Delanceyplace.com 07/12/06-Conventional Wisdom

In today's encore excerpt, John Kenneth Galbraith speaks regarding 'conventional wisdom', and suggests that it is often a poor surrogate for truth:

"It was John Kenneth Galbraith, the hyperliterate economic sage, who coined the phrase 'conventional wisdom.' He did not consider it a compliment. 'We associate truth with convenience,' he wrote, 'with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem.' Economic and social behavior, Galbraith continued, 'are complex, and to comprehend their character is mentally tiring. Therefore we adhere, as though to a raft, to those ideas which represent our understanding.'

"So the conventional wisdom in Galbraith’s view must be simple, convenient, comfortable, and comforting--though not necessarily true. It would be silly to argue that the conventional wisdom is never true. But noticing where the conventional wisdom may be false--noticing, perhaps, the contrails of sloppy or self-interested thinking--is a nice place to start asking questions."

Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics, Harper Collins, 2005, pp. 89-90.