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Do you have a good way to keep these rhetorical techniques and/or logical fallacies straight? I often find myself in situations where I can describe them but not be able to connect each one’s proper name, even though I’ve tried to commit them to memory. It’s very frustrating and embarrassing.
I've just seen a lot of them. For me, it's about understanding the motivation and technique of the person doing the bullshit. As well as the reason for each name.
A Gish gallop was named after an actual politician named Gish who would famously continue to say ridiculous things until he overwhelmed his opponent.
Sealioning was named after a popular comic taking a random topic of sealions to describe the rhetorical trick of continually asking for proof or evidence of obvious things, or of an intentionally wrong version of an opponent's argument, until the opponent is frustrated into quitting.
Straw man is related to the idea of a literal straw man / scarecrow, an intentionally false and weak misrepresentation of an opponent's argument. Something that seems real from a distance but isn't an actual threat and can be easily pushed over.
Reverse cargo cult is a complicated one that requires reading a couple of articles about what a cargo cult is (a real sociological phenomenon). But the gist is someone arguing that there's no such thing as truth, everyone lies, trying to change things is futile, and anyone who seems to be trying to do good is actually lying.
There's plenty of other tricks that don't have popular names (yet) and the best you can do is to describe them. But the first step is recognizing what the other person is trying to do.
This is helpful, thanks!