Wednesday, December 29, 2004

The Gish Gallop – the power of asymmetrical debating tactics

Duane Gish, of the Creation Research Society has a very effective tactic for debates on evolution. He will bring up a whole laundry list of "problems" with evolution. When you have a fixed-bandwidth situation, either a time limit or a word count, this technique gives you quite an advantage. You can raise ten issues in one minute, and each issue can take an expert ten minutes to respond to adequately.

The same tactic, called "the spread", is used elsewhere. The mainstream media may be learning the hard way that it doesn't work as well as it used to.

Professional Creationists have learned it. They don't enter debates in unlimited-bandwidth media such as mailing lists or internet forums.

In the past, the mainstream media has been insulated from the give and take of unlimited bandwidth forums (UBF?). Not any more. The UBFs are coming to get them.

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