Kritik Guide

Author: Barney

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#1
Barney
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As I previously soft announced, I've been building a Kritik Guide. Thanks to using Google Docs as a medium, refinements will always be easy to implement, but it's essentially complete. With this, there should no longer be difficultly in answering 'What's a K?'

I'm proud to say it is co-authored by Ramshutu, by far our most active voter and member of the moderation team, whom understands Kritiks far better than I.

Please use this tool for good rather than evil: https://tiny.cc/Kritik

...

Right now editing is set to be open for suggestions. However, at some point in the future I expect to be forced to lock that, and make this thread the suggestion point for any edits.
#2
Vader
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Kritiks are cop-outs to the actual debate. K Teams are to bad to read topic and do straight policy so they equate nonsense
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#3
Barney
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@Vader
Thank you for being the first user to run a Discourse and Institutional Kritik against the Kritik Guide.

Were I a noob having a debate with you on whatever topic, I would turn to the section of Handling Kritiks, and find the following advice: "First look for relevancy issues, as the link is where most K’s fail. Browse over it for common logical fallacies, as these weaken the impact. Etcetera."

The form of a valid Kritik is as follows...
  • Analysis: The main complaint, and Kritik introduction.
  • Link: What specific element of the opponent’s case it deals with and how.
  • Implications: The damage done if the K is ignored.
  • Alternative: What better solution does the K suggest? If none, we should use the status quo.

Testing the analysis, it's present: "Kritiks are cop-outs to the actual debate. K Teams are to bad to read topic and do straight policy so they equate nonsense"

The link is self explanatory due to Kritik being in the title of the guide.

The implications are absent, as Kritiks happen anyway; which admittedly gives greater strength to your assertion that those running Kritiks did not read what they are Kritiking.

Finally the alternative to this tool is implied as do nothing (since none was offered), which fails to teach anyone how to identify or dismantle Kritiks, so is a far worse option than having this tool available.
#4
Vader
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@Barney
I know the parts of the K because I did debate otherwise I would not have responded to the forum post :/


Ugh you K debaters are really something
#5
Vader
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@Barney
I literally was feeling so fucking stupid one time and wrote an entire K debate about why Greece should control modern civilization to promote pure democracy and fairness and got 3rd place in my Tournaments and lost when someone made viable and sustainable points about the stupidity of that argument. 

Acceptable K's are only Neolib K's because they make the most sense. A basic NeoLib K will do you well, but some K's are so stupid
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#6
Barney
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@Vader
Ugh you K debaters are really something
I absolutely would not define myself as a K debater. My primary tactic has always been to engage with the evidence, even on troll debates. My primary interest in them began about six months ago, when my opponent specified a "No kritiks" rule, but I identified their case as an institutional Kritik in excess to the scope of the debate.


an entire K debate about why Greece should control modern civilization
I have not done live debate, so I may be missing context... Were that initiated as a debate here, I would not call that a K, but merely a trollish resolution. Usually a Kritik would be if you pulled that one out of left field, say on a debate about taxation policy in Australia, and you ignored it to talk about how Greece should rule the world (which I would call "far off topic and ... non-sequitur").


Acceptable K's are only Neolib K's 
I disagree. As stated in the second paragraph of the guide, "...some debate types mandate Kritiks; countering truisms for example." Or if someone has defined a word badly or unfairly, you probably want to run a semantic kritik against said definition in favor of your own. If someone argues X is greater than Y, a value based kritik can be leveraged to show they're not comparable. So there's a lot of good times to use the tool, the important thing is to use the tool without becoming a complete tool.


some K's are so stupid
Agreed. Have you skimmed through the guide yet? I call an entire category of Kritiks: "merrily presented Word Salad or Argumentum ad tl;dr."