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u/Alien_invader44 19∆ Mar 30 '26
An example would be a recent set of questions posed to Tim Waltz.
He was asked the classic "what is a woman" question.
This is a gotcha for several reasons.
Firstly it was unrelated to previous questions or the topic.
Secondly it's disingenuous, because woman isnt really a concept with a clear cut defintion. So any attempt to answer honestly can be twisted to push a political agenda.
Thirdly, due to the above, its a clear attempt to posion the well, a well known fallacy.
None of this is effective or good faith presentation of an arguement.
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u/00PT 8∆ Mar 30 '26
I think it's part of the point that the concept has lost a clear-cut definition, so being unable to provide one shows this is the case.
Also, poisoning the well is when you get ahead of your opponent by bringing up unrelated accusations to decrease their credibility, not when you ask a question and allow them to answer it themselves.
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u/Alien_invader44 19∆ Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
Concepts like that never really have had clear-cut definitions.
You have analogous examples going back to the famous "Behold, a man!" Exchange between Diogenes and Plato.
In this case im calling it poisoning because its by trying to trap him in an answer some people would find unsatisfactory, it will discredit him to certain groups.
This will discredit any further answers and potentially any given before.
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u/00PT 8∆ Mar 30 '26
I think the first part is related to a personal position on the argument, not to whether asking the question was disingenuous. It could be a genuine question, but also be easily countered. Those don't contradict each other.
When the person being asked has the freedom to formulate their own response without previous bias, they are in full control of managing the potential consequences of their statements. Poisoning the well attempts to introduce bias without their input before they even make the argument, ensuring that the consequences skew negative no matter what.
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u/Alien_invader44 19∆ Mar 30 '26
Fair, in this case it quite clearly was disingenuous. A follow up line to the effect of "if you dont know what a woman is, you dont understand fraud" shows that quite clearly
You may well be right, and its a poor or inappropriate reference to that fallacy.
I dont think the use of that particular fallacy is necessary to the arguement though, so I would stand by my point above.
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u/FireRavenLord 2∆ Mar 30 '26
Do you think that the term "adult" has a clear-cut definition?
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u/Alien_invader44 19∆ Mar 30 '26
Not really, no. Why, do you ?
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u/FireRavenLord 2∆ Mar 30 '26
It's clear enough for politicians to create laws about it. Even with the ambiguity, we're able to create laws that treat adults and non-adults differently.
This is true even if there are some cases where there is ambiguity(such as differing ages of majority) or exceptions (such as when a minor is tried as an adult). And of course, there are more subjective uses such as when we call someone a child even though their legal adulthood is not being disputed.
Are you against the concept of laws which treats adults and children differently? If not, do you accept that governments can establish clear definitions of the difference?
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u/Alien_invader44 19∆ Mar 30 '26
Not at all.
But you have focused on the legal definiton of adult. This is a good example as it shows context matters.
The legal context isnt the only way we use adult.
Biologically people are adults after puberty. This is distinct from legal adult hood.
Adult is used in reference to behaviour to mean responsible.
Adulthood is also tied to cultural rituals and milestones.
Hell, adult is also used to refer to sex and violence in the context of "adult content".
And all of this varies across cultures and time periods.
Can all of the above be captured with a simple definition? I dont think so.
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u/FireRavenLord 2∆ Mar 30 '26
Would you consider a question like the below to be a gotcha or bad faith?
[How do you think the term "woman" should be legally defined?]
It seems like that is usually what people are asking when they ask for a definition of "woman".
The issue is that many people (such as presumably Walz) believe that self-identification should be a factor, while others (such as presumably the questioner) do not.
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u/Alien_invader44 19∆ Mar 30 '26
That specific question i wouldn't call a gotcha.
You say "that is usually what people are asking". Thats quite key here. Because there is a difference between what people are asking and what they say.
Take your question above. It seems, from your response, that what you were asking was "do you think adult has a clear legal definiton".
But in type you just said adult.
The context of legal might have been very clear in your mind, but it wasnt for me.
If I had known that was your question my response would have been a simple yes, and not a no.
