2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Old college threads.
User avatar
theMoMA
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 5993
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:00 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by theMoMA »

RexSueciae wrote:could someone please post the tossup on "utilitarianism"? I am not in fact a philosophy player but am curious about modern variants of that school.
packet D wrote:15. Embracing the reductio ad absurdum conclusions that result from this position was coyly dubbed “outsmarting” by J. J. C. Smart, who advocated for an extreme form of this position; Bernard Williams debated Smart in a book titled for this position and subtitled “for and against.” One objection to this position is that anyone trying to adopt it strictly would be frozen into inaction because it allows “no rest.” A challenge to this position that results from the “mere addition paradox” was elucidated in the book Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit. There are “act” and “rule” formulations of this philosophical position, whose founder developed the “felicific calculus.” For 10 points, what ethical position developed by Jeremy Bentham advocates the greatest good for the greatest number?
ANSWER: utilitarianism [accept word forms of utilitarian; accept act utilitarianism or rule utilitarianism or Utilitarianism: For and Against]
Andrew Hart
Minnesota alum
User avatar
heterodyne
Rikku
Posts: 427
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 9:47 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by heterodyne »

So, a couple things. First, I really don't mean to suggest that I don't think any of the criticisms I'm not responding to aren't worthwhile, important things to be talking about - I don't in fact think that anyone here is engaged in mental masturbation, mutual or otherwise - but I'm also frantically trying to finish work that I put off to play Regs and so I can't be complete.
theMoMA wrote:Stephen, I appreciate that thoughtful response to a post that, quite frankly, I found to be a ghastly reminder of the worst excesses of the music mafia.
Oof. That hurts, but I guess it's just the corrupting influence of John Lawrence.
theMoMA wrote: I will readily admit that some of these questions could have been cleaned up even further. For instance, it is probably a minor inaccuracy to imply that J. J. C. Smart coined the phrase "outsmarting," although there appears to be ample support for the notion that the clue, as a whole, applies specifically to an answer of "utilitarianism" (more specifically, "act utilitarianism," which is an acceptable answer). But some of the nitpicks are, in my reckoning, inaccurate. For instance, I defend the formulation of the Hume causation clue as accurately conveying Hume's skeptical argument that causation is just people's subjective perception of a "constant conjugation" between cause and effect. For another instance, as I learned the "no rest" argument, a person is ultimately frozen into inaction by the constant need to evaluate the best outcome among an infinite number of possible choices.
The problem with "outsmarting" was Joey's, and I'll leave that to him. The problem with the Hume clue was originally mine so I feel like I should address it. My particular issue is that the tossup claims that people "understand necessary connection through the 'constant conjunction' of cause and effect." One can't understand something that is false or doesn't exist - on Hume's account, to understand necessary connection is incoherent, since there is nothing to understand (or, more specifically, if there is, it's epistemically inaccessible). An important point of Hume's argument is that the labels cause and effect are applied because of the constant conjunction of the things in question - not that there is a constant conjunction of preexisting cause and effect.

But, as I hopefully made clear, this inaccuracy isn't a problem, because the clue is so famous! That's why my primary criticism was of clue placement. The inaccuracy here is really more of a symptom of the problems rather than one of the problems itself.
theMoMA wrote: But look, Cody's right that questions are short, and it's hard to summarize things accurately. Although I think Benji did a fine job picking an interesting set of answers and clues, and although I tried my best to verify and refine those clues, I admit that there's room for improvement; there always is.
Related to my above pain at being associated with (at least the idea of, if not the people within) the "music mafia," I really want to push back on the idea that the criticisms Joey and I have raised point to an unattainable ideal philosophy question. Maybe towards this end we can separate the criticisms into two classes. The first class contains things like openly incorrect statements, clues that (according to some set of standards which must themselves be defended yada yada) should not be in philosophy questions, insufficiently qualified statements about what something "is" when there is in fact debate on it, etc. The second class is descriptions of things that, in some sense, could be better. I make this distinction because, while criticisms in the second class can be applied to any set, no matter how acceptable or even great the questions are, the first criticisms cannot be applied to a lot of possible sets! In fact, I'd say that avoiding criticisms of the first class is a relatively low bar. I would say, though, that on a subjective level I felt more "bored" with these philosophy questions than I do with those in most tournaments. This suggests to me that the philosophy questions here failed to meet the average level of quality when it comes to the second class. That is, descriptions were in some sense less evocative (oh no, here I go mafia-ing again!) or intruiging.
theMoMA wrote: That said, there is a pernicious attitude in the post that I take extreme issue with: it is steeped in the false notion of rigid categories whose boundaries must be militantly policed. Tarski's contributions to natural language semantics be damned, he's a philosopher. Political theorists and neuroscientists cannot be clued in the philosophy distribution. A philosophy tossup on Eichmann is, for unstated reasons, an "unfortunate idea," regardless of execution. Stories illustrating the Taoist philosophical tradition are strictly scrutinized, while similarly narrative tossups on Platonic dialogues are not. Etc.
Maybe this is a knee-jerk reaction at the general societal tendency to differentiate philosophy from other fields as something that anyone can do, regardless of their training or field of interest, but while philosophers are often dealing in questions that regard the same things as the questions that neuroscience deals in, this does not mean that writings by those neuroscientists are in fact philosophy. Presumably, a science tossup on Einstein that was filled with clues about all the metaphysics of time that has sprung from a block-universe theory would not be well received, and for good reason - even though philosophy has been dealing with the nature of time for far longer than physics has. Similarly, I wouldn't want a philosophy tossup on "time" to be cluing about like, Minkowski space or whatever (can you tell I don't know things about science?).

My concern with the Tarski thing was not major, it was just that the clue seemed out of place. This was also judging from asking the linguistics PhD candidate on my team about how well Tarski's theory of truth was known among linguists (it is, but certainly not as well as it is in philosophy.) I think this creates a problem where that is where the clue-as-linguistics-clue should be placed, but definitely not where the clue-as-philosophy-clue should be placed. In either position one group of people listening to the question will be screwed, it seems like.

I'll take back my criticism of the Eichmann tossup as an unfortunate idea and stick to my several criticisms of how it was actually written.

When you talk about the narrative tossup on a Platonic dialogue, are you talking about the tossup on Euthyphro? There was really only one narrative clue there, at the very beginning, and I didn't like that clue! For some reason we didn't end up commenting on that packet (I think because Joey didn't play it and he made the list of packets from those he played), but I in fact mentioned this in our conversation that preceded that post. I think that there's a lot of really interesting ideas to be engaged with in Taoism, but I think that just relaying stories without connecting them to the ideas they are expressing fails to do so.
https://imgur.com/a/ui0k0
timestamp included for accountability :^)
theMoMA wrote: It was very annoying to discuss classical music for nearly half a decade because the entire conversation was premised on the invented notion that any question bucking a self-defined acceptable orthodoxy was self-evidently illegitimate. Let's not go down that road again, please, for the love of god, please.
Hopefully we don't do that, and actually explain why we hold the standards we do. I think our failure to do so was on a presumption of more commonly held standards than there apparently are.
Alston [Montgomery] Boyd
Bloomington High School '15
UChicago '19
UChicago Divinity '21
they
User avatar
Mewto55555
Tidus
Posts: 709
Joined: Sat Mar 13, 2010 9:27 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Mewto55555 »

On the whole, it seemed like the math tossups were significantly easier to buzz early on that nearly any other science category (compare the first line or two of, e.g., convex, binary trees, derivative, or power series to most of the biochem tossups). I don't think this was a function of me knowing math best of these categories -- it seemed like most other people who knew a bit of math were one-lining most of them too.

