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by AlexB138 3403 days ago
The Gish Trot, then?

I joke, but the whole point of the Gish Gallop is to rapid fire weak arguments. I don't think it exactly fits.

As an aside, does anyone know of a good source that categorizes and explains these modern underhanded argument techniques?

1 comments

I've seen the term "Rhetological Fallacies" used - there's no shortage of resources enumerating them online. Wikipedia has a whole section, there's a website called rationalwiki and commonly cited (though I have yet to read) is Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit".

For a more askew look at the topic check out Derailing for Dummies :)

http://www.derailingfordummies.com

FWIW I think its important to be careful with these concepts. I often see a perfectly valid point though a poorly constructed argument blown out of the water by reference to these techniques. There's an awful lot of subtlety to this stuff which if misapplied can cause you to miss out on certain valuable points being made just because of how they're being made. Also important to remember that these "weapons" can also be abused by the hypothetical ne'er-do-wells to prevent novel contributions to discussion ...