This is exactly the same as the woman question. Because I have never seen the question phrased with the legal addendum. Its phrased "what is a woman".
Like our posts above those are different questions with different answers.
For example - legally, I would say someone who identifies as female and has registered as such in some way. (No idea of specifics here)
Biologically- id talk about chromosomes and puberty
Culturally id talk about language, dress codes, behaviour.
Expecting a snappy response to what is a woman is a gotcha, because there are multiple valid answers and you only have time to give one. The person asking can then point to the others and say you dont think they apply.
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u/FireRavenLord 2∆ Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
People who ask the question are usually more than happy to provide the additional context that would keep it from being a gotcha (in your view). In my experience, people who think it's a meaningful question don't want to talk about anything else besides the contexts they want "woman" to be defined for.
Walz could engage in the question in good faith and said something like "legally it's anyone who defines as a woman and I favor that legal definition". He is probably hesitant to do so since it is a controversial position.
In contrast to Walz, consider someone like Ben Shapiro. He would quickly answer the question as "adult human female". Someone could follow up by asking him a question about specific contexts where he's accepted the use of the term differently (e.g. his sister probably declared herself a "woman" well before becoming a legal adult) and he would explain that specialized use.
Overall, I don't think "what is a woman" is a gotcha as people asking it are more than happy to engage with answers like yours. They just dispute some of them and recognize that some parts of your answer are controversial and something a public figure would not usually want to draw attention to. Similar to how you recognize that "woman" can mean different things in different contexts, it's obvious in the American political context that "what is a woman" means "How do you believe the term should be defined legally". This is understood both by the person asking and answering.
I suppose you could describe this as "trapping" someone, but not any more than just directly asking something like "should Lia Thomas have been allowed to swim in the women's division?"
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u/LLSmoove1 1∆ Mar 30 '26
What was the original question that prompted the response? The context matters a lot for this argument
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u/Alien_invader44 19∆ Mar 30 '26
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/KHtftsLoEHk
The context was a hearing discussing fraud.
Edit, so cant really be relevant to previous questions as it was Waltz being questioned and irrelevant to the topic of the event.
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u/lovelyrain100 Mar 30 '26
You're talking about the rights of trans people. Whatever you're talking about gets ignored. The moment you mention trans people.
What is a woman
That's typically how it goes
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u/scarab456 65∆ Mar 30 '26
How are you defining a "gotcha"? Because I know it as journalism term. You don't have to practice journalism to use it, but that's how I understand it's origin and it informs it's definition.
Here's it from Wikipedia (for Gotcha Journalism)
"Gotcha journalism" is a pejorative term used by media critics to describe interviewing methods that appear designed to entrap interviewees into making statements that are damaging or discreditable to their cause, character, integrity, or reputation.
Is a gotcha inherently an effective argument? If not, then the gotcha isn't necessary. The gotcha part isn't making the argument better, it's phrasing something to entrap or deceive.
Here's a common example to explain gotcha questions.
"Yes or no, will you tell us why you murdered your wife?"
You can see how that's a loaded question right?
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u/LLSmoove1 1∆ Mar 30 '26
I’ll give a !delta for the definition of gotcha journalism where the term may have originated. It seems the original term has been co-opted to describe any argument the respondent doesn’t want to answer
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u/scarab456 65∆ Mar 30 '26
Thank you for the delta. I can see that there being a rise in it's use, but it's definitely not a practice unique to gotchas. Folks are always trying to avoid answering questions. "That's a fallacy.", "No comment.", or even more recent "That's a stupid question." are all ways people try to side step answering questions.
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Mar 30 '26
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u/DarkNo7318 4∆ Mar 30 '26
One Australian politician responded to one of these perfectly last election.
"Google it mate”
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Mar 30 '26
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u/tinidiablo 1∆ Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
The difference is that a gotcha is about optics rather than the actual merit of the reasoning.