Can I see the bonus part on differentiating under the integral sign?
Max
formerly of Ladue, Chicago
User avatar
Sima Guang Hater
Auron
Posts: 1958
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:43 pm
Location: Nashville, TN

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - thanks and general discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Short-beaked echidna wrote:J: I think this is meant to be the philosophy tossup in this packet. Perhaps I am being hella western and bad here, but this is just a list of random stories without engaging with the philosophy or ideas?

A: This is pretty uncharitable to Taoism qua “school of thought” as opposed to body of stories or some other facet of religion; it’s not as if there aren’t meaningful ideas to be discussed, this tossup just doesn’t hit on them.
The leadin is a pretty notable passage from the Zhuangzi about the nature of death and assumptions about the superiority of life over death; I don't really see the problem with the question as it stands.
Eric Mukherjee, MD PhD
Brown 2009, Penn Med 2018
Instructor/Attending Physician/Postdoctoral Fellow, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Coach, University School of Nashville

“The next generation will always surpass the previous one. It’s one of the never-ending cycles in life.”
Support the Stevens-Johnson Syndrome Foundation
User avatar
heterodyne
Rikku
Posts: 427
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2012 9:47 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - thanks and general discussion

Post by heterodyne »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:
Short-beaked echidna wrote:J: I think this is meant to be the philosophy tossup in this packet. Perhaps I am being hella western and bad here, but this is just a list of random stories without engaging with the philosophy or ideas?

A: This is pretty uncharitable to Taoism qua “school of thought” as opposed to body of stories or some other facet of religion; it’s not as if there aren’t meaningful ideas to be discussed, this tossup just doesn’t hit on them.
The leadin is a pretty notable passage from the Zhuangzi about the nature of death and assumptions about the superiority of life over death; I don't really see the problem with the question as it stands.
I don't think the point of my criticism was that the stories being referenced are not, when read in their entirety, communicating philosophically rich concepts, but rather than the question doesn't seem to communicate the "philosophy" part of the stories. But I'm willing to admit that my knowledge of Taoist philosophy is super lacking, so I'm totally willing to cede to those who know more about it when it comes to the importance of those clues in Taoist philosophy (as opposed to the communication of that importance.)
Alston [Montgomery] Boyd
Bloomington High School '15
UChicago '19
UChicago Divinity '21
they
User avatar
theMoMA
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 5993
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:00 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by theMoMA »

I will post the final version of the set tomorrow so folks can look over the questions. I'll likely post a Google drive link. There are going to be at least two NASAT tryouts on the set, so do not give out the link to anyone you can't confirm is a college player.
Andrew Hart
Minnesota alum
User avatar
Fado Alexandrino
Yuna
Posts: 834
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 8:46 pm
Location: Farhaven, Ontario

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

I liked the music overall but felt it skewed harder compared to last year while being similar to what I heard at WAO. Both asking about Mahler 5 and Schumann through songs seemed like a bit on the hard side for this level. I don't think I regressed that much from before but i also think the middle clues definitely felt tougher this time. For example, the tossup on Toccatas could have spent more time describing the music of Bach's Toccata and Fugue. Some bonuses were also pretty tough, for example Brandenburg 4/Bach/Phrygian (which I assume is hard/easy/medium). The medium part didn't feel like a medium part, especially as it was clued as a series of tones and a semitones and not through scale degrees. Another example was asking for Rubenstien as a middle part; the bonus could have started by asking for Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto instead.

In the bonus on Beethoven Sonatas, what was the intended middle and hard parts?

I agree with Max on the math vs bio comment. There were a lot of interesting new stuff in bio (like the 5' methyl cap! "In front of the Kozak" sequence was kinda confusing, though, since that makes it seems you're looking for a sequence) but it seemed too much for regionals.

I never like questions on binary trees at this level. Is there a way other than intuition to know if they're just asking for binary trees or a specific type?
Joe Su, OCT
Lisgar 2012, McGill 2015, McGill 2019, Queen's 2020
User avatar
Gautam
Auron
Posts: 1413
Joined: Sun Feb 11, 2007 7:28 pm
Location: Zone of Avoidance
Contact:

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Gautam »

raffi_-_c-a-n-a-d-a.mp3 wrote:like the 5' methyl cap!
Heh I don't know about "interesting new stuff"...
Gautam in 2009 MO wrote: The addition of this structure sees the condensation of a GTP with the gamma phosphate of an end nucleotide, which is then methylated at its 7 position. For 10 points each:
[10] Identify this structure, wherein a 7-methyl guanosine has a 5′-5′ linkage with certain end nucleotide. In some organisms, the two nucleotides upstream of it are methylated at the 2′ hydroxyl group.
ANSWER: 5′ cap of mRNA [accept equivalents; accept m7GpppN(m); I need the “5′” part, so don’t just accept “cap” because 5′ is mentioned in the question]
[10] This sequence of about 200-250 repeats of the same nucleotide is found at the 3′ end of mRNA. The proteins bound to it prevent the cleavage of mRNA by 3′-5′ exonucleases.
ANSWER: 3′ poly (A) tail
[10] This other post-transcriptional modification sees the removal of non-coding introns via a lariat like structure. It is catalyzed by a complex of U2, U5, U6 ribonucleoproteins called Snurps.
ANSWER: mRNA splicing [accept equivalents mentioning “splice”]
Gautam - ACF
Currently tending to the 'quizbowl hobo' persuasion.
User avatar
The Story of a Head That Fell Off
Lulu
Posts: 87
Joined: Wed May 25, 2016 3:43 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by The Story of a Head That Fell Off »

I really enjoyed this set and liked a lot of the questions, even though I was pretty much asleep the whole day.

Can I see the tossups on South Korea, formaldehyde, Dvorak, Rachmaninoff, torii gates, and California in art?

Also, did I remember it incorrectly, or was there 3 history tossups regarding the Philippines? (one on Marcos, one mentioning Aguinaldo at the end, one mentioning Duterte)
Jeremy "JJ" Tsai
Rutgers 2016-2019 (President 2018-2019)
"Maryland" 2019-2021
User avatar
Red Panda Cub
Wakka
Posts: 211
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2011 9:59 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Red Panda Cub »

Having had some time to think I'm going to reframe much of what I said. I'll recant all the points about things not being philosophy, or whatever, since that's clearly stylistic and coursework based, and the point about the interdisciplinary nature of the edges of philosophy is a good one. I'll chalk up this frustration to the fact that when the philosophy itself is not well executed, having less "pure" philosophy in the set is kind of salting the wound. I recognise this is a rather Annie Hall opening esque "the food is so bad!" "I know, and the portions are so small!" but it is what it is. It's certainly subjective, and feel free to disregard it.

