Win any argument… ridiculously
Katrina Borthwick - 10th November 2025
If you are sick of being the skeptical ‘voice of reason’ in arguments, perhaps as an alternative to engaging in a proper discussion you could try using some logical fallacies, humor, or psychological tricks to confuse, disarm, or simply shut down your opponent.
Of course this is all ‘tongue in cheek’, and I am not really suggesting you do this, but I do hope that by reviewing some of these strategies you might be able to pick up when someone is trying to use these tactics on you.
So, without further ado, here are some ridiculous ways one might try to “win” an argument.
The Gish Gallop and the Reverse Gish Gallop
Using the “Gish Gallop”, you can swamp your opponent in such a torrent of numerous arguments and “facts” that they cannot possibly address or answer each one in real time. This makes you look like you have the stronger case. It doesn’t matter if the arguments are weak or even fabricated, just that there are a lot of them.
Donald Trump has been cited as using the gish gallop technique to overwhelm his opponents with a high volume of misstatements, exaggerations, and outright lies, such as in the 2024 Harris-Trump debate. The following video gives a good summary of this strategy.
But if your opponent somehow manages to heroically rebut every point, then there is always the ‘reverse gish gallop’ to fall back on. This is where they make one tiny error or gaffe, and you push that particular point out to the fore.
There is a more in depth explanation of the reverse gish gallop in the video here:
Laugh loudly
Another option is to present your opponent’s argument as so absurd that it’s not worthy of serious consideration. This often involves using a dismissive one-liner, or making a joke out of their point. For example:
- Of course, we should all wear seatbelts, and we should wear diapers and drink from bottles, too!
- Evolution? Yes, I believe that my grandparents were monkeys-of course that makes sense.
Source: Appeal to Ridicule Examples
And now for something completely different When you feel you are losing, you can abruptly change the subject to something completely unrelated. This is the Sudden Diversion (red herring) technique. The goal is to distract and derail the conversation, before your opponent can land a decisive point.
Bombastic blatherings
If you have the gift for saying lots of fancy words, or making them up on the spot, the “Blinding with Science” (or Bombast) approach might be for you. This involves using overly complex jargon or pseudo-scientific language to bewilder your opponent and make you sound very smart, even if what you’re saying is nonsense. If you’re persuaded by the arguments in the video below, you can be the proud owner of a turbo encabulator for the reasonable price of $750M, adjusted for inflation of course.
As mentioned earlier. If you lack the words, just make them up. I saw a good suggestion online that if you don’t really understand their point, you just say that their point lacks “zurfitude,” to imply you understood it. I am also thinking of when Trump ran out of insulting words and called Obama “sedatious”.
Rewrite reality
If you aren’t winning yet, you can simply change what your opponent said - for example by exaggerating their argument to absurd extremes (straw man fallacy), so as to make it completely ridiculous, and then attacking that logical extreme. This can make you appear to be the reasonable one.
Another option is to simply change what words mean. ‘Equivocation’ is where you shift the definition of a word in the middle of an argument. This is used in politics quite a bit. The way it works is you use and re-use a particular label with strong connotations, and then defend the label by using a ‘weaker’ definition of the word. In the following example the word ‘truth’ later gets redefined as lying to mislead potential buyers about a property.
“Truth” is a word that is often targeted, but look out for the word “liar” as well. Notice there are strong emotional connotations for both of them. Expect words like “equity” and “loyalty” to come up too. If you are losing an argument, you can hijack the conversation by redefining a key emotive word, to shift the discussion to that word or just nonsense.
Equivocation also works with numbers – shifting between the literal and figurative meaning, confusing categorisation with equivalence, cherry picking, or misleading claims such as “up to 90% discount”. Here’s an example where the literal and figurative meaning get shifted to great effect:
God: “One million years to me is a second.”
Man: “What about one million dollars, my Lord?”
God: “A penny.”
Man: “May my Lord give me a penny?”
God: “No problem, just a second.”
Here is an example of confusing categorisation with equivalence:
If all else fails, and you have truly lost the battle, then it’s ok. Just say you’ve won the argument anyway, leave and gloat loudly and publicly. You got this.
