  We explore dilaton gravity with general dilaton potentials in the
semi-classical limit viewed both as a gas of blunt defects and also as a
semi-classical theory in its own right. We compare the exact defect gas picture
with that obtained by naively canonically quantizing the theory in geodesic
gauge. We find a subtlety in the canonical approach due to a non-perturbative
ambiguity in geodesic gauge. Unlike in JT gravity, this ambiguity arises
already at the disk level. This leads to a distinct mechanism from that in JT
gravity by which the semi-classical approximation breaks down at low
temperatures. Along the way, we propose that new, previously un-studied saddles
contribute to the density of states of dilaton gravity. This in particular
leads to a re-interpretation of the disk-level density of states in JT gravity
in terms of two saddles with fixed energy boundary conditions: the disk, which
caps off on the outer horizon, and another, sub-leading complex saddle which
caps off on the inner horizon. When the theory is studied using a defect
expansion, we show how the smooth classical geometries of dilaton gravity arise
from a dense gas of very blunt defects in the $G_N \to 0$ limit. The classical
saddle points arise from a balance between the attractive force on the defects
toward negative dilaton and a statistical pressure from the entropy of the
configuration. We end with speculations on the nature of the space-like
singularity present inside black holes described by certain dilaton potentials.
