For this debate, “invasive-species eradication programs” are organized efforts to completely eliminate non-native organisms deemed harmful in a specified geographic area.

In Twelver Shia jurisprudence, a “marjaʿ” (plural “marājiʿ”) is a senior jurist qualified to derive Islamic legal rulings independently and recognized as an authority whose rulings other Twelver Shia Muslims may follow. Individual Twelver Shia Muslims who are not themselves qualified to derive such rulings generally choose a single marjaʿ whose rulings they follow.

There is no central body that appoints marājiʿ. Jurists instead become recognized as marājiʿ through their scholarly reputation and assessments of their legal expertise by other qualified scholars. Followers generally choose a marjaʿ based on knowledgeable scholars’ assessments of who is the “aʿlam” (“most learned”) jurist. Prominent marājiʿ have included Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Iran’s late supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Twelver jurists differ over whether followers may continue following a marjaʿ after the marjaʿ dies. Regardless of whether they permit followers to continue following a deceased marjaʿ, most do not permit individuals to begin following a marjaʿ who has already died.

For this debate, the “Third Way” is a strand of center-left politics that was especially influential during the 1990s and 2000s. It sought to modernize social democracy by relying primarily on markets and private enterprise to organize economic activity, while maintaining an active role for government in promoting social justice, economic security, and equality of opportunity. Prominent examples of Third Way politics included New Labour under Tony Blair in the United Kingdom, the New Democrats under Bill Clinton in the United States, and the Neue Mitte (“New Center”) under Gerhard Schröder in Germany.

For this debate, “Plan A,” proposed by the AI Futures Project, is an international agreement intended to delay the emergence of artificial superintelligence (ASI) until around 2040. It would begin between the United States and China and eventually include other countries controlling major artificial intelligence (AI) development projects or critical parts of the semiconductor supply chain. Under Plan A:

• the use of new software advances would be restricted to prevent rapid, AI-driven acceleration of AI research and development, while AI capabilities would continue to improve gradually through expanding computing capacity;

• research activity at frontier training data centers would be largely open to the public, while information at customer-serving data centers would remain private; and

• AI computing infrastructure, semiconductor fabrication facilities, and related industrial capacity built after the agreement began would be subject to mechanisms allowing them to be disabled or destroyed in response to violations of the agreement, largely reversing the expansion of computing capacity since the agreement began.

Tom Davidson, an AI progress researcher at Forethought, has proposed an alternative that retains Plan A’s broad framework, with two primary differences:

• rather than expanding computing capacity while restricting software advances, the alternative would prohibit the construction of new AI computing infrastructure and semiconductor fabrication facilities, while allowing AI capabilities to improve gradually through software advances using roughly fixed computing capacity; and

• software advances could then be slowed or paused as necessary to maintain gradual capability growth.

The “Gulf Clan” is a Colombian armed criminal organization that controls territory and generates revenue through cocaine trafficking, illegal gold mining, extortion, migrant smuggling, and other illicit activities. It is Colombia’s largest armed criminal organization by estimated membership.

“Fluid intelligence” is the capacity to reason, identify patterns, and solve novel problems without relying primarily on previously acquired knowledge.

For this debate, assume that a one-time magical event instantaneously redistributes fluid intelligence from Generation X (the group of people born from 1965 through 1980) to Generation Z (the group of people born from 1997 through 2012). Each member of Generation X loses an amount of fluid intelligence roughly equivalent in standardized-score terms to 0.5 standard deviations, or 7.5 intelligence quotient (IQ) points. All of the fluid intelligence lost is distributed equally among members of Generation Z, giving each member an increase equivalent to about 0.35 standard deviations, or 5.3 IQ points. (For intuition, relative to the pre-event age-standardized distribution of fluid intelligence, these shifts would move a person who began at average fluid intelligence from the 50th percentile to about the 31st percentile if they were in Generation X, or to about the 64th percentile if they were in Generation Z.) The event has no direct effects other than these changes in fluid intelligence.

India uses caste- and community-based reservations (quotas) for three primary categories of historically disadvantaged groups:

• Scheduled Castes (SCs), historically marginalized caste communities, many of which were subjected to “untouchability”;

• Scheduled Tribes (STs), constitutionally designated tribal communities; and

• Other Backward Classes (OBCs), a broad category of caste and social groups, including some Muslim communities, recognized by the government as having experienced significant social and educational disadvantage.

At the Union (national) level, 15% of government positions filled through nationwide competitive recruitment are reserved for SCs, 7.5% for STs, and 27% for eligible OBCs. The same percentages apply to seats in covered central educational institutions. State reservation policies vary. SCs and STs also receive reserved seats in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies, generally in proportion to their population shares.