[HN Gopher] Nirvana fallacy
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Nirvana fallacy
Author : tomodachi94
Score : 68 points
Date : 2023-05-24 05:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| mock-possum wrote:
| Oops, I've been calling this the 'utopia fallacy' for who knows
| how long.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| I've always called it that too. I suspect it is a common
| alternative name.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Something I say often is "utopia means 'no place'" or "no such
| place as utopia" - people too often focus on trying to build a
| perfect world/thing/product/whatever rather than focusing on
| how to exist in an imperfect world.
| eikenberry wrote:
| That at least is a name that somewhat represents the idea.
| Nirvana was a poor choice and probably stems from a
| misunderstanding of the idea by the economist.
| mtraven wrote:
| That's a much better name actually.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Right? I would say "utopia fallacy" is the perfect label for
| this meaning over "nirvana fallacy" because it can never be
| misconstrued as something associated with the musical band
| Nirvana.
| eikenberry wrote:
| The band has more in common with the usage here than the
| Buddhist idea.
| tangent-man wrote:
| As a Buddhist I agree. Heh.
| tangent-man wrote:
| I think you'll find Nirvana [?] Fallacy
|
| https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/nibba...
| freeopinion wrote:
| What do you call the opposite fallacy? The one where any proposed
| solution is worse than the status quo because of all the things
| that could hypothetically go wrong?
|
| What-if-ism?
|
| Add: Example: A restaurant that throws away 10% of their supplies
| each day proposes to donate them instead to a soup kitchen a day
| before they would normally dispose of them. Then somebody asks,
| "What if the soup kitchen holds on to them too long and then
| somebody gets sick from the food we donated and we get sued?"
| throwaway290 wrote:
| By definition fallacy is something that looks correct but is
| wrong due to a sneaky error in reasoning itself. Your case has
| to do with information not reasoning.
|
| "These anti-drunk driving ad campaigns are not going to work.
| People are still going to drink and drive no matter what." =
| fallacy
|
| "These anti-drunk driving ad campaigns are not going to work
| because a study from 50 years ago sponsored by Big Alcohol
| definitely proves so." = many possible issues (too
| lazy/stupid/malicious to check a better study) but no fallacy
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| Possibly the _Slippery Slope_ fallacy.
|
| There's also an _appeal to consequences_ where if the outcome
| of something is considered undesirable, then that something
| must be false.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| The restaurant example doesn't seem to be a fallacy?
|
| That is a real legal concern in US jurisdictions. I'm fairly
| certain there's some on-the-record case law too.
|
| Plus, a real system can be almost limitlessly decomposed, the
| lower bound is the black hole limit.
|
| So it doesn't seem like there could be an inverse fallacy.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| I think GP is trying to get at "unintended consequences",
| "this was a good idea at the time but didn't scale", or "we
| made totally-reasonable assumptions that turned out to be
| incorrect" ... all of which I'm sure we've all experienced
| first-hand in our lives.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I can't see how saying there were, or could be, unintended
| consequences becomes a fallacy.
|
| All systems more complex then two electrons can behave
| unpredictably. That's just a fact, that will always be true
| in 100% of all possible scenarios.
|
| There's of course a norm in day-to-day life to not quibble
| about every possible combination of 3 electrons or however
| many below a reasonable threshold, but that norm is based
| on the differing opinions of individuals in society.
| w10-1 wrote:
| By contrast, the transaction cost economics models make-or-buy
| decisions as rational choice between real, available
| alternatives, imposing the reality principle at choice time.
|
| In my experience of collective decision-making, it's often the
| case that more aggressive, less-proven technologies are rejected
| as unproven or unrealistic, largely because no one wants the
| reputation in the group of having championed a mistake.
|
| By contrast, people deciding alone often will take the more
| optimistic choice. In technology, that can mean that
| person/engineer who's now on the hook finds ways to make the new
| technology work (and avoid its flaws).
|
| That translates to high-achieving organizations giving
| individuals the power to decide, but also holding them
| responsible for the consequences. Whether the "move fast, break
| things" permission to fail in service of learning new
| technologies and the problem domain actually works depends on
| some real capture of knowledge. Probably the job cuts in tech now
| (particularly at Twitter) are driven by realizing this "real
| capture" ain't happening.
|
| So it's not enough to avoid the Nirvana fallacy. You also have to
| get past decision paralysis to learn, but show the lessons you
| learned are worth something to the company.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Reminds me of the classic parental rebuttal "life's not fair".
| True enough, but it's still worth trying to be fair in the here
| and now.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| That's usually a shorthand for a child's limited understanding
| of complex factors when parents are too tired or unable to
| explain things better - not an actual moral claim.
| skulk wrote:
| That's a great example of the is-ought fallacy. "Life's not
| fair" is, but perhaps not ought to be.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Maybe related to this but with different framing, I actually
| think comparing the real world to the ideal can help us
| prioritize and take steps towards making improvements.
|
| For example: I think abortions should be legal, but in an ideal
| world the number of abortions would be near zero because access
| to social safety nets, birth control, and sex education is
| plentiful.
|
| The thing about reality is that it forces us to deal with
| engineering constraints, and we have to carefully consider and
| understand the tradeoffs being made.
| pachico wrote:
| I like this Wikipedia article, however, I would have preferred
| it's contents to be transmitted directly to my brain in real time
| when I opened Hacker News. That would have been so much better.
