The winning team: Tin Puljic and Miri Muntean – © Berlin Debating Union

The Berlin IV 2020 (Online edition) is over. The final was won by the team in Opening Opposition named Quarantined, Scrappy, and Hungry (Tin Puljić, Miri Muntean), a mixed-team by the Zagreb Student Debate Forum and the Debattierklub Wien. The other final teams were real pandemics have curves (Amichay Even Chen, Roy Schulman; Tel Aviv) in Opening Government, A License and a Penance (Srishti Krishnamoorthi-Cavell, Tudor Musat; Cambridge) in Closing Government and LSE CM (Ciara Mitchell, Hamza Tariq Chaudhry) in Closing Opposition. The debate on the motion “THBT in times of severe crisis, individuals have a moral obligation to dedicate themselves towards combating the crisis” was judged by Robert Barrie as chair together with Dani Georgiev, Katharina Jansen, Lorna Staines and Rok Hafner.

The pro-am final saw a victory of the Closing Government Edinburgh B (Adam Mallis, Georgia Bentley) against the Opening Government Edinburgh (C)rackheads are the Most Important Actor (Cerys Walsh, Jason Woods), Opening Opposition Streitkultur A (Sven Jentzsch, Yara Remppis) and Closing Opposition Imperial OA (Alex Nielsen, Olga Enikeeva). The motion read “THBT individuals should only donate to charities that are scored highly by Effective Altruism” while the adjudication panel consisted of Lucy Murphy (chair), Josh Freeman, Nicole O’Sullivan, Rachel Homnick and Timothy Lo.

Best speaker of the tournament was Ciara Mitchell with an average of 81.80 speaker points. Tamir West placed first in the novice category with an average of 77.20 speaker points.

Open Break:
1. real pandemics have curves (Amichay Even Chen, Roy Schulman) – 14 pts |814 spks
2. LSE CM (Ciara Mitchell, Hamza Tariq Chaudhry) – 13 pts |815 spks
3. Quarantined, Scrappy, and Hungry (Tin Puljić, Miri Muntean) – 12 pts | 807 spks
4. TCD Hist A (Catríona O’Brien, Jack Kennedy) – 12 pts | 794 spks
5. A License and a Penance (Srishti Krishnamoorthi-Cavell, Tudor Musat) – 11 pts | 812 spks
6. ULU A (Przemek Stolarski, Maurice Coutiel) – 11 pts | 785 spks
7. Two Meters Logical Gaps (Hadar Goldberg, Noga Diamant) – 11 pts | 783 spks
8. cool hetero guys (Deepak Manchik, Ben Jackson) – 11 pts | 642 spks
9. TBA Marta & Đorđe (Marta Vasić, Đorđe Radosavljević) – 10 pts | 795 spks
10. Go Foucault Yourself (Caoimhín Hamill, Jack Synnott) – 10 pts | 793 spks
11. Mr Gorbachev – tear down this call (Samuel Scheuer, Marius Hobbhahn) – 10 pts | 785 spks
12. The elderly, the underprivileged and the vulnerable (Tamir West, Annie Schwartz) – 10 pts | 772 spks
13. TBA Petar & Olja (Petar Zec, Olja Bošnjak) – 10 pts | 768 spks
14. BITS Goa A (Suhas Prasanna, Yash Chaturvedi) – 10 pts | 768 spks
15. Am I wearing Pants? (Yishai Binnes, Tamar Ben Meir) – 10 pts | 767 spks
16. Imperial IR (Ivan Kapelyukh, Rhys Steele) – 9 pts | 785 spks

Pro Am Break:
1. Two Meters Logical Gaps (Hadar Goldberg, Noga Diamant) – 11 pts | 783 spks (Open Break)
2. The elderly, the underprivileged and the vulnerable (Tamir West, Annie Schwartz) 10 pts | 772 spks (Open Break)
1. Streitkultur A (Sven Jentzsch, Yara Remppis) – 9 pts | 760 spks
2. Edinburgh (C)rackheads are the Most Important Actor (Cerys Walsh, Jason Woods)
3. Edinburgh B (Georgia Bentley, Adam Mallis) – 8 pts | 762 spks
4. Imperial OA (Olga Enikeeva, Alex Nielsen) – 8 pts | 759 spks

Adjudication Break:
As adjudicators broke in alphabetical order Dani Georgiev, Elijah Kochin, Emily Frizell, Franka Boender, Ife Grillo, Jacklin Kwan, Joris Graff, Josef Moscovici, Joseph Lewis, Josh Freeman, Katharina Jansen, Klaudia Maciejewska, Lena Kolle, Lorna Staines, Lovro Šprem, Lucy Murphy, Mehdi Naderi Varandi, Milos Marjanovic, Nick Zervoudis, Nicole O’Sullivan, Rachel Homnick, Robert Barrie, Rok Hafner, Ron Leizrowice, Spencer Shia and Timothy Lo.

The tournament was fully held online via the program Zoom, replacing the (Corona) cancelled Berlin IV which was supposed to take place in May. It was organised by the Berlin Debating Union. The CA panel consisted of Milos Marjanovic, Katharina Jansen, Ron Leizrowice, Rachel Homnick and Josef Moscovici. Marthe Wijfjes was responsible for the tab. Linsey Keur acted as equity officer. 69 teams were participating. The tournament consisted of five rounds, a break to quarterfinals as well as a pro-am final.

All proceeds of the registration fee were donated to charity. Instead of a trophy, the winning teams could allocate 308€ each to a charity of their choice with Sci Foundation and Give Directly being the chosen organisations.

Motions:

R1: This House would give financial incentives to people who live a healthy lifestyle (eg. no smoking, exercising regularly, healthy diet)

R2: Infoslide: A pill has recently been invented which can fully emotionally distances the individual taking it from a person of their choosing. The pill is free and easily available to everyone in the world, and only works when voluntarily taken. The pill is safe and irreversible.

This House prefers a world where this pill exists.

R3: Infoslide: A universal basic income (UBI) is a form of social security in which all citizens of a country receive an unconditional monthly sum of money from the government.

This House would implement UBI in times of crisis.

R4: Infoslide: The Assassins Brotherhood is a recently formed, unaffiliated, secretive organization of highly talented assassins.

They have a near-perfect track record of committing highly visible, extra-judicial killings, with no direct collateral damage and escaping unidentified afterwards. Their location is a complete mystery, and all attempts to hunt them down have ended in failure.

Their philosophy or “creed” instructs their organization to protect the weak by targeting leaders of authoritarian states.

This House prefers a world where the Assassins Brotherhood exists.

R5: Infoslide: “Originalism” is a concept regarding the interpretation of a Constitution that asserts that all statements in a country’s constitution must be interpreted based on the original understanding of the authors at the time it was ratified.

This House believes that Supreme Court justices should adopt Originalist stances in applying constitutional law.

QF: This House prefers to follow a religion where one’s fate in the material world is predetermined, rather than one where one’s choices and actions influence their fate.

SF: This House supports the decline of oil prices.

Pro-Am F: Infoslide: Effective altruism is a philosophy, and social movement that attempts to apply evidence and reason to determining the most effective ways to improve the world. Effective altruism often has a focus on lives saved per amount donated, based on numerical, target based goals. For example – Effective Altrusim says it better to purchase malaria vaccines for 5 children, than provide end of life care to a child with a terminal illness.

This House believes that individuals should only donate to charities that are scored highly by Effective Altruism.

F: This House believes that in times of severe crisis, individuals have a moral obligation to dedicate themselves towards combating the crisis.

jm.