8 ms·

Gish Gallop

33 points by diablo1 6y ago

bobbiechen 6y ago
A particularly ridiculous version of this is "spreading" in debate, where you speak extremely fast so that your opponent has difficulty addressing all your points. Wired video with some interviews: https://youtu.be/0FPsEwWT6K0 https://youtu.be/0FPsEwWT6K0 And a transcribed video from a highly-prepped debate: https://youtu.be/JhzwSlK4uEc https://youtu.be/JhzwSlK4uEc
- wgerard 6y ago
  To be fair, I remember this being a problem even when I participated in middle school debate ~20 years ago. If you make a bunch of points that the other team doesn't refute directly, you get to nail them on it later. Short of you speaking so quickly that even the judge didn't understand you, it was heavily encouraged to speak extremely quickly even back then.
  - Ididntdothis 6y ago
    Stuff like this is why I don’t put any weight into whoever “wins” a debate. There is skill involved but in debating but it’s not about who had the facts on their side.
    - crankylinuxuser 6y ago
      But what about the points you didn't cover? They're correct, right? /s But yeah, I considered doing debate as I thought it was about logic and truthfulness. After watching a spectacle like this locally, I noped out of it.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      It's just a game, right? Would be like concluding which country is more powerful, UK or Croatia, based off a football game.
renewiltord 6y ago
The online version of this is a whole bunch of 'sources' in a comment. In fact, I suspect that there is a number of sources in an online comment where the truth goes up in sources and then drops.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Sometimes I've seen a "source" given that didn't actually support the claimed point. I think I've only seen that with a single source, though, not multiple sources. But when asked for a source, they just dropped a comment containing a URL that was superficially related, and someone had to take the time to actually read the link to find out that it didn't actually support the disputed point. In fact, the whole "a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on" idea might be considered a variant of this. Making fine-sounding claims is easy; proving that they are false is harder. If you make claims faster than they can be refuted, you can get at least some people to believe you, even if much of what you say is false.
Ididntdothis 6y ago
How do you deal with this strategy? A lot of hyper partisans and conspiracy theorists hammer you with a ton of “facts” that sometimes are correct but most of the times with half truths, misinterpretations and a pinch of things that are plain wrong. If you are lucky you can refute immediately but often it takes a lot of time and effort to research the topic. In a debate or discussion with friends I often feel stupid saying things like “I don’t believe the stuff you are saying but I need to research things for a while before I can tell you what exactly is wrong.” . The current pandemic is a good example. The “Plandemic” movie is making its rounds in the neighborhood but all I can say is that I can’t imagine that thousands of researchers around the world are part of a conspiracy. It just doesn’t make sense.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  I don't think you can. I think misinformation is simply superior at getting traction, especially with the internet where people who are disingenuous can immediately get out ahead of real knowledge.
  - setpatchaddress 6y ago
    The human race is doomed if that's the case. There must be a way to fight this.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      The only way to fight it is for having false beliefs to have bad consequences, and having true beliefs to have good consequences. But the advance of civilization is basically the continual reduction in bad consequences from false beliefs and good consequences from true ones. Once upon a time, having false beliefs would get you killed and having true beliefs would help you survive. Now having false beliefs gets you Facebook likes, and having true ones gets you downvotes.
    - krapp 6y ago
      There's no way to fight it that won't be considered censorship and a violation of free speech by many people, and that won't be fought against tooth and nail on principle alone.
cxr 6y ago
I've noticed that moving the goalposts is extremely prevalent on HN, which makes for pretty frustrating conversations (or just reading). And then sometimes it's a tag team. E.g.: Person A writes their comment. Person B1 offers a rebuttal. Personal A offers their response. Person B2 offers a second rebuttal that abandons the premise behind B1's rebuttal, and may actually be at odds with it. Person A ends up either deflated or looking defeated. It's like the cross product of a Gish gallop and a DDoS.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  I think of it more as graffiti. Somebody has a new thought, they write it on a wall somewhere (append it to a thread). Not always in 'response' to anything. Is there a better way to expand on a topic? It has to go somewhere, and all there are, is threads.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  This is especially frustrating when A's response is only within the context of B1's rebuttal, not A's full position. B2 then attacks the response as if it were A's full position. I like the DDoS analogy...
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  It's a long tradition! https://smbx.org/bsg-guide-for-sending-email/ https://smbx.org/bsg-guide-for-sending-email/ Proposed Symbolics guidelines for mail messages BSG 4/11/84 [...] It is customary to attack the someone by including his or her message, indented (unless you are using MM), and replying point by point, as someone debating someone they are watching on TV, or hearing on the radio. It is considered artful to append many messages on a subject, leaving only the most inflammatory lines from each, and reply to all in one swift blow. The choice of lines to support your argument can make or break your case. Replying to one's own message is a rarely-exposed technique for switching positions once you have thought about something only after sending mail. [...] You get 3 opportunities to advertise your Rock band, no more. Idiosyncratic indentations, double-spacing, capitalization, etc., while stamps of individuality, leave one an easy target for parody. [...]
rc_mob 6y ago
This is online Republicans favorite tactic. 30 links compiled, each link having some unique logical issue so that you can’t call them all out for the same reason. No one wants to go through and debunk 30 links individually
dang 6y ago
If people keep submitting (edit: I should really say upvoting) wikipedia.org articles on widely popular topics, we're going to have to penalize Wikipedia submissions again. We used to do that, but I was persuaded to remove the penalty. This case is particularly bad because the topic has long been an internet cliché, and also because it has a meta aspect. Meta is internet forum crack, so we try not to do it here—er, not too much. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114661 is another current thread where the topic is much too well-known to make a good Wikipedia submission. Good HN submissions from Wikipedia are about topics that have not been widely discussed before, and about which there isn't a good article available elsewhere. (If there is, it's best to submit the latter instead.) Since Wikipedia is the most generic of sources, short of maybe a dictionary, it should be the domain of last resort for a topic. I appreciate that not everyone has seen the same things. You can always use search as a proxy for how well known something is: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=gish%20gallop&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... This has been coming up repeatedly recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237