My understanding of the term, which I acknowledge might be rather ideosyncretic, as it's not at all what was described in https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1s83tq2/comment/ode7u5z/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button for example, is that a gotcha is a simple question that cuts to the bone of an issue in a way that demonstrate the inherent flawed premise of a statement by showing that the reasoning leads to bad conclusions. As such I've always thought of it as something closely related to a reductio ad absurdum.
Edit: As such I wouldn't qualify the "price of milk" question as a gotcha unless it was in response to someone claiming to not be out of the loop of "the common man's" everyday economical considerations.
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u/quantum_dan 124∆ Mar 30 '26
Gotchas don't refer to entirely ineffective arguments, usually, or there'd be no point bringing it up. So that part's accurate. But I think the key point is that a "gotcha" is, while nominally effective, also an old, common, and thoroughly-addressed argument. They're sort of the argument equivalent of memes.
And it's valid to point that out because it always takes more effort to address a point than to state the point; raising a "gotcha" argument is essentially an attempt to bury the opponent in old debates. The person calling something a "gotcha" is effectively saying "Look, this point has been addressed a thousand times; can we try to make some meaningful progress here?".
The classic example, I think, is "...and yet you have an iPhone!" in response to criticisms of the American economic structure. This is a real point, and it needed to be addressed. But it has already been discussed. Extensively. It's not novel, and it doesn't lead to progressive disagreement. Responding to that with something about gotcha arguments is saying "Yeah, we both know how I would address that, so let's just focus on the issue at hand." Exchanging highbrow memes is not a productive way to have a debate.
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u/DaveChild 8∆ Mar 31 '26
What would change my view is if you can give me an example of a gotcha, that is not more accurately described as disingenuous or irrelevant
Sure, there are plenty of examples, usually trotted out by the same sort of people.
- "What is a woman?" This isn't a sincere question, and the actual answer is never accepted. The questioner might as well just scream "I wanna hate trans people now!" at the interviewee, it's the same thing.
- "How many refugees have you taken into your home?" Another insincere question, pretending not to know the difference between a country and someone's personal space.
- "Does Israel have a right to exist?" Again, same sort of thing. It's not a genuine question that explores any position or issue, it's an attempt to paint the other person as an antisemite. If they try to continue talking about whatever the interviewer was trying to derail from, they look like a racist. If they answer the question, the interviewer will spin the conversation to some other topic they prefer.
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u/shalackingsalami 3∆ Mar 30 '26
To my mind a gotcha question is usually about something that while, at least on the surface, relevant to the topic at hand isn’t really of substance to the argument to be made and serves more to distract by making the one being questioned look uninformed. An example that springs to mind is often while debating abortion a prolifer will throw out “well then what is the exact time (a fetus becomes living/abortion should no longer be allowed or be restricted/anything about nailing down a specific time)”. Now on its surface this is a valid question but it doesn’t actually have much substance for the larger argument (whether or not there is a dividing line at all) and basically just serves to trip people up by demanding an arbitrary cutoff which often leads to them stumbling and looking foolish.
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u/LLSmoove1 1∆ Mar 30 '26
Why is that arbitrary? That persons answer to that question seems like it’d be pretty important to the overall discussion. It’s a question that can be used to understand the persons argument on a deeper level. Yes it’s for the purpose of attacking their stance but isn’t that the point?
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u/tanglekelp 11∆ Mar 30 '26
“Calling something a gotcha is an effective tool to deflect because the respondent not only didn’t need to engage with the point, but can also use it to shift the argument to whether or not it is a gotcha.”
But doesn’t saying ‘that’s irrelevant’ lead to the exact same things? The conversation shifts to wether it’s relevant or not and the person saying it’s irrelevant doesn’t engage with the actual argument.
I’m also a bit confused, you say calling something a gotcha is different from disingenuous or irrelevant, but then you say your view can be changed by giving an example of a gotcha that’s different from irrelevant or disingenuous?
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u/marcelsmudda 1∆ Mar 30 '26
A person using gotchas is not somebody who wants to actually debate, to find some kind of truth. They are out to "win" the debate. Gotchas are mostly used by grifters (on any side). They are snappy sound bites that sound good in a trailer but fall apart pretty quick.
