While most know that computers can be hacked, what’s not as well known is that people can be hacked. While computers can be hacked with malicious code, people can be hacked with rhetoric.

To keep the Antivirus For Your Mind up to date, it helps to understand the intellectual trickery that’s being employed in the online world. To that end, today we’re looking at the Gish Gallop.

Sometimes, you hear someone make their case in a manner that’s compelling in its confidence, and with the rapid-fire delivery of his points. He’ll make one point after the other, hammering away as he makes his case. If you’re really paying attention, you may spot a point or two that could be answered. But overall, it seems like he really did his homework.

But, not so fast. What he just did may have been a Gish Gallop.

So, what is a Gish Gallop? A Gish Gallop is what a person is doing when they make their case by rapid-firing numerous claims that are selected as supporting the case, whether the claims are valid or not. A Gish Gallop is as effective as it is because any debate opponent that the arguer may have cannot answer each of the arguments presented in a reasonable amount of time, or the allotted time, as the case may be. What’s more, most people aren’t familiar with this debate tactic, making them more susceptible to being wowed over by the presenter’s confidence and apparent knowledgeability.

The Gish Galloper may even claim victory, because his opponent didn’t answer each of the claims made, which isn’t reasonable to expect considering that it takes more time to refute a claim than to make it.

On social media, a Gish Gallop may take the form of a list. And on a platform like X, where replies have a character limit, to answer each point might not be possible without going into a long thread.

The Gish Gallop was named for the famed creationist Duane Gish, who not only employed the tactic, but also frequently changed the topic before his claims could be answered.

Here’s an example of a Gish Gallop you may see:

The case for socialism is quite clear:

• Capitalism tends towards one person owning the means of production, leading to an abusive power dynamic,
• People cannot be trusted to manage their own finances, as evidenced by their stupid financial decisions,
• Paying people only a fraction of the value that they produce is predatory,
• A debt-based monetary system bankrupts the people,
• Because the currency is produced by the government, they can control it as strictly as they please,
• It’s more fair when everyone is paid the same,
• People who own businesses are each like the top 1%, making them in a better position to pay their fair share.

What’s more, the idea of determining how I produce value on my own is mentally taxing.

Breadtoob Bradley

…And on, and on, and on.

Answering each of Breadtoob Bradley’s fallacious claims can take all day, and there are things that you could probably instead be doing. Breaking down each of these points can result in you typing up multiple paragraphs, so you’d probably be spending a disproportionate amount of time refuting each of the claims compared to the few seconds at a time that it took for Breadtoob Bradley to just fart them out.

And if someone is using the Gish Gallop deliberately, that may even be what they’re counting on. After all, someone in another ideological tribe cannot be counted on to respect your time.

However, Breadtoob Bradley’s rant might impress those who don’t recognize his tactic for what it is. In which case, it might be productive to step in and answer it.

But how does one go about it? What are some effective ways to answer the Gish Gallop?

For one thing, you can just call out the Gish Gallop. If you call attention to the tactic being employed, it’s not going to seem nearly as impressive. Once people know that such a tactic is being used to attempt to impress them, it will be understood for the psychological trick that it is, and the claims being made are more likely to be examined by others more critically.

Another effective way of dealing with the Gish Gallop is by choosing just one point that the opponent made, then hammering away at that.

Remember that the assumptions that the Gish Gallop appeals to is that if a person can present many points at a time, then they must be knowledgeable, and the assumption that if the opponent doesn’t answer all claims, then they can claim victory over any claim left unrefuted.

However, that’s not necessarily the reality of the matter.

Similarly to how a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, the entire Gish Gallop can fail if a carefully-selected point is sufficiently refuted. As a chain under load fails if just one link fails, if just one point in the Gish Gallop can be broken apart, the Galloper’s capacity for reasoning can be called into question.

Therefore, if you only have so much space or time to answer a Gish Gallop, select just one of the opponent’s arguments, then really hammer away at it.

You’re Gish Galloping. Many fallacious arguments does not a strong argument make.

What’s more, how does the state owning all the means of production prevent an abusive power dynamic? The state has the capacity to become abusive, not just individuals.

If that’s your first point, odds are, you didn’t think the rest of them the whole way through.

Based Benny

The party’s over.

But even if you don’t answer it, if you see the Gish Gallop at play and recognize it as the rhetorical trick that it is, you won’t fall for its hypnotic effect.

A Gish Gallop is less likely to be attempted in a format where a person is permitted ample time and space to answer a claim, such as on online discussion boards. So, you’re more likely to come across it in debates that are timed, or other formats where time and space are limited. Often, the Gish Gallop is designed to take advantage of the debate format in an attempt to impress the judges. Such debates are more of a game to exhibit one’s finesse with rhetoric than they are intended to discover the truth of a matter.

Outside of school debate clubs and the like, the use of dishonest tactics to “win” arguments is not a victory in which one can take true pride.

Speaking of, in high school debate clubs, there’s a phenomenon which is similar to the Gish Gallop. You’ve noticed it when you see a student talk super fast, often to the point of gasping for breath, in an effort to make as many points as they can in the allotted time. This is called “spreading” (a portmanteau of “speed” and “reading”), and it’s an embarrassment to the sport of timed debate.

Now that you know about the Gish Gallop, are you going to be as impressed when someone on social media attempts the shotgun approach in their pseudo-intellectualism?