[intro music]

ELINOR STEPHENSON: Hi, my name is Eli. And today, I'm going to be talking about rebuttal, how to structure it, and some tips for how to improve your rebuttal. So I'm going to start by talking about what kind of functions rebuttal can play in a debate and why it's so important. There are broadly 4 things which rebuttal can do for your team.

Firstly, rebuttal can mitigate. And this means playing down the significance of the other team's point. For example, let's say the other team had a benefit about making students less stressed. It would be mitigation to explain why actually their model doesn't affect as many students as they claim to. So we're saying their benefits are smaller than they've claimed. Secondly, we can have rebuttal which disproves the other team. So in this kind of rebuttal, we're explaining why the other team's points are untrue and don't make sense. For example, we might be claiming that the other team doesn't benefit students at all, and in fact, actively harms them. So this is obviously quite a strong type of rebuttal.

Thirdly, we can try to flip the premises of the other team's case. So we can try and take characterisation which they have made and explain why actually it works for our side. For example, if we said something like, the other team has claimed that their model makes students less stressed in the short run, but we think this is actually bad in the long run because it means students are not as prepared for their future. So we've said, well, maybe their mechanism in this debate is true, but it's actually a bad thing.

And fourthly, we can use our rebuttal to weigh up different ideas in the debate and to explain why the other team's ideas, even if they are true, are less important than our own. So broadly, what our rebuttal can do is one, make the other team's benefits smaller, two, disprove them together, three, try to flip the other team's logic to our side of the debate, and four, try to explain that even if the other team is right, their points are less important.

Quickly, there are three types of rebuttal that we can use to do this, or three things that we can broadly attack in the other team's case. The first type of rebuttal is going to be rebuttal about logic, where we point out that there's something in the other team's case which simply doesn't make sense. We might use this if the other team has a tension in their case, so they've contradicted themselves. We might use it if they simply haven't explained something properly, and we can point out that an argument has been premised on an assertion and hasn't been adequately justified.

Secondly, we can have rebuttal which targets facts or characterisation about the world in the other team's case. Importantly, we don't just rebut the facts of the other team's case when they're outright lying, instead, what we're trying to do is challenge that their characterisation of stakeholders in the debate, of the way the world works, that these things are realistic. So we're going to be saying, look, the other team has claimed that the world looks like this, but we don't think that's plausible. Here's why it actually looks like this. And obviously, this is going to be good for our team, not for them. Thirdly, we have rebuttal about significance. So this is when we point out that the other team's points are relatively unimportant, perhaps because they don't affect as many people, or perhaps because they don't-- are quite unlikely-- there's not a high likelihood of them actually occurring in the first place.

So what have we learned so far? We've got four functions of rebuttal. We've got three different types of things that rebuttal can attack in the other team's case-- logic, facts, and significance. OK. Let's move on to two quick tips about how to make your rebuttal a little bit deeper and more sophisticated. Firstly, we're going to talk about how you can discuss significance or importance, and explain why your points are more important than those of the other team. And then secondly, I'll talk about being comparative.

So how do you discuss significance in your rebuttal? There are five main ways that you can explain why your points matter more than those of the other team. Number one, you can explain that your points affect more people. They are larger in scale. Number two, you can say that the strength of your impact is a lot more strong, so maybe the other team affects a lot of people but in a very trivial way, whereas you affect people more profoundly.

Thirdly, you might make principled arguments. For example, you might say that your points have unique principled, moral, or ethical fairness benefits, or they affect stakeholders who we should principally care about more. Fourthly, you might talk about the level of likelihood of something happening. So let's say the other team has a benefit which would be very good if they could get it, but you can prove that it's highly speculative and unlikely, that might be a good way to suggest that the adjudicator should care about it a little bit less even if it is true.

And fifthly, you can think about mutual exclusivity. So obviously, if a harm or a benefit occurs on both sides of the debate, that's probably not going to be determinative in deciding who wins that debate. So you can basically suggest that the harms which the other team is accusing your side of having occur on their side as well. And that means that whatever is unique, whatever is only claimed by your side should be prioritised in the debate.

OK. The second tip I have about how to make your case much more important than the other teams-- oh, sorry, how to make your rebuttal deeper than the other teams is about being comparative. So what this means is not just attacking their case, but also defending your own and explaining why your case doesn't have the same problems that the other teams does. So this is very important for adequately engaging in the other team's case.

So basically, what you're going to do is whenever you make a claim about the problems that the other team might face, you say they have a harm, you're going to explain why your team is better than that, why your team either doesn't incur that harm, or why it's much better on your side. Similarly, whenever you defend a benefit on your side of the debate, you should explain why the other team cannot get that benefit, why it is unique to your side. And this is really going to help you to not just attack their case, but also strengthen your own. One good tool for doing this is to compare their best case scenario with your worst case scenario. And that will really help you to charitably show why your team wins in every scenario.