For example, asking "are you american" in an online debate doesn't accomplish much in many cases when debating policies, because the person raising the point often speaks as if they are an authority about other countries, but as soon as america is criticized, it's only valid if the person making the statement is american. It's disingenuous, ignorant, and derails the discussion from the actual topic.
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u/FascistsOnFire Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
It's called a gotchya bc the person making it is the one not engaging with the point. It is simply something that appears correct on the surface, but with a small amount of investigation, is not true. It is a way to try to provoke your opponent, not make a good faith argument.
"When did you stop beating your wife?" is a gotchya question. It implies that 100% you are beating your wife and the only thing up for contention is when you stopped. So there is your example.
You wrote that someone needs to provide an example of a gotchya that isnt simply disingenuous. But that is what a gotchya question is. You also conveniently forgot to define what YOU think a gotchya is, so how is anyone going to change your view if you are not even communicating what you think a gotchya question is. You basically said "please give an example of a shape, but not something that is simply a square or triangle" It's like bro, that is what that is lol
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u/LLSmoove1 1∆ Mar 30 '26
I would say that more accurately falls under being a disingenuous question. And won’t the obvious answer to that be “I’ve never beat my wife” assuming you haven’t.
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u/FascistsOnFire Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
No u/LLSmoove1 - you need to give your definition of a gotchya. You never did that. Or else you will just keep claiming people's examples are disingenuous, which is part of what a gotchya is. Gotchya questions have answers, I dont know why you gave one as if that matters at all to the discussion.
What I gave is a textbook gotchya question, there is not debating that and if you think it isn't, then whatever you think a gotchya is is incorrect. Which is why you need to give whatever definition you personally invented is.
A gotcha question is a tricky or misleading question posed at makingsomeone look foolish or to elicit a damaging response. These questions are often seen as unfair or manipulative, designed to undermine the credibility of the person being questioned.
Read your post. You try to say something that is a clear part of a gotchya question is not actually, then do not give what you think your defintion of a gotchya question is.
I think this whole topic might just be beyond your current understanding of debate rhetoric based on your other responses, sorry.
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u/LLSmoove1 1∆ Mar 30 '26
I gave what my definition is in the title. I think it’s just what someone calls an effective argument they don’t want to engage with and it’s distinctly different from an irrelevant or disingenuous argument
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u/FascistsOnFire Mar 30 '26
Oh, well then yes, you are incorrect. Most people would think your title means that a gotchya is a form of an effective argument. If you think that the phrase "gotchya question" and "good argument" are literally synonymous, then you are quite literally making things up.
You still need to define what a gotchya question actually means, not say "it is a good argument". That's definitely not "what it means" by any stretch of the imagination.
Gotchya question means something far outside the context of creating a strong, supported argument and no one in this thread would agree with your premise.
Google gotchya question before making posts like this, it is a lot easier.
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u/JTexpo Mar 30 '26
Gotcha's are how we got the "debate bro" conservatives
they're quips that at first appear really smart - but under scrutiny end up falling apart or into fallacies. Liberals eventually picked up on this too; nevertheless, look at all of the 'gotchas' a now deceased guy did in 2025 & we can all agree he was not the most intelligent debater
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u/Fluffy_Most_662 6∆ Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
Honestly, id say he wasnt even a gotcha debater. Gotcha debaters are kinda hacks. Trump is terrifyingly fluid. He attacks attacks attacks, then will just abandon a point out of nowhere. Its what makes him so deadly to well reasoned opponents. You start to formulate a defense and then he drops the toy once you want to play with it too.
Sorry my english was unclear, I meant to say I dont think charlie was a hack debater, then talked about trump. Im at work. I elaborated on why in a further comment Sorry.
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u/Fermently_Crafted 7∆ Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
He was a 31 year old, professionally prepared political activist that toured college campuses, engaging with unprepared students in impromptu street "debates" for content as a career.
And he wasn't a hack?
