The Galileo Fallacy
I just found a wonderful article on the common phenomenon, in our culture and especially on the internet, of the Galileo Fallacy. That people who have unpopular ideas must be right because people who have been attacked due to their unpopular ideas in the past turned out to be right.
There’s a form of very bad thinking that I see a lot in some very smart, thoughtful people.
The thinking goes like this:
“Great thinkers throughout history have had unpopular ideas that everyone disagreed with.
“I have an unpopular idea that everyone disagrees with.
“Therefore, I must be a great thinker.”
I do understand the impulse. If you’re a non-conformist and an independent thinker, you’ve probably gotten used to pushing against the current — to the point that doing so feels more comfortable and natural than going along with it. If you’ve spent your life resisting popular but stupid ideas, resisting popular ideas can become a reflex. And it can be very easy to start thinking of yourself as a smart person simply because you resist popular ideas.
The problem, of course, is this: It’s certainly the case that being popular, widely accepted, believed by the scientific/ academic/ medical/ etc. establishment… none of that makes an idea true.
But none of it makes an idea false, either.
You know what makes an idea false? Being false. You know what makes an idea true? Being true.
And it’s not like Galileo Fallacists are out there doing the research themselves…Galileo Fallacists are mostly just laypeople like the rest of us, and they’re relying on authority just as much as anybody else.
They’re simply relying on different authority — authority that supports their “you can’t trust the Man” view of the world. They’re rejecting The Man, only to accept the word of a different Man.
It is also similar to what she calls the Gadfly Corollary.
The Galileo Fallacy is often accompanied by the Gadfly Corollary. It goes something like this
“Great thinkers throughout history have make people upset, angry, irritated, or insulted.
“I make people upset, angry, irritated, or insulted.
“Therefore, I must be a great thinker.”
The fact that you’ve made people mad at you doesn’t automatically make you a misunderstood genius. Sometimes it just makes you an asshole.
Go read the whole thing. If Greta Christina has many more posts like this, I might’ve found a new blog to follow.
There is a corresponding fallacy in the arts. I’ve known more than a few actors, artists and musicians who reason thus: Many highly talented artists have been emotional basket cases, prima donnas, drunken, licentious, self-absorbed pains in the neck. I’m all of that, so I must be a great artist. Or, somewhat differently: I’m an artist, therefore my infantile, obnoxious personality is to be expected and excused.
This is all flimsy self-justification to avoid confronting our intellectual flaws and social ineptitude, to boost our wobbly self-image in the face of powerful suspicions that we are average and relatively inconsequential - an intolerable thought!
Bruce
October 24th, 2007
10:40 pm