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Golden hammer

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"♫♬If I had a hammer…"[1]
Cogito ergo sum
Logic and rhetoric
Icon logic.svg
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 hammerWikipedia 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'sWikipedia 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'sWikipedia 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.Wikipedia

Examples

See also

Want to read this in another language?

Русскоязычным вариантом данной статьи является статья Ошибка золотого молота

External links

References