I'm not going to back down on criticisms of thigns being inaccurate, or the necessity of context and clarification in philosophy tossups. I'm surprised that Stephen, in particular, seems to take issue with that thread of argument, since I discussed exactly that point with him in the wake of WAO, and he agreed with me about it then!
Me wrote:that's a huge problem in philosophy, since, as I mention in my post, most people write philosophy questions by interpreting the text, which is often done badly/without realising that's not how everyone reads it
Stephen wrote:I agree
Perhaps, then, the lack of grounding of assumptions in my post was born out of the incorrect assumption that the principles my stance relies on were understood.

So let's look at what Stephen suggests my post did.
Stephen wrote:1) that quizbowl should only be interested in treating philosophy as a bunch of people arguing with each other
The post did not claim that philosophy is only about arguments, but that arguments should at least be present! Perhaps I think there should be more of them than most people, but when it felt like there were close to zero through the set, that seems like a point any can agree is an issue.
Stephen wrote:that it's somehow unbuzzable unless you're told exactly who made an argument that is being clued (although presumably for pyramidal reasons, the people making the arguments are typically named later in the tossup)
This is also not a claim I made. The claim is that if you state something as if it is an unambiguous reading of a text, you make the player think it is, well, an unambiguous reading of a text! This is a point you've made yourself, about painting tossups!
Stephen wrote:To take an example from NASAT (though I don't think this was a pervasive issue there), the leadin to the bonus on Veronese describes a detail in The Feast in the House of Levi as "a tense stare-off between a cat under a table and a dog." Nothing about that detail feels tense to me. It's just a dog and cat looking at each other...If the writer unilaterally decides that there is tension in this detail, players will be led to search their brains for paintings with tense details, and their search will come up empty if they don't consider this particular detail to be tense.
Similarly, if the writer of a philosophy tossup decides that the sentences about, say, nonsense in TLP are arguments towards a certain goal, I'm going to be thinking of texts that unambiguously make that argument, instead of reflex buzzing on the word nonsense. I fail to see how this point is controversial. What is being conflated in your post, here, with this central point, is my proposed solution. You can resolve the problem of interpreting primary philosophical texts in a tossup by attaching interpretations to secondary readers. Philosophy has the good fortune of having a lot of super important secondary commentators that aren't well known in the quizbowl community, so if you want to clue a traditionalist reading of, again, say, nonsense, you can attach it to Hacker, who isn't going to generate a billion first line buzzes. This way you protect yourself from worrying about how to interpret primary texts that an editor doesn't reasonably have time to go in depth on, you increase clue density (there are now two named things for a player to make a buzz off instead of one) and you hedge against the possibility that you mess up the reading.

I think the above paragraph also pretty much replies to Cody's point.
Stephen wrote:that Joey's and Alston's view of what parts of thought constitutes "philosophy" determines whether a tournament's philosophy distribution is good or bad.
I can see how the post gave this impression, and for that I apologise.

Re accusations of mean-spiritedness in my post: Note that I didn't call anyone a wanker (or, rather, synonyms thereof), nor did I (or Alston) impute anything of Benji or the editors as people, unlike replies to what we said. If criticisms of the questions themselves had tonal issues, then I apologise for that.
Joey Goldman
Oxford '17
City, University of London '19
gyre and gimble
Yuna
Posts: 765
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:45 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by gyre and gimble »

Short-beaked echidna wrote:Re accusations of mean-spiritedness in my post: Note that I didn't call anyone a wanker (or, rather, synonyms thereof), nor did I (or Alston) impute anything of Benji or the editors as people, unlike replies to what we said.
Let me define "mental masturbation," lest it come across as purely rude, i.e. a synonym for "wanker." What I mean by this is that, under the premise of discussing some real problem that must be addressed, you have made a public display of the superiority of your knowledge, cognitive abilities, and/or other mental faculties relative to your audience. This actually happens all the time on these forums. I have no doubt that I do it as well.* Some people (Matt Jackson, for example) have the grace not to do it. But when combined with condescension, it is mean-spirited, annoying, and meritless. I'm not assessing your personality, the way you think, you as a person, or anything else outside of the content of your post. Nor do I believe I indicated anything to the contrary.

*In fact, I'm willing to entertain the idea that I'm doing it right now, in this post. Though I prefer to think that I'm trying to stamp out a bad type of post-tournament discussion. My other motive, for sake of transparency, is to defend my teammate's writing because he rarely posts here, and probably attributes less value to one's reputation as a question writer than I do.
heterodyne wrote:The problem with the Hume clue was originally mine so I feel like I should address it. My particular issue is that the tossup claims that people "understand necessary connection through the 'constant conjunction' of cause and effect." One can't understand something that is false or doesn't exist - on Hume's account, to understand necessary connection is incoherent, since there is nothing to understand (or, more specifically, if there is, it's epistemically inaccessible). An important point of Hume's argument is that the labels cause and effect are applied because of the constant conjunction of the things in question - not that there is a constant conjunction of preexisting cause and effect.
Let's grant that you're correct. Do you not see how incredibly nitpicky this is? How many philosophy questions have you written in your career? If that number is anywhere north of, say, 5, then you should know that these kinds of nuances can't always be worked out perfectly in a 7-line tossup containing 5-6 substantive non-title clues.
heterodyne wrote:Related to my above pain at being associated with (at least the idea of, if not the people within) the "music mafia," I really want to push back on the idea that the criticisms Joey and I have raised point to an unattainable ideal philosophy question. Maybe towards this end we can separate the criticisms into two classes. The first class contains things like openly incorrect statements, clues that (according to some set of standards which must themselves be defended yada yada) should not be in philosophy questions, insufficiently qualified statements about what something "is" when there is in fact debate on it, etc. The second class is descriptions of things that, in some sense, could be better. I make this distinction because, while criticisms in the second class can be applied to any set, no matter how acceptable or even great the questions are, the first criticisms cannot be applied to a lot of possible sets! In fact, I'd say that avoiding criticisms of the first class is a relatively low bar. I would say, though, that on a subjective level I felt more "bored" with these philosophy questions than I do with those in most tournaments. This suggests to me that the philosophy questions here failed to meet the average level of quality when it comes to the second class. That is, descriptions were in some sense less evocative (oh no, here I go mafia-ing again!) or intruiging.
See, I don't think you understand why you're being likened to the music mafia. Here is an alternative classification of your criticisms (ALL of them, I believe):

Class 1: You are either outright wrong, or out-of-touch with quizbowl's norms for writing philosophy questions.
Tarsky; Eichmann (your substantive criticisms are also wrong, because there's nothing problematic with a tossup that directly analyzes a historical figure without resorting to a primary focus on the underlying philosophy, even assuming that the tossup fails to address that); "mere addition" in utilitarianism ("mere addition" is not too early, as it appears in the 5th line of the tossup, before "act v. rule," "felicific calculus," and the giveaway, and you are being stupid); Bernard Baars in consciousness; Constant on Liberty; Taoism (there's no problem with philosophy questions taking a non-argument-based approach, especially for story/parable-heavy philosophical traditions from the East); Santayana

Class 2: You are nitpicking.
Hume; "no rest" in utilitarianism (given Andrew's response, this may belong in Category 1); Discipline and Punish; Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Class 3: Your concerns are correct, or at least valid and worth discussing on their face, without further justification.
Duns Scotus and Ockham both discussing "intuitive cognition"; P-Zombies as neg-bait for qualia; not prompting for liberty; knowledge (but I'm thinking that the "closed under closure" thing was just a typo?)