33 points by diablo1 6y ago

A particularly ridiculous version of this is "spreading" in debate, where you speak extremely fast so that your opponent has difficulty addressing all your points. Wired video with some interviews: https://youtu.be/0FPsEwWT6K0 https://youtu.be/0FPsEwWT6K0 And a transcribed video from a highly-prepped debate: https://youtu.be/JhzwSlK4uEc https://youtu.be/JhzwSlK4uEc

wgerard 6y ago
To be fair, I remember this being a problem even when I participated in middle school debate ~20 years ago. If you make a bunch of points that the other team doesn't refute directly, you get to nail them on it later. Short of you speaking so quickly that even the judge didn't understand you, it was heavily encouraged to speak extremely quickly even back then.
- Ididntdothis 6y ago
  Stuff like this is why I don’t put any weight into whoever “wins” a debate. There is skill involved but in debating but it’s not about who had the facts on their side.
  - crankylinuxuser 6y ago
    But what about the points you didn't cover? They're correct, right? /s But yeah, I considered doing debate as I thought it was about logic and truthfulness. After watching a spectacle like this locally, I noped out of it.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    It's just a game, right? Would be like concluding which country is more powerful, UK or Croatia, based off a football game.

renewiltord 6y ago

The online version of this is a whole bunch of 'sources' in a comment. In fact, I suspect that there is a number of sources in an online comment where the truth goes up in sources and then drops.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Sometimes I've seen a "source" given that didn't actually support the claimed point. I think I've only seen that with a single source, though, not multiple sources. But when asked for a source, they just dropped a comment containing a URL that was superficially related, and someone had to take the time to actually read the link to find out that it didn't actually support the disputed point. In fact, the whole "a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on" idea might be considered a variant of this. Making fine-sounding claims is easy; proving that they are false is harder. If you make claims faster than they can be refuted, you can get at least some people to believe you, even if much of what you say is false.