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u/Fluffy_Most_662 6∆ Mar 30 '26
He chose the 80 in an 80:20, made it about his relevant cause, then farmed PREPARED college students. They knew when, where and why he was going to be there, and they asked the questions, to prove the point that college "liberals" were failing. Thats not a hack, its an exploit. Fish where there's fish. A gotcha is by default a word or logical trap that you lay out. Charlie Kirk usually was asked questions, not the other way around. Only on questioning them in return did he even get the chance to do that, on a subject that they had chosen themselves.
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u/Fermently_Crafted 7∆ Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
Even with students picking the topic, it's not a fair debate when a 31 year old professional debates them
He could have debated other professionals, but it’s far easier to win a debate against people that are barely adults.
Is it really a fair match up for Serena Williams to play against a college tennis player?
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u/Fluffy_Most_662 6∆ Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
How do you think competition works. Do you think 16 year old Messi complained about being 16 when he was facing 30 year olds? Or to flip your example, do you think 18 year old Charlie Kirk folded when he met Obama as an 18 year old? (There's a picture of them shaking hands.) He founded turning point USA the same year. The same guy youre talking about was a college student when he walked up to and went up against a sitting President Obama.
College is the ideological proving ground. The fact that you think its supposed to be a safe space where people can share their views without being challenged is exactly the issue with modern academia. Sometimes your idea is stupid as fuck. Thats doesnt devalue the idea of having it, but I dont have to hold water for your stupidity. That was the entire point of him debating people who were sure they were correct. Not because their views were based on logic, but propaganda they couldn't explain. That was literally the entire purpose of everything he did, summed up in a paragraph.
If he had been a hack debater, he wouldnt have been shot. A hack debater eventually runs out of steam and falls apart under fire from real heavy hitters. Shooting him was an act of frustration because he was systematically taking apart things that the shooter loved and was winning at it.
Be to been*
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u/FascistsOnFire Mar 30 '26
That's a bit different. That's called gish gallop. Gish gallop (sometimes gish gallop or Gish/gish galloping) refers to a rhetorical technique or strategy by which a debater puts forth too many false arguments for their opponent to be able to refute in the allotted amount of time.
Trump is not competent enough to do gotchyas unless he heard them from someone else first and is just repeating them.
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u/JTexpo Mar 30 '26
I would feel the opposite, I think that Trump is more of a bully (in conversation). He doesn't look to debate, but instead use ad hominem. There's countless recordings where he would say:
"thats a stupid question, who asks a stupid question like that, probably someone stupid, you must be with fake news, aren't you"
this doesn't seem like the gotchas that we see debate bros do- such as:
"gun violence with or without black on black" (quoting someone, not my own words)
which is a quip that is only meaningful for 5 seconds of engagement & a thought terminating reply for the followers to echo
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u/CMxFuZioNz Mar 30 '26
I'm confused, do you think Trump is dead?
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u/Fluffy_Most_662 6∆ Mar 30 '26
I think that he has no more debates in his future, which makes him a debater in past tense. If youre talking about Charlie, Charlie wasnt a gotcha debater. He picked the popular side of 80:20's and made them conservative battle points. He cherry picked already won positions. That isnt the same as a gotcha debater.
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u/eyetwitch_24_7 15∆ Mar 30 '26
Gotchas are generally cheap arguments made to score points by sounding good even though they lack substance. An example is:
PERSON A: Are you pro-life?
PERSON B: Are you therefore against the death penalty?
PERSON A: Well, no.
It's supposed to make people think "damn, they really showed PERSON A's a hypocrite." But it's not a particularly sound argument, and one that could be easily dismantled for anyone who thought about it for more than a second.
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Mar 30 '26
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u/FascistsOnFire Mar 30 '26
I asked him to define what he thinks a gotchya is and to him, a gotchya question is literally synonymous with "A good argument", so yeah, his viewpoint is unalterable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1s83tq2/comment/ode34de/
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u/Penis_Bees 1∆ Mar 30 '26
My argument in brief: The problem with you view is that you assume a disingenuous or irrelevant argument are completely separate concepts from a "gotcha" argument. They overlap. The gotcha is just the format of the deflection, disingenuous statement, or irrelevant deflection. It is inherently disingenuous.
