The 2024 Legal Defense Fundraiser has ended early due to the Board's decision to settle the suit. Donations will go towards the creation of a legal defense fund. Discussion on the matter can be found at the RationalMedia Foundation noticeboard. Thank you for your generous support.
Golden hammer
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/GoldenHammer-en.gif/165px-GoldenHammer-en.gif)
Cogito ergo sum Logic and rhetoric |
![]() |
Key articles |
General logic |
Bad logic |
“”If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
|
—[2] |
A golden hammer is the luxury version of Maxwell's silver hammer a logical fallacy that occurs when you propose the same, simple solution (or type of solution) to every problem.
Alternate names
- Baruch's Observation
- Maslow's hammer
- Kaplan's hammer
- Birmingham screwdriver
- Law of the hammer
- Law of the instrument
- Persimplex responsum
- "Cookie cutter solution" is the management speak version.
Etymology
The name comes from Abraham Maslow's 1966 statement:
“”I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.
|
An earlier (yet less famous) quote comes from Abraham Kaplan's 1964 statement:
“”I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.
|
Problem
Essentially, not everything is a nail; no solution can fix every problem. There's always the possibility that we just haven't built a big enough hammer yet, though. But not for lack of trying.
Examples
- Every panacea
- Didit fallacy
- Some flavors of libertarians view free market economics this way.
- Conversely, many communists treat the prospect of a planned economy with the same overconfidence.
- Many neoconservatives view war as a "golden hammer".
- The item first from Wrecking Crew,
more often known from Super Smash Bros..
It can inflict serious damage, but some are defects that squeak on contact. Golden Hammers can break some challenges, though only limited times.
See also
- Enoch's Hammer of the Luddites
- Hanlon's razor
- Occam's razor
- Silver bullet
- Thor, wielder of the hammer that protected humanity
Want to read this in another language?
![]() |
External links
- "Golden Hammer", The Free Dictionary
- "Plurium interrogationum fallacy", The Autonomist