| tbm57 wrote:
| This article is talking about 'unrealistic' solutions - what
| you just said is going to be a neuralink plugin in 2030
| jjeaff wrote:
| Is neuralink even claiming to be working on input to the
| brain? I thought it was just trying to read the human brain.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| This is a corollary of the fallacy of relative privation, aka the
| "kids are starving in Africa so you have no right to complain
| about anything less severe" fallacy. Both fallaciously dismiss
| arguments by comparing them to unrealistic extremes.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Or "Do whatever I say because there's a slight chance if you
| don't follow my arbitrary rules you will be tortured forever by
| one of the characters in my arcane storybook"
| mcphage wrote:
| Isn't that just Roko's Basilisk?
| mistermann wrote:
| If the "so you have no right to complain" part actually
| happened. Many people (including smart ones) throw around
| popular memes with little regard for whether they are using
| them legitimately.
|
| This meme has excellent potential for that as the definition is
| subjective, but not explicitly disclosed as such creating a
| dependence on the reader to realize this.
|
| Another excellent point:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36076175
| Loquebantur wrote:
| Funny you would respond with a fallacious comparison.
|
| Relative privation is not fallacious because comparison was
| useless. Kids do starve (realistic) and there is even worse in
| the world (so not an extreme either). But you need to choose by
| some metric where to use your abilities, if you don't want to
| end up being an egotistic hedonist.
|
| You should help to right wrongs in ways amenable to your
| abilities, not more, not less. Honesty is key obviously, both
| ways.
| zokier wrote:
| I think this is closely related to no true scotsman, both involve
| comparison to idealized version of something.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| aka every single one of Elon Musk's product pitches, especially
| the Hyperloop
| davidw wrote:
| Oh. That Nirvana... Whatever.
| skyhvr wrote:
| ......Nevermind.
| klodolph wrote:
| I see this a lot when people are looking for some library /
| framework / programming language / game engine. You keep adding
| requirements and assume that you can spend some additional time
| evaluating alternatives to make up for the longer list of
| requirements you have. Reality is, there are often only a few
| serious alternatives in the first place. Adding more and more
| requirements to your search is, in some way, a stubborn refusal
| to prioritize among those requirements. Prioritization doesn't
| just mean affirming that some of your priorities are important,
| it means acknowledging that some of your priorities are
| unimportant and can be discarded.
|
| Related is the assumption that any custom-built library you write
| is going to beat an existing, well-known library that doesn't
| exactly match your needs. It's easy to come up with a list of
| problems with existing libraries, but your theoretical custom-
| built library can be perfect, because you're not imagining that
| it has any serious bugs or design flaws. You end up building your
| own solution and, in the process, rediscover _why_ the existing
| library was built the way it is.
| ozim wrote:
| It hits home when you realize people were saying 90% of
| software projects were failure.
|
| People wanted perfect solutions in one go. Everyone was blaming
| software developers.
|
| If one expects only perfect outcomes then it is easy to get
| high fail rate.
| remkop22 wrote:
| This hits home. Manytime have I come to appreciate a library or
| technology only after delusionally attempting to create a
| 'better' version. Mid attempt I actually start to understand
| the problem space, at which point I humbly and thankfully start
| depending on said library or technology.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| What kind of problem spaces need so much trial and error to
| understand?
| mcphage wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/592/
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Due to libraries and frameworks I most typically see the
| inverse of this fallacy. A team claims to want something
| amazingly ideal and yet easily feasible, but then reject the
| premise outright if they cannot execute it in their favorite
| library or framework in 30 seconds or less.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is usually just used as a sneak attack on someone's else's
| suggestion, a way to call it unrealistic without actually making
| a case that it's unrealistic. Rest assured, the people who tell
| you not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good do not think
| that what you suggested is either perfect or good, they just want
| you to shut up.
|
| The "fallacy" in this vein that I see is when after Bob suggests
| idea A to solve problem X, Mary says that idea A shouldn't be
| done because idea B is better for problem X, but Mary _also doesn
| 't support idea B._ Mary actually supports problem X, but if she
| admitted that, she would lose her influence on the reaction to
| problem X.
| thewataccount wrote:
| My favorite is still the "Fallacy fallacy" aka "Argument from
| fallacy".
|
| From my understanding it's very difficult to make a good faith
| debate without one of the bajillion fallacy's being applicable
| somewhere.
|
| Is there a name for the difficulty of making a debate without any
| single fallacy?
| gpderetta wrote:
| Fallacy Fallacy Fallacy?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Most "fallacies" are informal and rhetorical and not direct
| logical fallacies. Almost no one will say that X is not
| perfect, therefore it can be discarded. But plenty will focus
| their argumentation on how X is not perfect and leave the
| implication on the table that X is not worth bothering with.
| xg15 wrote:
| I see the same problem with the various lists of cognitive
| biases, rethoric devices, etc.
|
| I think the trick is to see them as patterns which should allow
| you to more easily construct a counter argument - instead of
| pretending that merely pointing out the pattern itself would
| already be enough to disqualify the argument.
|
| e.g., in the examples from the "perfect solution" section, they
| didn't just shut down the discussion with "well, that's a
| Perfect Solution Fallacy, so your argument is invalid!", they
| actually explained in each case, _why_ a non-perfect solution
| is still desirable.
|
| You could compare it with chess: An opponent is absolutely
| allowed to leave a piece vulnerable and you don't get an
| automatic win by just pointing out a bad position - you only
| get an advantage if you actually take the piece.
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