As you can see, most of your criticisms arise from a mistaken notion that your concept of how philosophy questions ought to be written is the norm. What gets filtered out from the sieve of "You Are Wrong" are a handful of nitpicks about clues being misplaced or not perfectly clear, and a handful of single-clue playability issues. Somehow, you and Joey take all of this to mean that Benji's philosophy questions are systematically bad. On top of this, you have all these unnecessarily condescending, bad-faith quips. For example:

A: Not understanding things is not good when you’re writing about them!
A: Just because consciousness is in the title of some Bernard Baars work doesn’t mean it’s good to clue him.

What do you think? Have I done a decent job at illustrating why your post was irresponsible and unproductive?
heterodyne wrote:Hopefully we don't do that, and actually explain why we hold the standards we do. I think our failure to do so was on a presumption of more commonly held standards than there apparently are.
I hope you do explain your standards. And if the community feels that your standards are worth adopting, then it should.** But realize that they are not the norm, and you should not retroactively judge a tournament for failing to adhere to standards that nobody else recognizes.

**
Short-beaked echidna wrote:Similarly, if the writer of a philosophy tossup decides that the sentences about, say, nonsense in TLP are arguments towards a certain goal, I'm going to be thinking of texts that unambiguously make that argument, instead of reflex buzzing on the word nonsense. I fail to see how this point is controversial. What is being conflated in your post, here, with this central point, is my proposed solution. You can resolve the problem of interpreting primary philosophical texts in a tossup by attaching interpretations to secondary readers. Philosophy has the good fortune of having a lot of super important secondary commentators that aren't well known in the quizbowl community, so if you want to clue a traditionalist reading of, again, say, nonsense, you can attach it to Hacker, who isn't going to generate a billion first line buzzes. This way you protect yourself from worrying about how to interpret primary texts that an editor doesn't reasonably have time to go in depth on, you increase clue density (there are now two named things for a player to make a buzz off instead of one) and you hedge against the possibility that you mess up the reading.
I haven't thought about it much, probably because I myself will never write another philosophy tossup, but I instinctively agree. This seems reasonable, and given my own desire to see objectivity in clue presentation throughout all categories, it serves my views on question writing as well. I wish you had articulated this in your original post, rather than posting what you did.
Short-beaked echidna wrote:[A]rguments should at least be present! Perhaps I think there should be more of them than most people, but when it felt like there were close to zero through the set, that seems like a point any can agree is an issue.
A quick perusal of the philosophy tossups suggests to me that "close to zero" is demonstrably false. But to encourage more responsible posting, I'll leave it to you to prove your claim, as that is your burden.

I think I'm done with this argument. You guys are posting productively now, you've retracted your ridiculous positions, and I think I've made my point. I fear anything else I say would be undeniably masturbatory.
Stephen Liu
Torrey Pines '10
Harvard '14
Stanford '17
User avatar
Red Panda Cub
Wakka
Posts: 211
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2011 9:59 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Red Panda Cub »

There's not much point in saying this, for obvious reasons, but you can impute whatever motivations for that first post you want, but it really had nowt to with demonstrating some weird sense of superiority, whatever that means. The fact that that accusation seemed so off-base to my is why I thought you were just being rude. Anyway, on to more constructive things.

The comment about TLP is not nitpicking, but if you take it to be that, then we are clearly quite far apart in our conceptions of how clues work. The leadin is, as it stands, basically false and misleading. This is not a nitpick, this is a badly constructed clause that turns a really great idea (talking about Wittgenstein's notion of nonsense) into a clue that is very risky to buzz on.

As to the point that you wish I had articulated my point about how to contextualise philosophy clues in the initial post, I did:
me wrote:Philosophy tossups are readings of the texts and philosophers they treat! Most of philosophy is about deciding how things ought to be read, so if you're cluing an interpretation, know that you're interpreting, and tie it to a major thinker who reads it that way.
It being nested in a controversial post probably meant this was disregarded/not read properly, and that's poor of me to have done. However, I was intending, in writing that post, for this be the core point.

As to the question concerning argument clues, I have gone through and I pretty much stand by my previous statement. I think this will come down to a conception of what clues about arguments look like. There were certainly a fair number of clues that referenced positions and arguments, which is awesome. What I'd've liked to see more of, and maybe this is idiosyncratic, is another step and explaining how the argument functions. As it stands, the argument clues are more allusions to arguments, rather than descriptions of them. What is missing, to my eye, then, is some "because" clauses.
Joey Goldman
Oxford '17
City, University of London '19
User avatar
Cody
2008-09 Male Athlete of the Year
Posts: 2891
Joined: Sun Nov 15, 2009 12:57 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Cody »

Mewto55555 wrote:Can I see the bonus part on differentiating under the integral sign?
Editors 1 wrote:9. Note: do not read alternate answers. This technique can be used to solve the integral over all reals of “sine of x over x” by introducing a factor of “e to the minus b x” and trimming the integral to be between zero and plus infinity. For 10 points each:
[10] What technique uses the fact that you can take the total derivative of an integral of a two-parameter function by taking the integral of the partial derivative of the integrand?
ANSWER: differentiation under the integral sign [accept equivalents such as taking the differential under the integral sign; or differentiation with respect to a parameter; or Leibniz integral rule; or Feynman integration]
[10] Differentiation under the integral sign was praised in this physicist’s memoir. He developed diagrams that depict the interactions of subatomic particles using arrows and squiggly lines.
ANSWER: Richard Feynman [or Richard Phillips Feynman]
[10] A photon would be represented as a squiggly line on a Feynman diagram in what field theory?
ANSWER: quantum electrodynamics [or QED; prompt on “QFT”]
Last edited by Cody on Mon Feb 20, 2017 11:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
Cody Voight, VCU ’14.
User avatar
a bird
Wakka
Posts: 164
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2012 3:50 pm
Location: College Park, MD

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by a bird »

Could I see the gravitational waves toss up? There was a buzzer race on the first line when I played it; I'm curious if this happened to anyone else.
Graham R.

