as "pre-fiat" or "post-fiat" because that would imply that fiat is an action which actually happens. Its not. Its an assumption that we make in round to avoid a double-bind created by the competitive rules of debate.

This is questionable; wouldnt discursive criticisms count as pre-fiat?

[Ankur]

Originally Posted by Spark

This is questionable; wouldnt discursive criticisms count as pre-fiat?

No.

They have no relationship to fiat whatsoever... except in the case of questioning the discourse of the aff if they are suggesting that there is a real world policy impact to the plan...

People really need to get it out of there heads that you can have something before and after a non-existent concept. You can have pre-telephone. You can have pre-Internet. You can even have pre-rebuttal. You cant have pre-assumption when the assumption is made before the round even begins.

[Chaos]

so instead of pre fiat DAs, we should call them in round DAs?

[aburo]

Originally Posted by Ankur

No.

They have no relationship to fiat whatsoever... except in the case of questioning the discourse of the aff if they are suggesting that there is a real world policy impact to the plan...

People really need to get it out of there heads that you can have something before and after a non-existent concept. You can have pre-telephone. You can have pre-Internet. You can even have pre-rebuttal. You cant have pre-assumption when the assumption is made before the round even begins.

I'm not sure I understand the "pre-assumption" idea. Maybe you can explain this further. "Fiat" is generally translated into "it shall be done", or, in the context of policy debate, that the debate run under the assumption that the plan should be passed and not necessarily that it will. "Pre-fiat" is generally explained as the way in which the world changes before the plan even occurs.

I'll give an example of this. A few years ago there was a debt relief to Sub-Saharan Africa case that crticized the neoliberal policies of the IMF and the World Bank. Of course debt had been relieved on such a large scale before, but the people running the case would contend that only in a situation where the US government would change its neoliberal mindset would this debt actually be relieved in a such a way that it would not be a neoliberal motion and that it would be effective for public health. The idea was that before we can "assume" that the plan is passed, we need to argue about how our demands can change the current neoliberal education and mentality. I think that essentially is "pre-assumption", as you put it.

[Wittwer]

Originally Posted by Ankur

No.

They have no relationship to fiat whatsoever... except in the case of questioning the discourse of the aff if they are suggesting that there is a real world policy impact to the plan...

People really need to get it out of there heads that you can have something before and after a non-existent concept. You can have pre-telephone. You can have pre-Internet. You can even have pre-rebuttal. You cant have pre-assumption when the assumption is made before the round even begins.

I don't think this is wrong, but the term "pre-fiat" is not necessarily meaningless. I take it to mean that the argument has an impact which should be evaluated prior to impacts which occur post-FIAT. So, while the impact to the Aff's biodiversity advantage discusses events which would occur after the plan was hypothetically passed, the gendered language impact to a criticism could be argued as a "pre-fiat" concern since the thing being impacted occured in round, as opposed to after the plan was hypothetically passed. I actually think many K's can be argued (though don't necessarily need to be) as "pre-fiat" arguments if they indict the epistemology of the Aff. The argument would be that the K impacts are not impacts to the passage of the plan, but impacts to the representations used to defend passage of the plan, thus they occur "prior" both temporally and logically, since, if the K claims are true, the entire basis for the Aff claims about their impacts is falsified. It's the difference between saying "Heg Bad - The result of the plan's power grab will result in counterbalancing" (post-fiat) and "Heg Bad - Their understanding of the world as a tool for US imperialism drives the 1ac's discursive contruction of threats to that very order." (pre-fiat, impact is not based off the plan's passage but off of the Aff's representations of IR)

[brorlob]

I think a better way of expressing what people generally mean when they say "pre-fiat" would be "sans-fiat"; the idea being the argument should be considered distinctly from evaluation of the potential effects of the policy proposal, which we (because of fiat) assume is in place. Some theoretical and kritikal framework arguments fit into this category, but I can't think of a reason to consider a DA without giving credence to the aff plan at the same time.

[Ankur]

Unless the affirmative is a few jalopies short of a used car lot, the affirmative is never going to say that an aff ballot results in the plan irrespective of the fact that the aff plan may be entirely policy-based with no kritical elements to it. The affirmative's discourse is always operational in the imaginary, 'discursive sphere' and never in this 'real world'.

The only 'real world' aspect to debate is the impact of discourse on the debaters, judge(s), and observers. To critique racist or gendered language, for example, would be to pose a discursive critique. Just because a critique questions assumptions an affirmative makes doesnt mean its a discursive critique at all. It is just a critique of assumptions. Cap K (generally) is a question of the aff's assumptions. So is statism. Stop trying to label arguments because the label applied is generally wrong.

