Sometimes you get abstraction with nothing concrete behind it. Conspiracy theorists like to use vague allusions to evidence of corruption like follow the money. An interesting shift in control can happen when you simply ask your opponent to keep telling you their side, but to be more specific. You appear conciliatory while in fact, you're taking their safety net of abstraction away, challenging them to talk concretely.
While not someone who usually aligns with my own views, one of my favorite examples comes from Ben Shapiro. In a political debate with a student who used the term "institutional racism" to which he replied,
When you say institutional racism, it's too broad. You at least have to name me the institution. Which one is the racist one?
[Student pauses in thought]
Which institution is racist? Tell me what you…so we can fight it—seriously—so we can fight it together. I want to be on your side. I want to fight racists. I think racist behavior is evil, but I can't fight it if you're not showing me what it is.
While Shapiro continues, the student nods and gives no indication she is ready with a response. Of course, what is actually happening here is the student is using a well known term, "institutional racism," to label a point about a current event. She appears to unknowingly accept Shapiro's grabbing of the rhetorical wheel here. Look at the wording again. He's calling all the shots and assuming he gets to set the rules.
…it's too broad. You at least have to name me the institution.
Shapiro uses a label ("broad") without making it the focus of the statement. The student implicitly accepts that "institutional" is too broad for the point she wants to make and accepts in her silence that she must play by the rules that follow—she has to name an institution. To bolster his control over the student, Shapiro invokes fairness and reciprocity: "you at least have to…" He implies he is being asked to give something, therefore she can "at least" do this one small thing for him, so he may comply. Granted, she's also speaking at a public event and is likely a bit nervous and we should be understanding that a college student with less experience in public debates would not think on her feet in her beginner state of public debate.
Nevertheless, she could have rejected the rule with simply "No I don't have to name anything and I won't change the subject" or even turn Shapiro's angle against him with "when is it okay for any institution to be racist? Do you need to check the institution before you agree to fight racism? Tell me, which institutions are acceptable to you?" Last, it's subtle, but Shapiro words his demand for specificity so well to say not just "What do you mean, what institution?" but by labeling with "broad," invoking fairness, then really spelling out the request for specificity: "which one is the racist one?" After all, who says that all racism funnels evenly into a single institution? I would not doubt with the experience Shapiro has in public debates and the frequency of this term being used, he has this carefully worded response ready to go should an opponent say the magic words.
Let's also take note the request for specificity here is unlikely to be fulfilled. In the context of this example, institutional racism does not have an official register of named and registered institutions. It's a broad term that is nevertheless meaningful and specific to repeated events in history. In other words, asking for specifics does not work well when there are specifics to be given. I usually don't ask for specific studies with a conspiracy theorist because they may have something that looks like a study. By requesting it, it's an implicit validation that should a study exist, it would suffice as good evidence in their corner. Asking for specifics works best when your opponent is wading hopelessly through the abstract.
I don't ask antivaxxers to name specific toxins because they make memes out of chemical names they don't understand. They'll happily send that to me. However, when they tell me the U.S. vaccine court paid out over $4B in claims, I know this data and I know the concrete parts of it that are being shrouded by abstraction. Like Shapiro, I'm offering to work with them but posing the lack of specificity as a challenge for me to walk through their door.
If vaccines aren't toxic, I wonder why the US vaccine court paid out over $4 BILLION dollars for vaccine injury???
$4B over how many decades?
Sorry but I'm not buying that anyone is being saved when FOUR BILLION dollars is paid out because vaccines are INJURING people!
Looks like that's over three decades, so less than $150 million a year for the entire US1. So how many people does that translate to in confirmed injuries?
Anyone can see that money is not being paid out unless you're GUILTY of injuring the public to line your pockets.
I'm trying to understand your theories1. How can I put <50¢ per person1 in context with the over 3B vaccinations & no reports of injury during just 1/3 of the same period? Which % of the cases are confirmed?1
By asking not for time, or even years, but decades labeling allows us to hide our own argument in the form of a question. It's with this indirect approach we can slowly disarm our opponent without them even noticing.
After letting your opponent struggle on the witness stand by your mere request for specificity, you might play dumb and eventually ask where they got the statistic from. They'll proudly tell you their source, a government website. You can use their absent-minded clearing of government data as a trustworthy source to finally bring out HRSA data showing 80% of cases are settled without a confirmation of the vaccine being a cause of the claimant's injury, some of this money goes to mandatory attorney fees paid by the court, and that of the 3.1 billion vaccinations in a ten year period, just over five thousand court cases were filed. The point is to let their inability to provide specifics slide them into your showcase of evidence.