Maryland
User avatar
Cody
2008-09 Male Athlete of the Year
Posts: 2891
Joined: Sun Nov 15, 2009 12:57 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Cody »

a bird wrote:Could I see the gravitational waves toss up? There was a buzzer race on the first line when I played it; I'm curious if this happened to anyone else.
Harvard A + Oxford B wrote:18. These phenomena are described using the transverse–traceless gauge, in which one can derive the quadrupole formula. Detectors for these phenomena are described by sensitivity curves for a characteristic strain h over some timescale. These phenomena are generated when the quadrupole moment of a mass distribution changes in time, which is why their best-understood sources are inspiraling binaries. The existence of these phenomena was strongly suspected because the orbital decay of the Hulse–Taylor binary pulsar agreed with the predictions of general relativity. A binary black hole merger led to the LIGO ("lie-go") experiment’s direct detection of, for 10 points, what phenomena that are the propagation of ripples in spacetime curvature?
ANSWER: gravitational waves [accept gravitational radiation and gravity waves]
Cody Voight, VCU ’14.
User avatar
naan/steak-holding toll
Auron
Posts: 2515
Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2011 11:53 pm
Location: New York, NY

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - thanks and general discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:
Short-beaked echidna wrote:J: I think this is meant to be the philosophy tossup in this packet. Perhaps I am being hella western and bad here, but this is just a list of random stories without engaging with the philosophy or ideas?

A: This is pretty uncharitable to Taoism qua “school of thought” as opposed to body of stories or some other facet of religion; it’s not as if there aren’t meaningful ideas to be discussed, this tossup just doesn’t hit on them.
The leadin is a pretty notable passage from the Zhuangzi about the nature of death and assumptions about the superiority of life over death; I don't really see the problem with the question as it stands.
I'll second this - I actually learned it from reading an essay about the Taoists as some of the earliest libertarian philosophers! You can (and do) learn these clues from legitimate engagement with the philosophical tradition.
Will Alston
Dartmouth College '16
Columbia Business School '21
User avatar
vengefulsweatermensch
Wakka
Posts: 139
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2013 9:13 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by vengefulsweatermensch »

geremy wrote: Also, did I remember it incorrectly, or was there 3 history tossups regarding the Philippines? (one on Marcos, one mentioning Aguinaldo at the end, one mentioning Duterte)
The question with Duterte clues was current events, not history.

3/0 is a lot of Philippines content for one tournament - I'm sorry if this annoyed anyone. The tossup on Philippines during Spanish rule was an editors question, while the other two were built around well-written submissions I felt obliged to include in the set.
Nathan Weiser
LASA '14, Stanford '18, Stanford Law '24
User avatar
kitakule
Wakka
Posts: 201
Joined: Tue Sep 22, 2015 12:49 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by kitakule »

Can I see the kings of Israel, Elijah, and Moses tossups?
Moses Kitakule
ESA '15
Yale '19
Columbia '28 (???)
User avatar
Sima Guang Hater
Auron
Posts: 1958
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:43 pm
Location: Nashville, TN

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

a bird wrote:Could I see the gravitational waves toss up? There was a buzzer race on the first line when I played it; I'm curious if this happened to anyone else.
Yes. The transverse-traceless gauge has come up a few times.
Eric Mukherjee, MD PhD
Brown 2009, Penn Med 2018
Instructor/Attending Physician/Postdoctoral Fellow, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Coach, University School of Nashville

“The next generation will always surpass the previous one. It’s one of the never-ending cycles in life.”
Support the Stevens-Johnson Syndrome Foundation
User avatar
Cody
2008-09 Male Athlete of the Year
Posts: 2891
Joined: Sun Nov 15, 2009 12:57 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Cody »

Apologies if the TT gauge clue created some buzzer races. It's fairly important, but I only turned up one hit on hsquizbowl.org/packetsearch.html (and none for "quadrupole formula"), which while incomplete (since it doesn't index zip files) I thought meant it would be okay as a lead-in.
Cody Voight, VCU ’14.
User avatar
theMoMA
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 5993
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:00 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by theMoMA »

theMoMA wrote:I will post the final version of the set tomorrow so folks can look over the questions. I'll likely post a Google drive link. There are going to be at least two NASAT tryouts on the set, so do not give out the link to anyone you can't confirm is a college player.
The set is available for download here.

Note: please preserve the integrity of these NASAT tryouts by limiting the distribution of this link and the packets to people you know to be in college. I will post an all clear when the NASAT tryouts end.
Andrew Hart
Minnesota alum
User avatar
What do you do with a dead chemist?
Lulu
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Nov 22, 2015 3:27 pm
Location: UK

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by What do you do with a dead chemist? »

A minor thing, in the Mozart question, it felt like Ave Verum Corpus was dropped really early.
Christopher Stern
Oxford 2014-18
Real life 2018-?
User avatar
Majin Buu Roi
Wakka
Posts: 145
Joined: Sat May 17, 2014 1:52 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - thanks and general discussion

Post by Majin Buu Roi »

Banana Stand wrote:
Short-beaked echidna wrote:
Liberty--

J: Spends a bunch of time on Constant, who is, like, not a philosopher?

A: Yeah, once again, if your goal when writing a philosophy question is to reward engagement with philosophy, you should clue philosophers.
How is Constant not a philosopher? Eric Xu first-lined this tossup with something he read in his political philosophy class, and most classes on Kant will at least mention him.
I know I'm late to the philosophy discussion here, but seriously, making Constant the lead-in of the liberty tossup is awesome because that essay was one of the most important developments in modern conceptions of liberty and is read in a whole lot of political theory courses. Moreover, Isaiah Berlin specifically cites Constant as an inspiration/forerunner to Two Concepts of Liberty.

Anyway, I thought this set was great. There were occasionally difficulty inconsistencies, but that's always unavoidable to a degree in packet-submission tournaments. I'd also like to give a personal digital bear hug to whatever wonderful souls picked Amin Maalouf and Cosmas Indicopleustes as hard parts and inserted the "hellburners" clue in the 80 years' war tossup.
Jason Golfinos
Trinity School '13 (inexplicably in charge, 2011-13)
Princeton '17 (inexplicably in charge, 2015-16)
Cambridge '18
HLS '22
gyre and gimble
Yuna
Posts: 765
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:45 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - thanks and general discussion

Post by gyre and gimble »

jasongg17 wrote:I'd also like to give a personal digital bear hug to whatever wonderful souls picked Amin Maalouf and Cosmas Indicopleustes as hard parts and inserted the "hellburners" clue in the 80 years' war tossup.
The hellburners clue was from Maryland A's submission. Amin Maalouf and Cosmas Indicopleustes were from me. On Maalouf: You have no idea how glad I am that someone knew this! I was pretty worried it was too hard, despite how important he is to contemporary Crusades studies.
Stephen Liu
Torrey Pines '10
Harvard '14
Stanford '17
User avatar
west neg, new york
Lulu
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2014 9:35 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by west neg, new york »

Just perused a couple of packets, and I just wanted to say that the set is very polished in terms of having an easily readable format, generally comprehensive answerlines, and helpful (but not obstructive) pronunciation guides.