The affirmative's use of fiat, in the traditional sense, is an assumption that with all else held constant, the status quo changes such that the plan exists. It doesnt get passed, it doesnt go through XO, the Supreme Court doesnt overturn it, it doesnt get vetted in committee, and it sure as hell doesnt get 600 pages of pork attached to the bill. It just simply exists. We assume that plan exists for the sake of discussing the outcomes of a hypothetical policy. Policy debate is about the outcomes of policy, not about criticizing the process of making policy. Fiat is not "the aff should be done". Thats the affirmative advocacy - that the aff should be done. Fiat is what lets the affirmative and negative determine whether or not the aff should be done.

The whole purpose of fiat (in the policy sense) is to avoid conversations about the process. The inherency-solvency double bind is entirely a criticism of the process: a plan which would not occur naturally in the SQ given current political climate would be overturned upon passage by normal political means, rendering the affirmative policy impotent. Inherency must exist out of fairness to the negative. If inherency must exist, then fiat must exist to compensate for the theoretical double bind created by the nature of arguments in competition.

The affirmative employs fiat before the round begins because at the time the sides are determined, the affirmative, bound by the rules of debate, is functionally required to present an argument favoring divorce from the status quo. At minimum, in order to make such a possibility, the use of fiat was agreed upon by all parties when the sides were picked. Even if the aff doesnt present a policy case, and presents a kritikal case, it doesnt mean that the criticism selected by the aff doesnt need to be a divorce from the status quo. It must still represent change (delta) from the SQ. And in order to evaluate the change, we must first assume that the change is both possible and real in order to determine if the outcome of said assumption is desirable.

Furthermore, fiat is not a discrete event - the assumption carries through the round. The negative uses fiat too, and not just with counterplans. When arguing a disadvantage, the negative makes a simple posit: assuming the plan happens, the disad is X.

Fiat, in the concept of debate, is just an assumption: "assuming the plan exists, then what?"

This doesnt mean that one cannot critique the assumption that is fiat. It is perfectly acceptable to critique the idea that policymaking should not be about the process of making policy and only about the outcomes. And this can be a valuable argument to make, and in my opinion, if one is going to run an alternate agent CP (generally) or a politics disad, I think its an essential argument to make. The irony of the critique being that in order to critique fiat, one assumes that fiat does indeed exist.



It all makes a helluva lot more sense if you break the aff down to a simple logic statement:

Aff Advocacy: We should do X because its good.
Neg Advocacy: We should NOT do X because its bad.
Change: Status quo +/- X
Fiat: do

If you dont assume "do" then you can never determine if its good or bad. Therefore, every time the neg responds to the aff advocacy, they are assuming the aff's proposed 'change' regardless of whether its a policy or criticism.

If you think about it in that light, you will realize that fiat is not "let plan be done"


Ben -
I would say that the right term for what you are suggesting is "post-plan", not "post-fiat".

[Rhizome]

Originally Posted by Ankur

I've been saying this for years and years. I even have a mathematical model proving such.

I made a graph too.

[brorlob]

Good luck convincing the average politics debater of this, Ankur.

[Rhizome]

good luck of convincing BAD politics debaters of this...

[brorlob]

Originally Posted by Rhizome

good luck of convincing BAD politics debaters of this...

The average politics debater doesn't get this, else the idea that political capital is expended to pass the plan wouldn't be the primary link to most politics DAs. There was a long thread on this a while back.

[Rhizome]

i agree to that as well.

[Ankur]

Originally Posted by brorlob

Good luck convincing the average politics debater of this, Ankur.

I refer you to my signature.
Working against insurmountable odds is nothing new. I'd pick a fight with the wrong end of a howitzer.

[brorlob]

Originally Posted by Ankur

I refer you to my signature.
Working against insurmountable odds is nothing new. I'd pick a fight with the wrong end of a howitzer.

This issue has the power to make one feel like a quixotic artifact in some circles, doesn't it?

[birdwing7]

I don't like labels for arguments (or much of anything else, really). I'd just make whatever argument you want to make, and then explain later in the debate how it interacts with other arguments in the round.

[Ikissinger]

Ankur, I think that your post above is one of the best explanations of Fiat I have ever seen - and may be just about easy enough to explain to my novices. Thanks.

~K

[Ankur]

Originally Posted by Ikissinger

Ankur, I think that your post above is one of the best explanations of Fiat I have ever seen - and may be just about easy enough to explain to my novices. Thanks.

~K

Glad you like...

I have had a work-in-progress paper for about seven years on this... I revisit it about once a year when I get some free time... make some changes and then file it away in the "to do later" list. Its specifically how the mathematics of the situation require the policymaking = implications not process position of fiat. And specifically how it ultimately excludes process-linked arguments from the negative's arsenal.

The irony of which is that in order to permit the plan passage linked arguments (like politics), only the affirmative can make such statements, rendering the neg impotent of arguments mid-round.

The math is kinda interesting when you visualize it...

[TheScuSpeaks]

Originally Posted by Ankur

I've been saying this for years and years. I even have a mathematical model proving such.

Does your mathematical model have a variable t?

EDIT: Post the mathematical model! Unless that thing above was it, if so... .