The Greater Sucker Fallacy

Among the perils of modern existence is something akin to ‘paralysis of perception’, but as likely to fall upon the clever as upon the dim. Paralysis of perception is a shorthand phrase for the way in which clever people think themselves into inaction due to perceiving too many options in life. When everything is technically, theoretically accomplishable, very little actually gets done.

The Greater Sucker Fallacy can be taken as either a subclass of the perception-paralysis or it can be taken on its own. As it afflicts all intelligences, I prefer to take it on its own.

The Greater Sucker Fallacy is simply the idea that the other person must have better information than you, or that the other person’s notion on the matter is superior. It is the idea that you are the greater sucker, that what you think about a given topic is CLEARLY incorrect or faulty in some crucial regard.

It is fundamentally the idea that you are clueless about it all and other people never are, precisely because they seem way more certain about their conceptions of reality than you do. You, with your willingness to admit doubt and occasional confusion. You, with your willingness to accept that new data can lead to a revised opinion. You, with your belief that life is an endless series of greys, with fewer binary choices than any of us would prefer. You, with your utterly incompetent conception of the world as a complex series of interactions with consequences not entirely or easily predictable by human minds.

You are the Greater Sucker. Because you’re not convinced that you have found all the answers, or even one particular one for a particular topic.

The Greater Sucker Fallacy is that quailing in the face of certitude by people with absolutely no reason other than arrogance to believe that their viewpoints carry higher authority or heftier weight in the grand schemes of things. They seem so sure they’re right– you worry that all you know must therefore be wrong because it’s not so clearcut for you.

This fallacy is an insecurity, but it’s also the natural result of a modern world where the loudest people who seem most certain claim all the authority and work terribly hard to crush all opposition. Only they are not nearly so excellent at it as good old Ghenghis Khan. Who was less certain…

I guess really, the Greater Sucker Fallacy is just the belief that the Greatest Suckers are Great at anything else.