A very small thing I saw while looking through our and Oxford B's packet: the Italian "ci" + vowel is pronounced "ch" + vowel sound and not "chee" + vowel sound, so in the 20th century Italian music bonus, Luciano Berio's first name is pronounced "loo-CHA-noh" and not "loo-chee-AH-noh." It's a fairly common thing when English speakers are pronouncing Italian names, so I doubt anyone really cares/had their tournament experience significantly worsened because of it, but if guides are going to be included, they might as well be accurate, right?
Robert Chu
Harvard '17
Johns Hopkins '21
NAQT writer
User avatar
Auks Ran Ova
Forums Staff: Chief Administrator
Posts: 4295
Joined: Sun Apr 30, 2006 10:28 pm
Location: Minneapolis
Contact:

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

For PGs like that I tried to split the difference between the most technically correct pronunciation and the most common "Americanized" version, vaguely erring towards the latter if I thought confusion might be introduced. Since in a quizbowl context pronunciation guides function more as a way to prevent readers from stumbling completely than as a pure instructional tool, some compromises are inevitable*. (That's not to say that all this philosophizing was going through my head when I typed out "loo-chee-AH-no" or whatever, but it's the general outlook I brought to the task.)

*especially when some of the myth questions contain like 50 impossible-to-phonetically-anglicize Irish or Welsh names, Stephen
Rob Carson
University of Minnesota '11, MCTC '??, BHSU forever
Member, ACF
Member emeritus, PACE
Writer and Editor, NAQT
User avatar
ErikC
Rikku
Posts: 288
Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2016 12:44 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by ErikC »

I'd like to say that I've found a good deal of questions on the Philippines to be fairly transparent. Most of the time it's just because it's a weird mix of names that only an Asian country ruled by Spain and the U.S. would have. I think the Marcos question was effective because it avoided this. I still think it was a little weird to have so much content on one country.
Erik Christensen
University of Waterloo - School of Planning Class of '18
Defending VETO top scorer
User avatar
Ike
Auron
Posts: 1063
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2008 5:01 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Ike »

Auks Ran Ova wrote:For PGs like that I tried to split the difference between the most technically correct pronunciation and the most common "Americanized" version, vaguely erring towards the latter if I thought confusion might be introduced. Since in a quizbowl context pronunciation guides function more as a way to prevent readers from stumbling completely than as a pure instructional tool, some compromises are inevitable*. (That's not to say that all this philosophizing was going through my head when I typed out "loo-chee-AH-no" or whatever, but it's the general outlook I brought to the task.)

*especially when some of the myth questions contain like 50 impossible-to-phonetically-anglicize Irish or Welsh names, Stephen
Completely agree with this. I just want to say inserting PGs is a thankless, mindless job. The goal of PGs is to help out moderators who don't know any better. I think they are good to have, but I would just ask people to be understanding with what they are and not demand too much from them, especially if the PGs aren't going to obstruct the player from understanding the word. By which I mean, if some PG is wrong in a minor way like, say NUH-bahk-ov instead of nuh-BAHK-ov, feel free to point it out, but I wouldn't expect them to get better anytime soon, especially with words like Pupienus or whatever.
Ike
UIUC 13
User avatar
vengefulsweatermensch
Wakka
Posts: 139
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2013 9:13 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by vengefulsweatermensch »

ErikC wrote:I'd like to say that I've found a good deal of questions on the Philippines to be fairly transparent. Most of the time it's just because it's a weird mix of names that only an Asian country ruled by Spain and the U.S. would have. I think the Marcos question was effective because it avoided this.
The editors' question on the Philippines was specifically written to avoid this problem.
Editors 2 wrote:19. In this colony, Andrés Novales declared himself emperor after its governor, Mariano Fernández de Folgueras, threatened to limit the number of local-born soldiers. Anticolonial activists in this territory venerated a trio of martyred priests collectively known as the GOMBURZA. In this colony, the nonviolent pro-independence groups La Solidaridad and La Liga gradually gave way to a more radical movement led by Andres Bonifacio. Galleons traveling from this colony to Acapulco fueled the worldwide silver trade. In this colony, involvement in the pro-independence Katipunan (kah-tee-POO-nahn) society led to the execution of the author of El Filibusterismo (fil-ih-boost-er-EEZ-moh). For 10 points, name this modern-day country where Spanish rule was opposed by Jose Rizal and Emilio Aguinaldo.
ANSWER: The Philippines [or Spanish Philippines; prompt on “Spanish East Indies” or “Indias Orientales Españolas”]
As you can see, none of the names mentioned in the tossup are even vaguely "Asian"-sounding, with the possible exception of "Katipunan." Calling the Philippines a "colony," too, opens up the potential answer space to include every location the Spanish colonized - which makes up, like, 30% of the land on earth. While I share you concerns about Philippines tossups in general, Erik, I don't think they're really applicable here. Then again, I wrote this question, so I might just be projecting.
Erik C wrote:I still think it was a little weird to have so much content on one country.
Fair enough.
Nathan Weiser
LASA '14, Stanford '18, Stanford Law '24
gyre and gimble
Yuna
Posts: 765
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:45 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by gyre and gimble »

Auks Ran Ova wrote:*especially when some of the myth questions contain like 50 impossible-to-phonetically-anglicize Irish or Welsh names, Stephen
Clearly, the optimal solution here is for everyone to go and take a semester of Welsh.
Stephen Liu
Torrey Pines '10
Harvard '14
Stanford '17
User avatar
wcheng
Wakka
Posts: 165
Joined: Mon May 26, 2014 12:02 pm
Location: Palo Alto, CA

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by wcheng »

Before I make any comments about this set, I would like to thank the editors for putting this set together. In the categories that I was paying the most attention to (history, religion, economics, and CE/geo/"other"), I felt that the vast majority of the answerlines were executed and clued well. That being said, I would like to leave some thoughts on the religion in this set, starting with a few (I promise, only a few!) nitpicks. For the most part, they are minor quibbles, so feel free to ignore them if it means that you will read the rest of my post.

Thomas TU in Packet A: This was a tossup that I submitted. I noticed that the alternative answers "Gospel of Thomas," and "Gospel According to Thomas" were added to the answerline, although the "namesake text" that I was referring to in the leadin was the Acts of Thomas. This is an extremely inconsequential nitpick, though, so it's not really a problem at all.

Elijah TU in Packet C: "In First Kings, this man summons fire on Mount Carmel, thereby proving the superiority of Yahweh over Jezebel." I think it's somewhat odd (though not incorrect) to say that he proved the superiority of Yahweh over Jezebel, given that this is describing the contest with the prophets of Baal. I would personally have replaced Jezebel with Baal in this sentence.

