Golden Mean Fallacy: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|If [[CNN]] did sports reporting, every game would be a tie.|Cenk Uygur, of ''[[The Young Turks]],'' in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}3MQ2a032OUE this] clip.}}
Most people know that there are two sides to every issue: their side, and the wrong side. Authors (and people in general) who subscribe to the
The fallacy comes about by assuming that not only are extreme solutions ''never'' reasonable or correct, but the correct solution can ''always'' be found in the middle, e.g.: Bob wants to exterminate all the termites in the house. Alice doesn't want to exterminate them at all. Therefore, the correct course of action is to kill exactly ''half'' of the termites.
The
Another handy (and sneaky) thing with this method is that you don't actually have to be very moderate to use it. A [[Strawman Political]] is by definition hideously more extreme and unreasonable than any position in [[Real Life]]
The technique is known among American political strategists as [[wikipedia:Overton window|the Overton Window]].
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== Literature ==
* In ''[[Anita Blake]]: Vampire Hunter'', the title character considers conservatives to be bigoted troglodytes who want to exterminate vampires for being different, and liberals to be air-headed idealists who think that vampires are harmless fluffy fanged bunnies and forget that they are dangerous and not entirely human. Since Anita is a complete [[Canon Sue]], her views are entirely accurate.
* ''[[Angels
** Or [[Science Is Bad|science]] and the Catholic Church. Skepticism of Langdon's postmodernist interpretations of paganism is apparently ignorant, and the Catholic Church is apparently [[Christianity Is Catholic|guilty of any irrational thing any other sect of Christianity has ever said]].
* [[Illuminatus|The Bavarian Illuminati]] however know that there must always be 5 sides.
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* In [[G. K. Chesterton]]'s ''Magic'', the Duke is prone to such flights of fancy as donating to both sides of the issue.
{{quote|'''SMITH'''. [''Turning eagerly to the_ DOCTOR.''] But this is rather splendid. The Duke's given £50 to the new public-house.
'''HASTINGS'''. The Duke is very liberal.[[''Collects papers.'']]
'''DOCTOR'''. [''Examining his cheque.''] Very. But this is rather curious. He has also given £50 to the league for opposing the new public-house. }}
* In ''[[Dilbert|The Dilbert Principle]]'', the chapter "How to Get Your Way" suggests using the "Final Suggestion Maneuver" to get the last word in business meetings. The technique involves staying uninvolved throughout the entire meeting as conflicting suggestions are made, then chiming in at the last minute by disguising your suggestion as a composite of everyone else's. The theory behind this maneuver is that everyone will be so desperate to leave that they'll rush to accept your suggestion without questioning it.
* In ''[[Harry Potter and
** From a political standpoint her position is blatantly obvious, though, her language being extremely middle-class conservative.
** In the third book, Lupin tells an anecdote about a [[I Know What You Fear|boggart]] that came across two people at once; one was most afraid of flesh-eating slugs and the other was most afraid of headless corpses. The boggart, possibly attempting to combine "slug" and "headless", turned into half a slug, which, as Lupin points out, is not nearly as scary.
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* ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' presents most attempts at compromise as examples of this fallacy. In keeping with the series's position on the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]], it seems that we are usually meant to agree with him. This is subverted in an important instance, though, when Stacy defies House's wishes and [[Take a Third Option|takes a third option]] while he's in a coma following his enfarction, saving his leg and probably his life as well.
* This was part of Jon Stewart's show-ending rant on ''Crossfire''. The show was infamous for bringing on people of supremely dichotomous views, whom the hosts would then egg on into an argument. The thinking was that the producers were presenting the views of the mainstream public on an issue by bringing on their loudest extremists, with the public view somewhere between them. This point-of-view was the basis for Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity."
* In ''[[Community]]'' episode "[[Community/Recap/S1
* In ''[[Yes Prime Minister]]'', Sir Humphrey is trying (without much success) to find an argument against a plan for banning cigarette advertising and punitive taxes on tobacco. Eventually he's reduced to "The government should not take sides." Hacker spots the fallacy at once: "You mean, impartial as between the fire engine and the fire?"
* In ''[[QI]]'', when Alan Davies talked about giving honey to bees that have been hurt in order to help them recover, Dara O'Briain responded that he would prefer to just squash it. Rob Brydon followed up with his compromise plan - drown the bee in honey.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Dungeons
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* ''[[Bruno the Bandit]]''. More about religion than politics, but the principle is the same. Atheists are pig-headed, verbally abusive, and so [[Straw Vulcan|fanatically devoted to "reason"]] that there is no amount of evidence that would convince them to change their minds, [[Flat Earth Atheist|not even a god making an appearance right in front of their eyes]]. The church is dogmatic, inflexible, and more interested in [[Corrupt Church|hoarding wealth to glorify itself]] than in practicing any of the charity it keeps preaching. Yes, thank heavens for the existence of liberal Catholi... ahem, ''[[Crystal Dragon Jesus|Ailixism]]''!
