How To Response To Gish Gallops

What to do when met with a string of nonsense.

This was originally an X post, but many keep sharing it so I’m resharing and expanding it here.

If you’re involved in the issue of circumcision, you’ve probably seen a gish gallop.

A gish gallop is when someone floods the debate with weak claims that take far longer to debunk than they do to make.

Here is what a gish gallop looks like on the issue of circumcision:

“Circumcision prevents [bad study], [false claim], and [claim even doctors don't believe]. It also [religious concept from a completely different discourse]. It's [platitude like "cleaner" or "healthier" with no explanation for what this means] and [cultural myth with zero studies]. Plus, [claim based on their personal subjective preferences]."

Debunking each of those claims would require a paragraph each.

In some cases, I've interviewed the author of the study they're citing after a 2-second Google search. While I could take them through that study, it would not change their mind, because they don't actually care, and would immediately move on to the next baseless claim.

In these cases, it's better to reframe. For example, if you reply: "Would those be reasons to circumcise women too?" they'll immediately start making intactivist arguments for you.

Depending on where you want to take the conversation, you can try different reframes. A reply like: "Wow, it sure seems like you've spent a lot of time thinking about reasons to touch babies' genitals" will likely be met with anger and fragility, since you’ve shifted the conversation to their underlying motivation for making those claims.

The purpose of a gish gallop is to flood the conservation with surface-level nonsense so the speaker doesn’t have to examine the issue. Gish gallops are often full of thought-terminating cliches. The points are being brought up to end discussion, not invite deeper exploration.

If you spend time debunking an individual claim in a gish gallop, the person will often ignore that one of their points has been disproven and immediately move on to the next. Rather than accept their frame, call out the tactic they are using and set your own frame.