Not even wrong

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'''Not even wrong''' (or the full version "'''That's not right - that's ''not even wrong'''''") refers to any statement, argument or explanation that can be neither correct nor incorrect, because fails to meet criteria by which correctness and incorrectness are determined.
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'''Not even wrong''' (or the full version "'''That's not right - that's ''not even wrong'''''") refers to any statement, argument or explanation that can be neither correct nor incorrect, because it fails to meet any criteria by which correctness and incorrectness are determined.
  
 
The phrase implies that not only is someone not making a valid point in a discussion, but they don't even seem to understand the nature ''of the discussion itself'', or the things that need to be understood in order to participate.  
 
The phrase implies that not only is someone not making a valid point in a discussion, but they don't even seem to understand the nature ''of the discussion itself'', or the things that need to be understood in order to participate.  

Revision as of 21:04, 17 August 2011

Not even wrong (or the full version "That's not right - that's not even wrong") refers to any statement, argument or explanation that can be neither correct nor incorrect, because it fails to meet any criteria by which correctness and incorrectness are determined.

The phrase implies that not only is someone not making a valid point in a discussion, but they don't even seem to understand the nature of the discussion itself, or the things that need to be understood in order to participate.

Contents

Origin

The phrase apparently originates with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who used the phrase to describe an unclear research paper. Pauli was known for his detestation of sloppy writing and arguments and for his somewhat "colourful" objections to such things. The term has since gathered some popularity amongst those involved in refuting pseudoscience, to reference the difficulties faced in dealing with some of the more out-of-this-world arguments, such as the so-called creationist escape hatches, which are a series of irrefutable (but equally unprovable) claims that defy correction with conventional logic.[1] It also applies to science stoppers.

Form

A correct argument or explanation is easy to spot; it may look like this:

2 + 2 = 4

A wrong argument, again, just has an incorrect conclusion, like so:

2 + 2 = 5

Something that is not even wrong is usually so far out of the ballpark or so far from reality that it is, quite simply, flabbergastingly irrelevant. For example:

2 + zebra ÷ glockenspiel = homeopathy works!

This is more than just arguments leading to a wrong conclusion. The premises aren't even related to the conclusion, so a "not even wrong" argument is often an extreme non sequitur. Usually this is because of a lack of understanding in the person making the argument. They don't know enough about the subject to know what premises are needed to form the right argument and probably are completely unaware of that fact, similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Examples

The webcomic xkcd parodied the idea by suggesting that someone thought they had managed to disprove special relativity using a "racecar on a train" thought experiment.[2] The blog Science and Math Defeated seems to be the real personification of what this comic strip is about, however, no one is 100% sure if it is real or not.

Examples in real life often involve "skeptics" arguing with established scientists. In climategate, for example, where a thousand e-mails from leading climate change researchers were hacked and released publicly, most critics seemed to not understand the basic meaning behind some of the emails (climate science and atmospheric chemistry are complex disciplines), instead preferring to quote mine a few emails out of context and misunderstanding the use of the word "trick". Climate science is one of the areas where "not even wrong" arguments unfortunately apply a lot, owing to the complexity of the system under study. The political pressure group CO2 is Green certainly is not even wrong when declaring that "more CO2 is good for the planet because it's plant food". The whole of climatology, and plant biology is many, many orders of magnitude more complicated than such a statement suggests - CO2 is good, but more CO2 may certainly not be.

A further example was in the Lenski affair, where conservative website owner Andrew Schlafly demanded that Professor Richard Lenski should "release the data" on his long term evolution experiment. This stemmed from Schlafly's misinterpretation of the research paper in question (if indeed he has ever read it, which some doubt) as the paper did in fact mention all the relevant data one would need to appraise the experiment. Schlafly's further criticisms regarding the statistics reported in the paper were certainly in the field of "not even wrong" owing to his complete misunderstanding of basic practice when applying statistics as well as ignorance of the computer programs used - confusing the professional software package Statistics 101 with an amateur website.

Other use

The strict definition of "not even wrong" applies when the premises of an argument are known to be false (based on observational evidence), or when they are used to describe theories which cannot possibly be falsifiable or provide meaningful predictions. For example, any physical theory based on the existence of the aether, and any biological idea based on evolution by Lamarckian inheritance would be classed as not even wrong. In this case, it is a type of logical fallacy. Because the premises are wrong the conclusion is certainly incorrect, but it is correct based on said premises, the term "not even wrong" therefore describes this situation.

For a clear but silly example, one can say that "this chair is made of hard, solid wood, therefore I can sit on it". This is perfectly true, except in the case where the chair is made of jelly. The conclusion is correct based on the premise, but the premise is clearly wrong, so the conclusion is not even wrong.

Wronger than wrong

There is one step further than not even wrong and that is wronger than wrong. The phrase was coined by Isaac Asimov in The Relativity of Wrong,[3] and expanded and popularised by Michael Shermer, who called it "Asimov's Axiom".[4] Wronger than wrong describes any idea that equates errors that clearly aren't equal. The example originally given is that a belief in a flat earth is wrong, but a belief in a spherical earth is also wrong (as it's actually a distorted spheroid) - however, saying that a spherical and flat earth are equally wrong, is more wrong than both those errors combined. This phrase has important implications regarding the nature of scientific theories and aptly describes how the scientific method builds up knowledge and understanding - theories may change and adapt, but calling them outright wrong is not necessarily the right way to go about it. One reviewer of Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong asserted that such thinking was a great tool for "arming oneself against the inevitable anti-science attack that one often hears — [that] theories are always preliminary and science really doesn't 'know' anything".[5]

See also

Footnotes

  1. The Guardian - Not Even Wrong
  2. http://www.xkcd.com/675/
  3. The Relativity of Wrong
  4. Scientific American - Wronger than wrong
  5. John Jenkin's - Review of The Relativity of Wrong
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