Why and How: Kettle Logic, the Gish Gallop, and the "Tiny Dog" Strategy
What to do when someone tries to overwhelm you with counterpoints
Have you ever said something and had someone else respond with a whole list of points they expected you to address individually? But then none of those points made sense?
Today, we’ll look at a lesser-known logical fallacy and two related manipulative strategies: one you may have seen used online or in political debates, and another similar tactic that appears more in casual conversation. We’ll discuss what makes these tactics weak, why they are manipulative, and how to effectively counter them.
If you want to talk about an online discussion where someone used one of these, tell me in the comments!
Kettle Logic
While he wasn’t doing cocaine, Freud occasionally did useful things, like describing a dream by his patient Irma that exemplified this type of fallacy, kettle logic. Freud recalls in The Interpretation of Dreams a story where a man borrows a kettle from his neighbor and returns it damaged. When the neighbor calls him out on it, the man claims the kettle was fine when he returned it, the kettle was already broken when he borrowed it, and he never borrowed the kettle anyway.
The strategy is clear. He doesn’t want his neighbor to think he broke the kettle, so he’s grasping at situations where he would not be held responsible. If any of these three things were to be proven true, he’d be in the clear. So the strategy hinges on the neighbor being able to accept one of these three possibilities as a viable alternative to the belief that this dude broke their kettle.
What makes this a fallacy is, the three scenarios listed are not consistent with each other. He can’t have not borrowed the kettle and have borrowed a broken kettle. That makes no sense.
Like most casual uses of logical fallacies, the appearance of kettle logic does not necessarily indicate that the user’s claim is false. However, it does suggest that the user arrived at their conclusions through some means other than formal logic.
The Gish gallop
Named for Duane Gish, a creationist, the Gish gallop is a rhetorical strategy that involves making many different points in quick succession. This is meant to make the user’s position appear strong—look at how many points they’re making!—and to control the flow of conversation by putting the other person on the defensive, leaving them to address each of the galloper’s points individually rather than sticking to their original statement.
You see this technique all the time in online discussions. If someone ever busts out a bullet-point list and the rest of the conversation is all people bulleting their responses in the same way, trying to hit the goal posts for each individual point in that list, that’s an example of a successful Gish gallop in writing.
The “Tiny Dog” Strategy
Lastly, we have a rapid-fire derailment strategy exemplified by this video. Look out. It’s catchy.
The Tiny Dog strategy, as I am defining it here, works by using a dialogue to cycle through objections until they find one that the other person accepts. Because the user’s goal is to get the outcome they want—in this case, being allowed to bring their dog into a grocery store—they will have succeeded if the other person takes just one of their objections seriously, or is so distracted by fielding the objections that they are not able to enforce the restriction they set in place.
Note that when the other person refuses to accept a single objection, the tiny-dogger does not acknowledge the failure. They just move on to the next excuse.
In casual conversation, this strategy is often used to argue someone out of a stated priority or boundary that the strategy’s user finds inconvenient.
Analysis
So far, we’ve seen three slightly different tactics, all characterized by overwhelming an opponent with arguments in a short span of time. In each case, the person using these strategies is hoping to cast a wide net: they just need one of the many statements they made to land for their gambit to work, so it doesn’t matter if some of them are easily dismissed.
The differences are:
Kettle logic is the only one of the three strategies outlined that can be classified as a fallacy. The others are rhetorical techniques. The Gish gallop or Tiny Dog strategy may or may not also use kettle logic.
The Gish gallop requires one party to be able to speak at length without interruption. This makes it more likely to appear in written contexts such as online disagreements, or in formal debates where each party is given a set amount of time to respond.
The Tiny Dog strategy requires a dialogue. It’s more likely to be used in one-on-one conversations where there is no audience involved, and where there is an immediate goal one party is trying to achieve. Hence, it’s rare in online debate.
When figuring out how to process and respond to these, we should recognize they’re all irrational and intellectually dishonest in the same way. In each case, the user cares more about being perceived as right than being actually right: they want to nudge the discussion toward a certain outcome. Lining up multiple objections is just a means to that end. That is what makes all three of these fundamentally manipulative.
As with most manipulation tactics, these all involve not being able to acknowledge when their opponent has made a point. Because if they do, they might not get what they want. It’s like the tiny dog video. When one of their statements fails, they don’t acknowledge that. They just move on to the next one. Since the truth value of each individual statement matters less than the possibility of one of their objections landing, there’s no motivation to make each individual component strong.