** Of course, [[Failure Is the Only Option|is anyone at all ever portrayed in a positive light in that webcomic?]]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120207160740/http://www.idrewthis.org/d/20070815.html This comic strip] offers a wry comment on the subject.
** It also unintentionally illustrates how the
* Also parodied in [http://xkcd.com/690/ this] ''[[Xkcd]]'' cartoon. And directly called out in [http://xkcd.com/774/ this] one.
* This is how politics works in ''[[Sore Thumbs]]''.
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* Parodied: No matter what the issue, JP Nickel gives you... ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGArqoF0TpQ Both Sides!!!]''
* Discussed in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7hhT22seTY this] Angry Aussie video, as an argument when discussing creationists' arguments against evolution.
* Parodied in a ''Scientific American'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20131030083220/http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=okay-we-give-up April Fool's joke]:
{{quote|''Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts.''}}
* ''[[Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do In An RPG]]'' include parodying this:
{{quote|1339. If unsure of what side of the road we drive on, the middle of the road is not a healthy compromise.}}
== Western Animation ==
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** And then there's the debacle with the children of Springfield trying to figure out why all the adults had disappeared from the streets after Grampa started selling his aphrodisiac:
{{quote|'''Millhouse:''' Ahem. OK, here's what we've got: the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people under the supervision of the reverse vampires are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner.}}
* ''[[South Park]]'' uses this trope a lot to deliver its message. [[Strawman Political
* ''[[Futurama]]'' made fun of this at the end of one episode, where Bender states the moral he learned:
{{quote|"I'll never be too good or too evil ever again, I'll just be me."
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*** Not really. Historical opinion is still divided on whether or not appeasement was a wise policy - certainly, buying time at Munich let the UK and France step-up re-armament to a level that they would find it easier to fight Germany with.
** A part of the treaty was that Germany could not possess an army of more than 100k infantry, which would be suicidal to go to war with. The problem with the treaty is more likely to have been that it leaned too hard towards the French standpoint (squash ze Germans!) while not having the support in the US or GB to be followed through in later years. A good example of the disaster the treaty was is that the attempted alleviation of the harsh terms, the League of Nations (precursor to the UN), failed to secure membership of the US and Soviets. Since Germany was barred from entering, this meant that almost half of the great powers were not part of the League, making it a useless formality at best.
*** Another problem that has been noticed was the forcible downsizing of the German military, took away the new German Government's ability to defend itself from domestic threats while encouraging unemployed service personal to become hatchetmen for radical political organization. Under this theory the disarming of Germany [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|actually aggravated problems.]]
*** Germany joined the League of Nations in 1926, the Soviet Union (founded in 1922) in 1934. From the French POV the problem with the Versailles settlement was that it was left incomplete because the defense treaties with the UK and the US that were supposed to guarantee French security did not come about after the US Congress failed to ratify the Versailles Treaty (which from the French POV leaned too much to the American, or more specifically President Wilson's standpoint) and the entrance of the US into the League of Nations. This gave the British government the pretext it needed not to enter into a permanent defensive alliance with France either, and that in turn caused French policy towards Germany to be much more confrontational because until the mid-1920s it was felt they had to use their transient military superiority to improve a situation largely determined by the much larger population and industrial strength of Germany.
***The destruction of the Hapsburg Empire can be criticized too for making ministates at just the time when a resurgent Germany was out for blood.
** Perhaps the best interpretation of the Treaty of Versailles is that it was a toss-up between British pragmatism, American idealism and French revanchism, and ended up trying to be all three and failing at each one.
* There are many branches of science that are seen as controversial by laymen but are, in reality, grounded in a lot of evidence. As a result, people will often try to find a common ground behind science that works and quackery that doesn't, sometimes with disastrous results. Take, for example, medicine, which is "controversial" because of influences like the pharmaceutical industry, so often well-meaning newscasters will, "for balance", hold a debate between an accredited medical professionals and (often unqualified) alternative medicine advocates, even though [[Tim Minchin|if alternative medicine were to work, it'd just be called "medicine"]].
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[[Category:The War On Straw]]
[[Category:Logical Fallacies]]
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