A Gish Gallop is presenting a lot of not-very-good points and then drawing a conclusion, so that you ignore people who disagree with your conclusion if they missed any of your points. This is not drawing a conclusion, and I think the points are individually interesting.
The book I wrote about a month or two ago, Real Presences—now that was a Gish Gallop.
I was going to downvote your comment, but then I realized you gave a useful answer to a question I asked, so that would be ingrateful of me, and I will say “thanks!” instead. I guess people are interpreting this as an attack on reductionism.
(Would it make sense to say “thanks and a downvote” when you’re grateful for a response that you think is wrong? That is, should the votes represent gratitude, assessment of usefulness in the larger context, or accuracy of claims made in the comment?)
A wrong response documented is worth the implicit benefit of the response being addressed in the minds of all who would object with that response’s reasoning.
And I think you meant to say you read Real Presences, not wrote it. :P
I think an upvote suggests agreement with the content rather than gratefulness for it. If someone has a wrong opinion, but people are interested in why, and he explains it, and they all upvote it out of gratitude, he might interpret that as agreement.
If a downvote implies something other than the opposite of what an upvote implies, it becomes difficult to interpret votes.
A Gish Gallop is presenting a lot of not-very-good points and then drawing a conclusion, so that you ignore people who disagree with your conclusion if they missed any of your points. This is not drawing a conclusion, and I think the points are individually interesting.
The book I wrote about a month or two ago, Real Presences—now that was a Gish Gallop.
I was going to downvote your comment, but then I realized you gave a useful answer to a question I asked, so that would be ingrateful of me, and I will say “thanks!” instead. I guess people are interpreting this as an attack on reductionism.
(Would it make sense to say “thanks and a downvote” when you’re grateful for a response that you think is wrong? That is, should the votes represent gratitude, assessment of usefulness in the larger context, or accuracy of claims made in the comment?)
A wrong response documented is worth the implicit benefit of the response being addressed in the minds of all who would object with that response’s reasoning.
And I think you meant to say you read Real Presences, not wrote it. :P
Ah. “I wrote about a month ago” = “I a month ago”, not “I wrote ”.
A wrong response is worth something, but I wouldn’t want to vote it up, since that would be read as agreement.
Would downvoting imply disagreement, then?
I think an upvote suggests agreement with the content rather than gratefulness for it. If someone has a wrong opinion, but people are interested in why, and he explains it, and they all upvote it out of gratitude, he might interpret that as agreement.
If a downvote implies something other than the opposite of what an upvote implies, it becomes difficult to interpret votes.