Samson TU in Packet D: "This man receives 30 linen wraps and 30 changes of clothes after he stumps 30 men with the riddle [...]" I don't think that "receives" is really the right word for this sentence at all. Basically, Samson stumps them with the riddle (which means that they would have to give him 30 changes of clothes according to their agreement). The men then harass his bride until she convinces Samson to tell her the answer, which they use to answer Samson's riddle (which means that Samson would now have to give them 30 changes of clothing). At this point, Samson goes into Ashkelon, kills 30 people, and takes their clothes, before giving them to the thirty men. I don't think that he "receives" clothes at any point in this narrative.

kings of Israel TU in Packet J: I personally think that "kings of the United Monarchy" should be an acceptable answer, given that the time period described in the question is usually referred to as the United Monarchy, which the giveaway actually alludes to.

Having gotten that out of the way, I would like to address what I personally thought to be the biggest issue with the religion in this tournament. While I recognize that, as a packet-submission tournament, it is difficult for the editors to create a "balanced" subdistribution, I thought that the religious subdistribution in this tournament had issues that none of the previous tournaments this year had. I would describe them in two broad categories: 1) miscategorization of tossups on other subjects as "religion" and 2) lack of representation of non-Abrahamic religious tradtions.

1) There are two packets in this tournament which I believe contain tossups which are essentially on other subjects that were categorized as "religion." These packets are Packet H (with a tossup on "miracles" drawing extensively from philosophy) and Packet M (with a tossup on "monotheism" drawing extensively social science). I make this assertion because both packets have tossups which are clearly identifiable as philosophy and social science questions (liberty and Ronald Coase in the former, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and clash of civilizations in the latter). Why do I think that this is problematic? Well, here are the two tossups in question. First, the tossup on miracles:
A book titled for these events uses an anecdote about a child who thinks that aspirin cannot be poisonous
because there are no “horrid red things” inside of it to argue that belief and imagination are separate things;
that book titled for these events puts forth an “argument from reason” against naturalism. A discussion of
these events proceeds from an argument that the “wise and learned” can use as an “everlasting check” against
delusion. In a book titled for the “life and morals” of a religious leader, Thomas Jefferson used a razor and
glue to remove all references to these events, which were the subject of an empirical criticism by David Hume.
A “preliminary study” by C. S. Lewis discusses, for 10 points, what kind of supernatural event exemplifed by
Jesus turning water into wine?
ANSWER: religious _miracle_s [accept Christian _miracle_s or _miracle_s of Jesus Christ or similar answers; accept
“Of _Miracles_” or _Miracles_: A Preliminary Study]
It seems to me that this tossup is essentially about various philosophical texts on a religious subject (Miracles: A Preliminary Study and "Of Miracles"). While I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with writing a tossup about this, it seems to suffer the same issues as, say, science history: will it actually reward people who know the subject in question? I'm incline to believe that this question is much more likely to reward philosophy players than religion players, for one key reason: this tossup does not substantively engage in the textual or devotional traditions of any given religious tradition! While the philosophy of religion is certainly important, I don't think that it can be characterized as "religion" if it does not engage with religion as it is actually practiced.

Now, here's the tossup on monotheism:
The argument that this concept troublingly implies sexlessness is central to a Howard Eilberg-Schwartz
monograph about a “phallus.” Jan Assmann’s (yahn AHS-mahn's) book on the “price of” this concept explains its
origins as a break from a cosmos-oriented paradigm. In the early 20th century, Wilhelm Schmidt argued that
this concept originated from primitive non-Western cultures in an “Ur” form before taking on its final shape.
This concept, whose adoption in Persia is central to Karl Jaspers’s (YAHS-perz's) theory about the Axial Age, is
central to a book arguing that it arose after a group partly composed of Midianites murdered a man who was
not a Jew but instead an Egyptian of noble birth who adhered to the doctrines of Akhenaten. For 10 points,
what religious concept is paired with “Moses” in a Sigmund Freud title?
ANSWER: _monotheism_ [accept word forms or equivalents such as the _oneness of God_; accept The _Price of
Monotheism_ or Ur-_monotheism_ or _Moses and Monotheism_]
Firstly, I would like to say, I think that this is a great idea for an answerline. I think that this could have been a very interesting tossup on monotheism drawing clues from things like the development of monotheism within the Old Testament or the doctrine of tawhid in Islam. What this tossup actually was, however, seems to me like a tossup on a religious subject within the social sciences. Just like the tossup on miracles, I believe that this tossup is more likely to reward social science players than religion players for the same key reason that I mentioned early.

2) In my opinion, the first issue looks much worse in light of the second issue, which is the lack of the representation of non-Abrahamic religious traditions. Here is a list of what I believe are all of the religion tossups in the tournament:

Judaism/Old Testament
Packet C: Elijah
Packet D: Samson
Packet F: the Moon
Packet I: kings of Israel
Packet L: Ecclesiastes
Packet P: sacrifices

Christianity/New Testament
Packet A: Thomas
Packet E: Sun Myung Moon
Packet J: Pentecost
Packet O: candles

Islam
Packet B: mothers
Packet G: Moses (within the Islamic tradition)
Packet K: Ali

Borderline "religion"
Packet H: miracles
Packet M: monotheism

Non-Abrahamic religions
Packet N: torii

I think that one glance at this list should suggest that there is an issue. 13/16 (81.25%!) of the tossups on this tournament are about Abrahamic religions, and of the remaining tossups, two were on the borderline between religion and other categories, leaving one (!) tossup on non-Abrahamic religions. Needless to say, I do not think that this is anywhere close to being representative of the world's religions as they are practiced. The beliefs of literally hundreds of millions of Hindus, Buddhists, and others had virtually no representation at all in the tossups in this tournament. In fact, philosophy and social science had more representation in the tossups in this tournament than they did! Now, had those two borderline tossups had been tossups on non-Abrahamic religions, I probably would have chalked it up to the packet submission format, but, in my opinion, the almost complete exclusion of tossups on non-Abrahamic religions is a glaring oversight.

I would offer two suggestions for future religion distributions: when writing religion questions, one always attempt to engage with the textual and devotional traditions of some religion in some way. Also, when putting together a packet submission tournament on religion, one should keep the overall subdistribution in mind and use editors packets to rectify the situation if necessary.

