Ever wondered how you would categorize things you read or write about?
This is called topic modelling, and it’s simple with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), so let’s take it for a spin! If you want to do it yourself, check out this article and the accompanying Jupyter notebook.
While it’s easy for humans to put things into categories -- in terms of my fanfiction reading habits, I can quickly tell you that I read humor, tragedy, and unusual AUs -- it’s much harder for a computer to determine genre from examining a text. Topic modelling has been shown to highly successful when looking at messages or emails, though, so let’s have a look at some comments!
I scraped all the comments on my own AO3 works and stacked them together -- above is an excerpt. By looking at all these comments, will certain topic groups stand out?
With a few short steps, we can build a model using this data! It depends on the number of categories you want, so you’ve got to play around a little, but it’s fast so you can do that. I finally settled on four categories, shown below:
Looks like we’ve got some decent distinctions!
Topic 0 falls nicely into the category of ‘BnHA fanfic’
Topic 1 likewise is about ‘ATLA fanfic’
Topic 2 is hard to distinguish unless you’re me, and know exactly what kinds of comments I tend to get at the end of my ATLA tragedy, your name upon my gravestone (although I’m a bit surprised the word ‘laugh’ is in there instead of ‘cry’).
Topic 3 I’d call general comments.
By the way, the reason some words appear to be missing their endings is because all the text was lemmatized and stemmed (basically changed to their root form).
So what’s the math doing there? Well, what this has actually done was training a model! With these formulae, any comment not in the dataset can be categorized, using the words present in the comment. Let’s try it out!
Here’s the latest comment in my inbox and what the model predicts:
It scores high in the ‘general comments’ section, which is fair.
I’ll try a few more...
Well this was definitely a comment on an ATLA fic! :D
Curious about the special category for your name upon my gravestone ... well, this comment just gets classified in the ‘general’ section, although the next highest candidate is in fact the correct category. Still, this is pretty fun! (Topic modelling worked very well on a different dataset of news articles -- I wasn’t expecting much of a result here, but happy to find that manages to find some groupings!)
Finally, let’s finish off with a kind of cluster map for the different topics!
What’s next? I’m thinking of looking at popular one-shots in a big fandom... my default is ATLA, but if there’s something different you want to see, let me know!
"The obligation to aid those seeking asylum outweighs national security concerns."
So far, my primary concern with this topic is how it’s phrased. It’s definitive. More to the point, to use an old Policy cliche, this is a zero-sum resolution, which is funny, because this is not a policy oriented topic. This is a value debate, considering the use of the words “obligation” and “outweighs.” However, this could potentially be twisted into a fact/preponderance of evidence debate, especially if the Con has their way.
It seems to me that, if the Pro can get the judge to believe their round framework, then the topic is slightly skewed towards the Pro, but that advantage can only occur if the Pro can prove the “obligation.”
Likewise, the Con merely needs to disprove that obligation, and then prove that there is a threat to national security that could be worsened by providing asylum.
*Note that these topics are arranged on the website in alphabetical order*
Resolved: Corporations ought to value their responsibility to shareholders over the public interest when the two conflict.
Honestly, this topic is the worst. It sounds so boring, that I feel like sleeping from just reading it. Who comes up with these? They say that students do, but I feel like that they just tell us that to make us feel more comfortable about the topics because they, for some reason, think we are comforted by the idea that our horrible experiences are incited by our peers. It’s like institutionalized peer pressure. Though, I know if we got this topic (and we may or may not), I may begin to find it more enjoyable once we really start getting into it.
Regardless, this could still (unfortunately) very well be a topic that LDers nationwide will have to grin and bare through. Brace yourselves.
This is kind of also going to be a tutorial on how to analyze topics. Okay, so the first thing that we should do (obviously) when analyzing any topic is to first define the key words in said topic.
It’s important to define what a corporation is. Even if you think that everyone already knows what a key word in a topic is, define it anyway (unless it’s a word like am or are or is or something of the like).
Because, if not, some asshole is going to bring it up in cross, and when you say that you don’t have a definition for corporation, they’ll say that, in that case, the judge can only take their definition as the definition of corporation to look to for the whole round, and somehow make it benefit them, and they will be completely right, and you’ll look like a dumb ass in front of your judge. Let’s avoid that, shall we?
Also note that you should always, always, always have a source for your definitions. Never, ever lie about a source or make one up. Because I guarantee that someone, someday will pull out some receipts on your ass and wanna see your speech, and you will look like an idiot, and they will be right- because, newsflash, it’s against the rules to not have sources for anything in a round of LD, and your own personal definition for anything does not count, and won’t do you any good.
So, when selecting definitions for a round, any source is fine, but it’s also important to note that using a source from a more specific, topic-centric source is always better. Like, for example, last year, I got definitions for the topic on internet censorship from a Harvard study on internet censorship, that clearly defined every concept it discussed. Also make sure that your definition of any word somehow benefits your side of a case. Like, if you’re arguing a topic from a socialist point of view, define the words from a socialist perspective.
