Golden Mean Fallacy: Difference between revisions

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 [[Golden Mean Fallacy]] have another outlook. They believe that there are in fact three sides: the side of the complete morons to the left of them, the side of the complete morons to the right of them, and their own side, which combines the good points of each in sublime harmony while avoiding all the bad. If one position is argued to be superior ''solely'' because it is in the middle, then this is the [[You Fail Logic Forever|logical fallacy]] of [[wikipedia:Argument to moderation|Argument to Moderation]].

The [[Golden Mean Fallacy]] is turning both sides of an argument into [[Strawman Political|Strawman Politicals]] and declaring that the only sensible approach is to take the middle road. There is a number of benefits to this - you avoid offending either side too much since they can each take comfort in the fact that their enemies get just as ridiculed as them, you get to come off as a sensible person who thinks for oneself and doesn't blindly follow any one party line, and you get twice as many people to insult and make fun of.

The technique is known among American political strategists as [[wikipedia:Overton window|the Overton Window]].

Of course, one of the hazards of this trope is that you'll end up angering ''both'' sides of the debate, who might be more interested in complaining about what they wanted but didn't get, without even acknowledging anything that they might have gained. Alternatively, an attempt to compromise too closely might result in a watered-down solution which fails to satisfy anyone or accomplish anything; sometimes, tough decisions ''do'' have to be made for good or ill. Finally, one of the sides may actually be completely right after all, and thus taking the middle road is as wrong as the opposing viewpoint.

== Anime and Manga ==

== Films -- Animated ==

** 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.

* Subverted in the [[Judgment of Solomon]] from the Old Testament. Two women each claim to be a boy's mother. Solomon cannot tell who is lying, so he declares that he will cut the baby in half and give each woman her 'share.' The boy's true mother gives up her claim so that the child lives, which reveals who truly loved him. Subverted in that Solomon never intended this as a legitimate solution but only a trap to catch out the liar, leading to the phrase "splitting the baby" when someone destroys the subject of a dispute rather than assign it to one party.

{{quote|"'Nature sets her gifts on the right hand and on the left.' Those conditions which flatter hope and attract desire are so constituted that as we approach one we recede from another. There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but by too much prudence may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either."}}

== Tabletop Games ==

* [http://www.idrewthis.org/d/20070815.html This comic strip] offers a wry comment on the subject.

** It also unintentionally illustrates how the [[Golden Mean Fallacy]] is frequently abused by people who are too lazy or cowardly to defend their own ideas. Say, for example, if you can just make everyone think that "their" beliefs are inherently wrong (like, say, [[Deliberately Bad Example|equating an opposing viewpoint to blending kittens]]), you don't have to explain why ''yours'' are right.

* This is how politics works in ''[[Sore Thumbs]]''.

* ''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'' Presents: [http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=216 Logical Fallacy Comics]

* ''[[Jesus and Mo]]'' have reached [http://www.jesusandmo.net/2010/11/16/sober/ that precarious and profound middle ground between being extremely drunk and extremely sober].

** 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.

*** 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.

* 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"]].

* This can be a problem in wikis ([[Repeatedly Used On This Very Wiki|just like the one you're reading!]]) - two opposed people get in an [[Edit War]], and the only ways to appease them both are (a) come up with something halfway between the two, or (b) have the article [[Conversation On the Main Page|contradict itself]].

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Politics Tropes]]

[[Category:The War On Straw]]