To end this post on a positive note: although I have my disagreements with the overall selection of answerlines, I greatly enjoyed much of the religion in this set, and thought that, in general, the religion questions were well edited and put together. I just think that there were some mistakes made in putting together the religion subdistribution as a whole, and hope that future tournaments can avoid the issues I saw here to create a more balanced and engaging religious subdistribution.
Weijia Cheng (they/them)
Centennial '15
BS @ Maryland '18 (Fall)
MDiv @ BU '27
User avatar
Cody
2008-09 Male Athlete of the Year
Posts: 2891
Joined: Sun Nov 15, 2009 12:57 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Cody »

wcheng wrote:It seems to me that this tossup is essentially about various philosophical texts on a religious subject (Miracles: A Preliminary Study and "Of Miracles"). While I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with writing a tossup about this, it seems to suffer the same issues as, say, science history: will it actually reward people who know the subject in question? I'm incline to believe that this question is much more likely to reward philosophy players than religion players, for one key reason: this tossup does not substantively engage in the textual or devotional traditions of any given religious tradition! While the philosophy of religion is certainly important, I don't think that it can be characterized as "religion" if it does not engage with religion as it is actually practiced.
I think you have fallen in to a classic quizbowl trap: there are strict, unyielding rules for categories and interdisciplinary questions that veer from the quizbowl norm are a bad thing. This is not true. Your opinion may differ, but I believe your framework for evaluating these questions presents a very limited view of what the religion category should be, to the detriment of the category.

While quizbowl tends to focus on the practice of religions within the religion distribution, there is a wide expanse of unexplored content in religious studies that has nothing to do with the practice of religions and plenty to do with philosophy, social science, and cultural history. The two questions you have called out seem to me like great examples of the types of religion questions we want to ask (in some moderate amount), and correspond very nicely with the actual academic study of religions. As an added bonus, they present a good way to keep the religion category fresh (instead of yet another question on Bahai or Cao Dai).

Sure, care must be taken to ensure that questions don't go so far as to primarily reward the "wrong" type of knowledge for a given category (similar to the art film/trash film distinction)—so maybe a question on Rumi isn't the best idea for the religion category. But, there is plenty of room in the religion category (and others) for a significant amount of bleed between categories. I think that's a good thing when contextualized within the academic study of religion.

(as just one example, Duke's very highly regarded Religious Studies program offers an entire class on the theology of CS Lewis)
Cody Voight, VCU ’14.
User avatar
theMoMA
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 5993
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:00 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by theMoMA »

I will again take a strong stance against rigid category boundaries on things like "miracles" or "monotheism." Both academic and popular study of religion are much broader than the "textual and devotional traditions" of religions. The idea that the philosophical or comparative study of religion cannot be the basis for a question in the religion distribution is an invented restriction that doesn't reflect what people know or what people study.

Similarly, the idea of rewarding "religion players" versus "philosophy" or "social science" players finds no analogue outside of quizbowl. It makes no sense to accept the notion that players' knowledge of "textual and devotional traditions" should be rewarded, while players' engagement with academic study of those same traditions should not be. I get that it's much easier to study for a tightly defined category that doesn't open out onto other subjects, but that's a feature, not a bug. The less hermetically sealed categories are, the more a player is forced to reckon with the slurry of information that is the real world. Cody posted while I was writing this up, and I agree with his points, as well.

On the subject of subdistributions, I chose to focus the tournament on Abrahamic religious traditions. The tossups ended up being a bit more skewed than I would've liked, but around half the bonuses were on non-Abrahamic traditions. The reason I did this is threefold. First, I think there are a lot of underexplored nooks and crannies in the broad study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Second, the source and secondary materials for those religions tend to be more fulsome, definitive, available, and well-known on the level of primary engagement. Third, I think the nth tossup on Bahai, or a feature thereof, tends to reward those who have heard a chunk of the n-1 tossups on Bahai, creating a sort of quizbowl-knowledge loop that seems particularly prevalent in the religion and mythology distributions.

The tossups ended up being more skewed than they should've been, so point taken there, but on the whole, I think it's good for quizbowl to focus on going deep rather than wide in religion questions.
Andrew Hart
Minnesota alum
User avatar
ErikC
Rikku
Posts: 288
Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2016 12:44 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by ErikC »

vengefulsweatermensch wrote:While I share you concerns about Philippines tossups in general, Erik, I don't think they're really applicable here. Then again, I wrote this question, so I might just be projecting.
Sorry, I wasn't very clear about this. I didn't play the editor's pack that had that question in it at the Canada site so I didn't mean to lump it in with the questions I've heard in the past, which have combined names in such away. I agree that this one avoids this problem, and its even better because it calls it a colony instead of a country.

Also, while I agree that some of the larger categories might have had fairly standard, canon material, I really liked some of the content that in other areas. I don't remember everything I really appreciate besides the tossup on agriculture and the bonus on the study of war, but I felt like this tournament really used the more niche and optional parts of the distribution well.
Erik Christensen
University of Waterloo - School of Planning Class of '18
Defending VETO top scorer
User avatar
Muriel Axon
Tidus
Posts: 729
Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:19 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

Questions on the Catholic Church should accept "the true Holy Mother _Church_."

--Shan(tanu Jha)
Shan Kothari

Plymouth High School '10
Michigan State University '14
University of Minnesota '20
User avatar
Sam
Rikku
Posts: 338
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 2:35 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Sam »

Muriel Axon wrote:Questions on the Catholic Church should accept "the true Holy Mother _Church_."

--Shan(tanu Jha)
I knew you seemed familiar...
Sam Bailey
Minnesota '21
Chicago '13
Votre Kickstarter Est Nul
Rikku
Posts: 365
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 2:09 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

Hey, I was looking at last year's set and was wondering if anyone knows what novel this is referring to:
A character in this profession imitates Barnes by smoking crack cocaine while trying to be “Time’s first human author of perfection." [editors 1, question 2, the answer is Lawyer.
Emmett Laurie
East Brunswick '16
Rutgers University '21
jonah
Auron
Posts: 2383
Joined: Thu Jul 20, 2006 5:51 pm
Location: Chicago

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by jonah »

Neggman wrote:Hey, I was looking at last year's set and was wondering if anyone knows what novel this is referring to:
A character in this profession imitates Barnes by smoking crack cocaine while trying to be “Time’s first human author of perfection." [editors 1, question 2, the answer is Lawyer.
Googling the quoted phrase led me to this, suggesting it is A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava (and the lawyer in question is Casi).
Jonah Greenthal
National Academic Quiz Tournaments
User avatar
theMoMA
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 5993
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:00 am

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by theMoMA »

Jonah is correct.
Andrew Hart
Minnesota alum
Votre Kickstarter Est Nul
Rikku
Posts: 365
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 2:09 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

jonah wrote:
Neggman wrote:Hey, I was looking at last year's set and was wondering if anyone knows what novel this is referring to:
A character in this profession imitates Barnes by smoking crack cocaine while trying to be “Time’s first human author of perfection." [editors 1, question 2, the answer is Lawyer.
Googling the quoted phrase led me to this, suggesting it is A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava (and the lawyer in question is Casi).
Thanks! (now time to figure out why I can't google well enough)
Emmett Laurie
East Brunswick '16
Rutgers University '21
bradleykirksey
Wakka
Posts: 187
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 5:09 pm

Re: 2017 ACF Regionals - specific-question discussion

Post by bradleykirksey »

Edit: I don't know how to read and I'm sorry
Bradley Kirksey
Mayor of quiz bowl at the University of Central Florida (2010-2015)
The club at Reformed Theology Seminary Orlando (2017 - 2021)
Locked