Would it be possible to relax time limits for the whole exchange? That might prevent the other person from engaging in a “Gish gallop”. The poor soul trying to respond to that would run out of time long before they got to most of the misrepresentations, owing to Brandolini’s Law. Gish made a whole career out of winning that way.
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The Gish Gallop is a fairly easy rhetorical technique to counter in a debate:
“My opponent just made a large number of barely supported claims, mostly outside the scope of this topic, because he doesn’t have any strong evidence and knows that I can’t address them all. I’ll pick one, and trust the audience to realize the rest are just as weak.”
Then dismantle the easiest thing the opponent said. Alternatively, in a power move, replace ‘barely supported’ with ‘entirely unsupported’, and then dismiss them all as baseless conjecture without addressing any and use the time for something else entirely. Both effective strategies, the choice depends on the audience.
A better option is to make sure the topic is sufficiently narrow and the moderation sufficiently effective. Especially important now, since people don’t actually do formal debates any more. They just have opening statements, open discussion, ‘sometimes’ closing statements, and a question/answer phase with no rebuttal phase. So I’d get moderators to agree beforehand that they won’t allow Gish Gallops, and will cut debaters off after one or two topic changes.
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The other way to deal with a Gish gallop is to have the moderator be very ready to stop the galloper after one assertion: The galloper says “How do you explain XYZ? And in addition, how do you explain ABC? And …” to which the moderator immediately says: “Stop there – let’s discuss XYZ right now and hold off on ABC. Josh, what’s your response to XYZ?”
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One of the concerns brought up is how to avoid certain tactics that are common in debate formats with someone who affirms Young Earth Creationism.
I wonder if there’s a project that you are currently working on where he could actually be a positive (even if limited) contributor to.
When people are in a different role or mindset and planning on or already working on another project together toward a shared goal (even if limited), there is less likelihood of certain tactics being used (though doesn’t of course eliminate all tendencies).
It could really showcase the Peaceful Science approach—Gathering around the grand questions together. I think it could be Another demonstration (as your work leading up to and incorporated in GAE has already done) that science isn’t inherently against certain views or intuitions at the start, and it also could help demonstrate the confidence of someone (you/mainstream science) inviting such collaboration.
I also realize there are risks with such an approach, but you have shown a way to navigate that well.
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