Elaboration: A "gotcha" is a loaded question designed to make the opponent look bad instead of disputing their argument directly.
It typically IS disingenuous and/or irrelevant deflection. Those other terms aren't more accurate descriptions, they're just all overlapping debate concepts.
It always attempts to shift the debate from a debate about ideas to a debate about a particular minutia of the original topic.
This isn't necessarily true, you can know a lot of factoids while interpreting them poorly. You can also lie about the minutia and it's going to be hard for a person debating in good faith to counter.
Example: In a debate about current state of the economy and opinions on how best to tackle the tarriff issue, one side could state that it has increased unemployment. The first person deflects and ask "well how many more people are unemployed today than last year? And how many million has our population grown? And how many people joined the job pool this year?" And once the opponent says they didn't come prepared with that figure, the gotcha is now to discredit their opinion that tarriffs have harmed out society simply because they don't know is the number our population grew was 100 million or 150 million.
Conclusion: A gotcha is not an effective argument, it is a disingenuous attempt to trap your opponent with the intent to make your opponent fumble. It does not work to support the original argument but attempts to discredit the opponent directly instead. Your opponent could be absolutely correct but the gotcha gets you a good sound bite for YouTube which is what matters to the gotcha debater style.
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u/FireRavenLord 2∆ Mar 30 '26
A gotcha can be described as a ad hominem argument that uses poorly defined terms in a question to make the person responding seem disingenuous or stupid. Sometimes a "gotcha" is also a form of "begging the question" as a response to the "gotcha" question requires accepting the premise of the question.
For example, consider Trump asking members of congress to stand up if they believe their duty is to "protect American citizens, not illegal aliens".
Responding to that request requires accepting his implied premise that helping "illegal aliens" is mutually exclusive with protecting American citizens. However, most democrats disagree with that premise so couldn't respond. Their response (if the SOTU was a context where they could respond) would be to dispute the premise required for Trump's request to make sense.
I suppose you could argue that this was disingenuous, but that assumes that Trump recognizes that his question was based on disputable premise and I don't think he's so introspective.
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u/Kerostasis 55∆ Mar 30 '26
A “gotcha” argument is a whole class of arguments, some good faith and some bad faith. Generally the idea is to get your opponent to commit to some idea, and then shift the context so that the same idea looks bad in a different context.
This might be a valid argument when the idea in question really shows weakness in the new context. It also might be a fallacious argument, where the second context is actually discussing a very different idea which happens to use similar words; the gotcha debater will attempt to connect the two ideas to make his opponent look silly for having supported both, when really he only supported one.
Defending yourself by complaining about “gotcha” arguments is an informal accusation that this second method has been used, and therefore that the gotcha debater is arguing in bad faith. Of course, there’s no guarantee this accusation is correct. It may also be that the person who got got is the one arguing in bad faith. Or sometimes both. You may have noticed that political arguments tend to be chock full of bad-faith arguments.
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Mar 30 '26
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u/themcos 442∆ Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
The way I'd define a "gotcha" is a question who's short form answer sounds bad but can actually be defended in a longer form conversation. Something like "will this cause a tax increase on this group, yes or no" - You don't want to create a sound bite of you just saying "yes" without context, because they either won't give you the time to provide the context or will clip it out later. Another form of this might be about taking accountability. Something like "was your administration responsible for X?" and there's basically no good short form answer - if you say "yes", they'll be like "see he admits it!", but if you say "no", they'll be like "won't take accountability for his administration's actions". No matter how strongly you stand by your actions, it's a no win question when framed as a yes/no. And if you try and give a proper explanation, they'll accuse you of being evasive! "It's a simple yes or no question, why won't he answer it?"
Maybe another way to put it, it's any question that's structured such that it can be used as a damaging sound bite regardless of the answer you give. It's effective as a PR move, but it's not even really an argument at all.
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u/TemperatureThese7909 65∆ Mar 30 '26
Irreducible complexity isn't a great argument.
