Flooding Fallacies

Fallacies of Confusion, Flooding ad_Nauseam, Pluralism

The Gish Gallop - is a term for an eristic technique in which a debater attempts to overwhelm an opponent by excessive number of arguments, without regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. The term was coined by Eugenie Scott; it is named after the creationist Duane Gish, who used the technique frequently against proponents of evolution. It is similar to a method used in formal debate called spreading. 

Technique and countermeasures

During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths, and misrepresentations in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate. In practice, each point raised by the "Gish galloper" takes considerably more time to refute or fact-check than it did to state in the first place. The technique wastes an opponent's time and may cast doubt on the opponent's debating ability for an audience unfamiliar with the technique, especially if no independent fact-checking is involved or if the audience has limited knowledge of the topics. 

Generally, it is more difficult to use the Gish gallop in a structured debate than in a free-form one. If a debater is familiar with an opponent who is known to use the Gish gallop, the technique may be countered by pre-empting and refuting the opponent's commonly used arguments first, before the opponent has an opportunity to launch into a Gish gallop. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

Gish gallop is a fallacious debate tactic in which a person uses as many arguments as possible against their opponent, without any consideration into the strength of the arguments.

The arguer’s aim is to quickly back their position with a large amount of “evidence”, however, it is typically hastily put together, inaccurate, and even irrelevant to the issue at hand. In fact, the more arguments one can come up with, and the vaguer they are, the more effective the tactic becomes.

As such, the Gish gallop fallacy only focuses on the quantity of the arguments, not quality, in order to achieve its objective: to make it too difficult for the opponent to respond. As a result, the person committing it seemingly gains an upper hand in the debate.

Gish Gallop (Logical Fallacy): Definition and Examples https://fallacyinlogic.com/gish-gallop/

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Proof by intimidation (or argumentum verbosum) is a jocular phrase used mainly in mathematics to refer to a specific form of hand-waving, whereby one attempts to advance an argument by marking it as obvious or trivial, or by giving an argument loaded with jargon and obscure results. It attempts to intimidate the audience into simply accepting the result without evidence, by appealing to their ignorance and lack of understanding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_intimidation

Ad nauseam is a Latin term for an argument or other discussion that has continued to the point of nausea. For example, "this has been discussed ad nauseam" indicates that the topic has been discussed extensively and those involved have grown sick of it. The fallacy of dragging the conversation to an ad nauseam state in order to then assert one's position as correct due to it not having been contradicted is also called argumentum ad infinitum (to infinity) and argument from repetition.

The term is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as "to a disgusting or ridiculous degree; to the point of nausea." Colloquially, it is sometimes used as "until nobody cares to discuss it any more."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_nauseam

....Objective truth is drowned out in the resulting cacophony of voices. The effect of RT, as well as the myriad conspiracy-theory-producing websites across the world, including in the United States, has been to destabilize the kind of shared reality that is in fact required for democratic contestation.

What did Mill get wrong here?

Disagreement requires a shared set of presuppositions about the world. Even dueling requires agreement about the rules. You and I might disagree about whether President Obama’s healthcare plan was good policy. But if you suspect that President Obama was an undercover Muslim spy seeking to destroy the United States, and I do not, our discussion will not be productive. We will not be talking about the costs and benefits of Obama’s health policy, but rather about whether any of his policies mask a devious antidemocratic agenda.

In devising the strategy for RT, Russian propagandists, or “political technologists,” realized that with a cacophony of opinions and outlandish possibilities, one could undermine the basic background set of presuppositions about the world that allows for productive inquiry...

How Fascism Works - The Politics of Us and Them

-Jason Stanley

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586030/how-fascism-works-by-jason-stanley/9780525511830/

...“The people who deny science are often trying to uphold membership in something that they find meaningful,” says Nina Eliasoph, PhD, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California. That meaningful thing could be a political or religious affiliation or some other group that prizes certain ideas or ideals. Whatever shape that group takes, the important thing is that it has other members — it’s a community.

Once a community absorbs an idea into its collective viewpoint, rejecting that idea becomes akin to rejecting the whole community, Eliasoph says. And that sort of rejection is a very, very difficult thing for any of its members to do. “This is why you talk with people who deny science and the goalposts are always changing,” she says. “What really matters is the membership in the thing that has meaning, and to keep that membership you have to ignore certain ideas and pay attention to others.”...

Science Denial, Explained by Psychologists  

https://elemental.medium.com/how-identity-not-ignorance-leads-to-science-denial-533686e718fa

https://immortalista.blogspot.com/p/denialism-myths-refutations.html