Ididntdothis 6y ago

How do you deal with this strategy? A lot of hyper partisans and conspiracy theorists hammer you with a ton of “facts” that sometimes are correct but most of the times with half truths, misinterpretations and a pinch of things that are plain wrong. If you are lucky you can refute immediately but often it takes a lot of time and effort to research the topic. In a debate or discussion with friends I often feel stupid saying things like “I don’t believe the stuff you are saying but I need to research things for a while before I can tell you what exactly is wrong.” . The current pandemic is a good example. The “Plandemic” movie is making its rounds in the neighborhood but all I can say is that I can’t imagine that thousands of researchers around the world are part of a conspiracy. It just doesn’t make sense.

gameswithgo 6y ago
I don't think you can. I think misinformation is simply superior at getting traction, especially with the internet where people who are disingenuous can immediately get out ahead of real knowledge.
- setpatchaddress 6y ago
  The human race is doomed if that's the case. There must be a way to fight this.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    The only way to fight it is for having false beliefs to have bad consequences, and having true beliefs to have good consequences. But the advance of civilization is basically the continual reduction in bad consequences from false beliefs and good consequences from true ones. Once upon a time, having false beliefs would get you killed and having true beliefs would help you survive. Now having false beliefs gets you Facebook likes, and having true ones gets you downvotes.
  - krapp 6y ago
    There's no way to fight it that won't be considered censorship and a violation of free speech by many people, and that won't be fought against tooth and nail on principle alone.

cxr 6y ago

I've noticed that moving the goalposts is extremely prevalent on HN, which makes for pretty frustrating conversations (or just reading). And then sometimes it's a tag team. E.g.: Person A writes their comment. Person B1 offers a rebuttal. Personal A offers their response. Person B2 offers a second rebuttal that abandons the premise behind B1's rebuttal, and may actually be at odds with it. Person A ends up either deflated or looking defeated. It's like the cross product of a Gish gallop and a DDoS.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
I think of it more as graffiti. Somebody has a new thought, they write it on a wall somewhere (append it to a thread). Not always in 'response' to anything. Is there a better way to expand on a topic? It has to go somewhere, and all there are, is threads.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
This is especially frustrating when A's response is only within the context of B1's rebuttal, not A's full position. B2 then attacks the response as if it were A's full position. I like the DDoS analogy...
DonHopkins 6y ago
It's a long tradition! https://smbx.org/bsg-guide-for-sending-email/ https://smbx.org/bsg-guide-for-sending-email/ Proposed Symbolics guidelines for mail messages BSG 4/11/84 [...] It is customary to attack the someone by including his or her message, indented (unless you are using MM), and replying point by point, as someone debating someone they are watching on TV, or hearing on the radio. It is considered artful to append many messages on a subject, leaving only the most inflammatory lines from each, and reply to all in one swift blow. The choice of lines to support your argument can make or break your case. Replying to one's own message is a rarely-exposed technique for switching positions once you have thought about something only after sending mail. [...] You get 3 opportunities to advertise your Rock band, no more. Idiosyncratic indentations, double-spacing, capitalization, etc., while stamps of individuality, leave one an easy target for parody. [...]

rc_mob 6y ago

This is online Republicans favorite tactic. 30 links compiled, each link having some unique logical issue so that you can’t call them all out for the same reason. No one wants to go through and debunk 30 links individually

dang 6y ago

If people keep submitting (edit: I should really say upvoting) wikipedia.org articles on widely popular topics, we're going to have to penalize Wikipedia submissions again. We used to do that, but I was persuaded to remove the penalty. This case is particularly bad because the topic has long been an internet cliché, and also because it has a meta aspect. Meta is internet forum crack, so we try not to do it here—er, not too much. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114661 is another current thread where the topic is much too well-known to make a good Wikipedia submission. Good HN submissions from Wikipedia are about topics that have not been widely discussed before, and about which there isn't a good article available elsewhere. (If there is, it's best to submit the latter instead.) Since Wikipedia is the most generic of sources, short of maybe a dictionary, it should be the domain of last resort for a topic. I appreciate that not everyone has seen the same things. You can always use search as a proxy for how well known something is: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=gish%20gallop&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... This has been coming up repeatedly recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237