Monthly Archives: September 2011

Some Good cites

An interesting new study about Util and public policy makers that is going around the blogosphere:

Point

Most of us seem to be placing too much value on the wrong characteristics. Our preferred candidates are able to “connect” with the public. We want to like our leaders; we favour candidates who we’d be comfortable having a beer with. But according to the study, this isn’t the type of candidate who will give us utilitarian outcomes. If we really want the greatest happiness of the greatest number, we should be electing psychopathic, Machiavellian misanthropes.

 

Counterpoint

Since it seems implausible that we are best off governed by Machiavellian psychopaths, I take the findings of Bartels and Pizarro–that those attracted to utilitarianism tend toward the psychopathic and Machiavellian–as prima facie evidence that utilitarianism is “self-effacing,” that it recommends its own rejection.

And some global conflict U for K debates

(all pilfered from the dish)

Judge Philosophy Guidelines

As the season begins, there are many people who will begin judging for the first time. There are also many people who realize they are terrible judges and want to improve. As such, people will be writing and posting new judge philosophies. I wanted to try and put together a guide for people approaching this task to help guide them through the process. These insights are gleaned from my years in debate looking at judge philosophies and from many revisions to my own philosophy and the effects I saw it have on debates I judged.

I will update this post a few times before Greenhill, but a few people asked me about it so I wanted to get the bare bones out there.

Updated 9-14

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