
Gish Gallop - diablo1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
======
dang
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&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=gish%20gallop&sort=byDate&type=comment).

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)

------
cxr
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.

~~~
DonHopkins
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.

[...]

------
bobbiechen
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
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
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.

~~~
renewiltord
It's just a game, right? Would be like concluding which country is more
powerful, UK or Croatia, based off a football game.

------
Ididntdothis
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.

~~~
pdonis
_> How do you deal with this strategy?_

By not debating with people who use it.

The hard question is how you prevent people who use this strategy from having
influence over the opinions of others. We haven't solved that problem.

~~~
Ididntdothis
“By not debating with people who use it.“

That’s what I usually do. But it’s sad to see well intentioned people seduced
by nonsense.

------
renewiltord
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
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.

