The Gish Gallop.

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Ferno
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The Gish Gallop.

Post by Ferno »

How it works, in a nutshell.
Cite a giant wall of text, or a three hour long [Y]ou[T]ube video, and then claim it as irrefutable proof.

When they ask for the relevant excerpt, whine about how it's not your job to do the research for them.

When they go through the video and start explaining why the video is wrong, accuse them of cherry picking [...] because they aren't addressing the "important" arguments.

When they ask you what the important arguments are, insist that it's not your job to do the research for them.

And... repeat.
Longer explanation

which leads to the argument that, that it's easier to produce bull★■◆● than to refute it. The harry potter reference is nice, too.
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Lothar
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Re: The Gish Gallop.

Post by Lothar »

The classical name for this is "snowjob" -- an attempt to overwhelm someone with low-quality information, as if burying them in a blizzard and then complaining that they haven't removed every single snowflake.

One of my rules for dealing with an apparent snowjob is to ask someone to specify which piece of the argument they'd like addressed first -- which part they consider the most important. I like to specify that I'm not willing to go back and forth for weeks on a bunch of tangential arguments the other person doesn't even care about just to find the one or two they do care about. And if they try the "it's not my job to do the research" line, I counter with "it's your job to communicate clearly. If you've watched through this 3-hour video and find it convincing, surely you can communicate what specific argument you found convincing well enough to either encourage me to watch it or to explain it well enough that I can address it."
Izchak says: 'slow down. Think clearly.'
April Fools Day is the one day of the year that people critically evaluate news articles before accepting them as true.
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