There’s an additional flaw that arises more in political disagreements than interpersonal ones. While a kettle logic user or tiny-dogger might come up with excuses on the fly, the Gish galloper may expect to have the same type of conversation multiple times, so they can prepare their lists in advance. This is tempting, since it saves time. And if someone debunks one of their claims in one thread, they can just reuse it somewhere else and hope the new audience falls for it.
As a result, though, prepared lists aren’t designed for a specific conversation, so they don’t flow logically with the rest of the exchange. So while they want the audience to think they’re nailing bulls-eye after bulls-eye with no hope of the other person catching up, it’s really more like flailing their arm wildly around because they’re not paying attention to where the target is.
Response
I think of conflict as having two components: an internal processing component, and an external communication component. The relative importance of each depends on whether there is a third party watching. What that means is, internal processing is key to both situations, but communication, and a counter-strategy, only matters if someone’s listening to you.
And if people are running their brains to come up with a list of reasons why you’re wrong, they have very little energy left to process what you’re saying. You cannot convince them, because their goal is not to ensure they are acting on good faith based on all available information. Their goal is to defend their position. Period. People who have survived abusive relationships know this in their bones. We would like for there to be a magic set of words, or a magic line of argument, that could get them to change their mind and see it from our perspective—but it just won’t happen.
One-on-one
If you’re in a conversation where someone is trying to use one of these tactics on you, it’s most likely Tiny Dog. You will have done a good job if you (a) recognize that this is a manipulation tactic, (b) choose to take your position seriously even if the other person won’t, and (c) make an effort to understand how the conflict originated. It doesn’t make sense to craft the perfect response. The only acceptable conclusion to a tiny-dogger is for them to get what they want, so they’re going to find fault with any attempt to prevent that.
In this case, I would recommend the response that takes the least energy, which is usually ending the interaction as soon as possible. You already know it’s going to be a waste of time to try to sway this person, so you may as well divert your brainpower fully toward processing the exchange. What were they trying to get you to do? Who does that benefit? Why weren’t they listening? Were they trying to coax you out of your boundaries?
Knowing a good response is not going to convince the other person, but having a script might help you gain confidence in yourself and your abilities. Personally, I’d have a hard time not breaking down in hysterical laughter and singing the “Tiny Dog in a Grocery Store” anthem before walking off. But if you’re more mature than that, feel free to call them out every time they throw out another non sequitur, and repeat your original point as often as possible to keep the conversation from being diverted. For example, “you didn’t acknowledge when the last excuse didn’t work, now you’re just coming up with another one. That doesn’t have to do with what I said. What I said was X.”
Third party present
If you’re in a situation where a third party is watching, it may be harder for you to interrupt, making the tactic more likely to be a Gish gallop with or without kettle logic. Others, notably British journalist Mehdi Hasan, have suggested steps to beat the Gish gallop. I favor a different strategy, based on the fundamental weakness of these tactics: if they’re all addressing slightly different points, the likelihood that the user of such tactics understands the other person’s position is very low. This gives an opportunity to turn it back on them.
First, start off with “What did I just say?”
There’s no way they were actually listening (or reading, if this is an online discussion), so you’ll likely either get a misrepresentation or an excuse. In that case, follow up with, “Okay, I’ll repeat it.”
Repeat it. Then have them repeat it back.
So far, this is a defense against strawmanning. Stating a position clearly, making key statements multiple times, and making sure each person can accurately repeat back what the other believes: these steps all make it easier for an audience to follow what is happening. Even though others may not classify the Gish gallop as a strawman technique, it functionally works that way. The gallop is a response that pretends you said eight separate things that are easier to argue with, because that’s the only context in which their response makes sense. So you have to start off by reminding everyone what the galloper is actually responding to.
To counter the gallop, then ask, “How are each of those statements related to what I just said?”
This puts them in the position of having to go back and individually justify why each of the points they made is relevant, and there is no chance of them being able to do that effectively. Anyone who can process information on the fly will be capable of responding to you head on, and introducing a bunch of non sequiturs in a row suggests they’re reading from a script rather than thinking critically about what was said. Nail them on that.
You may notice that, in contrast to other strategies against the Gish gallop, this does not involve responding to or acknowledging the galloper’s points at all. That’s because the Gish gallop is a manipulation tactic meant to derail the conversation, and letting the galloper put you on the defensive means the tactic worked.
So, stand your ground. Expose that this is a weak strategy. And don’t let a galloper fool you into thinking firing a lot of shots means they’ve hit the target.
These are general strategies, and I want to use it as a starting point to get more granular depending on what people want to see. If you have questions, suggestions, or have used this or any other counter-strategies that you feel went well, feel free to share them in the comments!
This is very helpful!