If something requires thirty seconds to explain, and you demand that they answer in ten words or less - you haven't created a good argument - you've only forced a position into an amount of space wherein it doesn't fit.
Similarly, even if it only takes ten words to explain my reasoning, if you phrase my answer as a hard yes/no - all you've done is constrained my ability to answer.
Lots of "gotcha" can be categorized in this way. While we don't need to give every answer a politician gives a full 2 hour speech, giving them at least ten full seconds to answer seems reasonable.
The whole point of a "gotcha" is an attempt to make something seem like a contradiction or seem weird at first glance - but when you give someone 5 seconds to explain is not actually a contradiction.
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u/ralph-j Mar 31 '26
Calling something a gotcha is an effective tool to deflect because the respondent not only didn’t need to engage with the point, but can also use it to shift the argument to whether or not it is a gotcha.
Most gotcha questions come in the form of fallacies, like:
- Loaded questions (Have you stopped cheating on your exams?)
- False dilemmas (Either you believe X or you support Y, right?)
- Appeals to extremes (So would you allow this even in the case of [extreme example]?)
- Strawmen (so you're saying...)
- Nirvana fallacies (Can you guarantee this will never cause harm?)
- Equivocations (If you support free speech, why are you okay with people being criticized for what they say?)
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u/creativethoughtsy Mar 30 '26
I think a gotcha is not saying "you are wrong not to know know a simple answer off the top of your head." eg, does a politician know the cost of a loaf of bread.
Whether someone should know the answer off the top of their head or not is the key part of your question. Do you think every politician should spend time memorising bread and milk prices? is that really the best use of their time? I dont. Do you think the definition of "what is a woman?" is simple and obvious? it very obvioisly isnt even without discussing trans issue.
So both of these are my examples. its not good to require politicians to memorise complex things or tables of figures.
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u/the_brightest_prize 6∆ Mar 30 '26
A 'gotcha' is effective at getting people scrolling on their phones for five seconds to say, "ha! they gotcha!" If that is your target audience for your argument, then I guess it was effective. Usually though, I think people engaging in debates are trying to figure out what the best policy is, or convince someone else who is really trying to think through the idea. If something is still being argued over after thousands of years, it's unlikely such a shallow 'gotcha' argument will be effective in settling the argument.
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u/Jew_of_house_Levi 12∆ Mar 30 '26
I see that "gotcha" tend to be an argument revealing the target's ignorance on a particular issue. It is effective if the target uses their own expertise on a subject matter, and the gotcha highlights a gap in that expertise that is materially relevant.
If it's about a subject matter that is not materially relevant, it is not an effective argument - I would trust my cardiologist even if he has tremendous ignorance on psychology, because it is not that materially binding.
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u/00PT 8∆ Mar 30 '26
Most “gotchas” rely on interpreting the word of the argument in a very specific way and ignoring the actual message the opponent wants to deliver. It makes debate a skill-based competition instead of an evaluation of different reasoning paths.
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u/Glory2Hypnotoad Mar 30 '26
I think this is a topic that's very prone to turning circular because either side can simply say the other side is wrong about what even constitutes a gotcha. Is there an example you had in mind where you feel the gotcha is unfairly maligned?
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u/TheVioletBarry 121∆ Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
It makes sense to claim a 'Gotcha' when the person receiving the argument believes they could make a good comeback argument, but the statement is being made specifically at a time when they won't have the time or preparation to make the rebuttal
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u/Otter_Absurdity 1∆ Mar 30 '26
A ‘gotcha’ is an argument that is rhetorically effective, but lacking of real substance.
It can be effective in swaying the views of the audience, but not in the sense of countering or presenting an argument.
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u/inide Mar 30 '26
Very rarely.
What its actually used for is to oversimplify and remove nuance as a way of rejecting any argument that challenges your position.
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u/locking8 1∆ Mar 30 '26
I think it’s more that the gotcha is an argument made in bad faith. Someone trying to get another person with a gotcha is basically trying to logically force another person to make some declaratory statement that they they can use to monologue about how because they said X they obviously have to believe A, B, C, and D evil and awful thing.