A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
I've identified an aggravating trope for which we do not have a word.
What should we call it when as a rhetorical strategy one pretends there is a consensus—one invents one, really—solely for the purpose of posturing oneself as an heroic, original, and lonely transgressor or innovator against it?
It shows up in many ways. Every week a new report is released that shows that wine and chocolate will make you young again, boost your sex drive, give you 20 years of good fortune, and so on. In each one the reporter writes it up as something that will astonish us who have continued to labor under the conventional wisdom that chocolate and wine are Bad (the writer presumes that we are benighted puritans persuaded that what is delicious is ipso facto evil) .
Almost every popular economics article written in the last twenty years has begun with the words “Contrary the longstanding and unquestioned assumption that people are perfectly economically rational, researchers at University of X have discovered…” (Note: it was never the case that neoclassical economists assumed people to be rational according to the conventional meaning of that word.)
It’s almost as if ‘conventional wisdom’ isn’t so much what is actually widely believed, as it is a common reference point that we can call the ‘conventional wisdom’ in order to talk about other things that relate to it. Having such a common reference point might be necessary, but it's misleading and self-congratulatory to call something the conventional wisdom when it actually isn't.
I have the sense this is actually a very common thing. Can you think of other examples? And can we find a name for this?
- Comment (27)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (1)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments :
Dec '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
False contrarianism is a form of straw man argument. "Everybody knows," "common sense tells us," and "the conventional wisdom is" are all ways of creating an authority to appeal to or to contrast against.
As you note, false contrarianism often reflects the speaker's ignorance of the subject. They get the meaning of a term of art, like "rational economic actor," twisted or turned on its head and then make an argument against their misinterpretation.
The classic example of this was Saturday Night Live's Emily Litella.
Jul '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
How 'bout:
1)The straw-man rebuttal posture.
2) The benighted proles fallacy.
3) The phony anti-discovery.
The last is my favorite.
Edit: Darn it Stuart, you beat me to my first point, and said it better.
Edited on Feb 5, 2011 at 6:37pmOct '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
Look to the essays of Samuel Clemens for inspiration should you wish to reach into some meaninful depths...
Otherwise, call such a "P.T. Barnum moment".
Trust you understand that reference...
There is no quick " Pull a Rabbit out of you hat" solution.
Edited on Feb 5, 2011 at 6:39pmSep '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
Perhaps we should name it after the Dixie Chicks. They bashed George W. Bush in front of an audience that was inclined to agree with them, to impress a music industry that was inclined to agree with them, and claimed martyrdom for alienating a bunch of people they didn't care about anyway (if I recall correctly, they were crossing over from country to rock around that time).
May '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
I don't think it stretches the notion of "strawman," but I'm sure some clever neologism could be coined. For some reason drunk chocolate bunny comes to mind as my nomination...
Oct '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
Most publications in the squishy sciences pass peer review only if they oppose the conventional wisdom. I put this down to “physics envy”—many of the breakthroughs in physics in the twentieth century were, at first glance, inconsistent with human intuition based upon experience in very different circumstances, so why not in the social sciences as well? (Well, because there's nothing in the social sciences which is remotely comparable to the square of the difference between the speed of a horse and the speed of light, and besides “social science” isn't science at all; as Hayek observed, there is no noun in the English language which is not devalued by qualifying it with “social”.)
I call all of these ephemeral enthusiasms based upon “studies” by “researchers” from obscure institutions “peach fuzz”.
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
Hmm, these are all very helpful. But wouldn't it be wrong to call this thing a variation on the straw-man fallacy? A straw man is a caricatured vision of another person's argument, which one constructs in order to make easier work of refutation. But in this case the phony anti-discoverer isn't necessarily caricaturing an idea -- he's mischaracterizing the stance society as a whole takes toward that idea. Or is that a distinction without a difference?
May '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
Manstraw? Strawbunny?
Dec '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
I think the anti-discoverer (and why not use that as the neologism?) is creating a straw man or at least a phantom: he's setting up the "conventional wisdom" to knock it down. And his "conventional wisdom" is itself an idea -- an assertion, an argument -- about what society as a whole believes.
Look at another example: Barack Obama now says that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Reagan had some good ideas. That anti-discovery presumes that most Americans thought Reagan was an amiable dunce -- but that view was only prevalent among Obama's ideological pals on the Left (and people soft-headed enough to take their word for it).
Dec '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
Matthew, are you familiar with the musical You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown? There's a number in it in which Lucy educates her little brother Linus about the world around him -- things "everybody knows," like the grass grows because ants pull up each blade to make it taller, and snow comes up like flowers and only seems to fall down because the wind blows it around. She states it with such authority that when Charlie Brown can no longer stand it and tries to correct her, it doesn't even dent her confidence. And the next exchange is:
Linus: Why is Charlie Brown banging his head against that tree?
Lucy: He's loosening the bark to help it grow.
Feb '11
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
"pretends there is a consensus..."
I'm reminded of the Three Dog Night hit 'Liar'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UKTg0rlvYU&feature=related
Dec '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
I can't find a good link for this, but I think William Buckley referred to the phenomenon as a "Planted Axiom".
Dec '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
Here you are (Google is your friend).
Dec '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
Stuart Creque
Here you are (Google is your friend). · Feb 5 at 10:40pm
I did see this one; however, I was looking for a quote from Buckley defining the term, which I have yet to find. I must also disclose I first heard mention of Buckley's "planted axiom" from Peter Robinson on one of the pod-casts or maybe Uncommon Knowledge.
Edited on Feb 5, 2011 at 10:48pmAug '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
Underneath, it's just a particularly common form of Pride, the worst of the Deadly Sins.
May '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
The writer is not just putting up a straw man, but an entire straw society.
How about stipulae publica? Somebody might have a better suggestion for the Latin inflexion, but Google translates it as "straw public" or "public of straw".
Or exercitus stipula which is "straw army".
Edited on Feb 6, 2011 at 3:30amNov '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
I like "straw public". Or perhaps "straw masses" after "straw man"? But it's not merely the public or the masses: it's the supposed experts too.
The trope definitely needs a name. Another example: I have noticed, on the economics shelves of UK bookshops, a rash of books claiming all to debunk the fashionable consensus that laissez-faire capitalism works. The only problem is this: I can't find on those same shelves any books that says it does work. You'd have to go somewhere like << mises.org >> to find them. And, as true-blooded free-marketers of the Misesian sort are often dismissed by left-wing critics as peripheral cranks, it is difficult to see how they regard them as embodying the inflexible, sweeping consensus they so bravely rail against.
Dec '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
Such arguments are the common currency of cranks and con artists.
Aug '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
I'd put it slightly differently and say this is the legacy of Karl Popper. People have a vague notion that science is about falsifying hypotheses and so any finding must be phrased in terms of the hypothesis it is rebutting and if this rebutted hypothesis did not heretofore exist then it must be made to have. This of course is not how science actually works except insofar as Popper has had a performative effect.
Aug '10
Re: A Pet Peeve in Search of a Name
"Home" (the album they were touring on in 2003) was actually more country/bluegrass than their previous record, "Fly." They did have a crossover single on the Adult Contemporary chart at the time but they weren't really looking to leave country until they were pushed out by the boycott. Personally, I find it sad that we impose litmus tests on entertainers rather than allowing ourselves to be entertained by people who give mildly offensive expressions of mainstream political positions.