4 ms·

How do you deal with it?

• zbentley 3y ago
  Careful note taking, keeping your head and identifying contingent and similar arguments such that you don't have to spend tons of time on each counterpoint, prioritizing offensive ("your claim X actually supports my side, not yours, because Y", aka. turns) rebuttals over defensive ones, and not spending undue time on weaker claims that the judge is likely to doubt as well. There's a lot more you can do, but those are some pretty uncontentious strategies. Source: debated for 8 years in school.
  • lupire 3y ago
    The way to respond to Gish Gallop is to refuse to engage.
    • zbentley 3y ago
      I was referring to competitive debate, where refusal to engage isn't a feasible option: judges rarely consider "spreading" (Gish Galloping, basically) inherently abusive, and convincing them of its abusiveness via a speed Kritik is widely considered to be a poor strategy, since the offending team is likely able to overwhelm the points of the Kritik with spreading as well.
• morelisp 3y ago
  A gish gallop is an asymmetric attack. They can produce nonsense faster than, say, a physicist can produce physics or a mathematician proofs; and usually have nothing else to do with their time. But in a policy debate framework both sides have equal time, neither is doing original research and both are expected to cite qualified evidence, the judge understands the structural flow of the arguments, and you can say "this is nonsense" faster than they can "explain" the point. Or as Wikipedia even says: Generally, it is more difficult to use the Gish gallop in a structured debate than a free-form one.