For example, any capitalist could define “universal health care” as something negative- like “a system of a health care that involves taking money from hardworking tax payers and distributing it among the people” (or something like that). But, if you’re going to analyze a health care topic from a socialist point of view, then you should define it as something like “a system of health care that involves re-budgeting the national budget and distributing it among the tax payers in a way that benefits them and ends institutionalized classicism” (or something like that). You get it?
Perspective is everything, and philosophy and morality are the very basis of Lincoln-Douglas. Literally. It’s called value debate for a reason.
So, don’t use these definitions literally in your constructive (unless they actually do benefit everything you’re saying), and try to go out of your way to find the perfect definitions for you. Unless you’re a real first-time novice, and have never done this before, there’s no excuse.
So, we’ll define corporation as simply what dictionary.com defines it as: an association of individuals, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members.
*Note that you’ll also need to understand what this definition means in layman’s terms, because a lot of LD debaters, I’ve noticed, ask what your personal definitions of words are during CX, and you don’t wanna seem like you just stole a definition from a varsity friend.*
Next, we should define ought. Most LD debaters define ought as “denoting a moral obligation, like should.” That’s a fine definition, just make sure you have a source (no, this blog is not a valid source). It’s important to stress this, but your opponent (especially if you’re AFF) needs to realize that the resolution doesn’t necessarily mean that we HAVE to do blah blah blah, but that we SHOULD do blah blah blah, because it’s just the moral, right thing to do. This isn’t PF. We’re arguing morality- not reality, even though we use reality as evidence to support morality sometimes. I cannot stress this enough.
After ought, define value. It’s rare that we ever see the phrase “ought to value” in any LD resolution, so you don’t have to get too comfortable with this, but nonetheless, it was probably specifically phrased that way, and thus, it’s important to stress that phrase. Since it’s sort of a phrase, and not exactly spoken as individual words (if that makes sense?) you don’t have to define value and ought individually, you can define them together, as a phrase. I have no source for this, but I would define them as something like “having a moral obligation to praise and appreciate something or someone,” or something like that. I don’t know. Figure it out.
I don’t really need to define responsibility. I don’t think you can mess that up. Just say it’s like “something the corporation in question is obligated to do by terms of a contract/moral obligation/social convention” or something of the like. Shareholders is probably the most important word in this resolution, and it’s important you take special care to define it properly, and not sink your own ship before you’ve even sailed it.
I won’t define shareholders for you, because there are so many ways that you can define it that will somewhat affect how you do in the end. But, I will explain to you what a shareholder is, so that you kind of get the gist of it.
A shareholder is essentially someone who buys stocks (a certain share of ownership of a company) from a corporation. This is beneficial to everyone, at least, in theory, because since a corporation is customer-owned, then not only will the company do well because it’s being funded by non-affiliated entrepreneurs who give more and more money the better a company does, so that they don’t have to spend as much money paying the bills and caring for its employees, but the company will also do well because it will be given ideas and input from the very consumers who buy their products in the first place.
Most corporations have shareholders nowadays, and a lot of ordinary people have shares. It’s a good investment.
You should also define public interest and conflict, but it’s hard to mess those up, so you probably won’t cause any sub-debates over the definitions of these words.
Now, you may ask, Mady, what is this topic actually saying? Well, essentially, the topic is just asking whether or not a company should cater to the interests of it’s shareholders over the public or not. For example- if there were to be, like, say, a public demand for an improvement to a product, the topic is just asking which side the corporation should take. Like, say that the public demanded that Apple release a new iOS update for the iPhone 6+, but the shareholders tell Apple that producing the said update would take up way too much time and money, and could possibly earn less than expected- which is a very real, common thing, and it could go either way.
*Note: I keep saying company but I mean corporation. Y’all know.*
Your goal with this topic, providing you’re AFF, is to prove that
A. The shareholders are usually right
B. It doesn’t really matter if they’re not anyway, because they have a legally binding affiliation with the corporation, are giving them money, and thus, actually have a say in what the corporation does and does not do
C. The corporation benefits from listening to the shareholders anyway, and
D. The public doesn’t always buy what they want regardless, but the shareholders are still giving the corporation money and invested in them, thus, get an input.
If you’re NEG, you need to prove that
A. The corporation exists to have the public’s favor and money
B. If consumers invest in buying a certain product from a company, then they deserve a good product and
C. The company would literally fail without the support of its customers.
And also, that your opponent is wrong, but that’s a given.
Anyways, that’s about it for now, if y’all wanna give some input, send in some asks, ask questions, answer questions, give advice, etc- feel free to do so. Discussion makes us better. I’d love to know how other varsities would analyze this topic, and what V/C you would use, so please let me know! Also, I’m so down to have one-on-ones with any novices who are confused about this topic, or LD in general. I was once you.
So far I have a page and a half topic analysis for Capital punishment in Texas is unjust. I have nothing else todo during the last week and a half of summer apparently. If someone wants to discuss this topic please let me know! I love discussing topics; it gives a lot of info from different perspectives! I have also spent my time making a playlisy for while I work on my topic analysis. It is 7 hours long and contains a lot of random shit that I never listen to and decided to throw it in there.
