I recently learned about something called the Gish Gallop, which I had never heard of.  I was relieved to discover that people I know hadn’t heard of it either.  The Gish Gallop is a debate technique deploying a firehose of bluster, often falsehoods, that the debate opponent simply can’t fact-check or even keep up with.  It’s named for a Creationist back in the ‘30s called Duane Gish, who used the technique to great effect. I had serendipitously discovered a book by Mehdi Hasan, called Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking, and this is where I […]

I used to love the TV show M*A*S*H.  I think it’s one of the greatest shows of all time.  It was about a mobile army surgical hospital right near the front lines in Korea.  When combat heated up, the wounded would come in overwhelming waves, resulting in surgery sessions many hours straight.  The whole point of a MASH unit was to get the wounded to care as quickly as possible, which helped increase survival rates.  But with too few surgeons and too many wounded, they were forced to triage.  Triage is prioritizing — determining who is going to die, who […]