Just the other day, someone (I don’t remember who), linked to this page on fallacies on the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe website.
These are great fallacies for everyone to be aware of (not just skeptic) because knowing where our thinking is flawed and where it can be expressed in our writing and interactions with others can help us improve our thinking skills and better understand where biases might be in things that we are reading or hearing. There is one fallacy, though, that I haven’t found listed anywhere, not even on the fantabulous resource, The Fallacy Files, that I keep seeing and it really bugs me. It bugs me so much that I decided to write about it, just for your reading pleasure.
The fallacy I keep seeing is what I’m going to call the ‘real world’ fallacy. Now, it isn’t, itself, a fallacy type but would be an example of one. I’ve struggled for a word for it. I searched through Fallacy Files,trying to see if it had been defined. I failed to find what I was looking for. I am hardly the queen of fallacy identification. Still, the subject is worth addressing.
So, what is the REAL WORLD fallacy? Well, it is usually found in places where one type of person or group of people tells another group of people or person that they need to “join us in the real world” or it can be a reaction to something where someone says, “welcome to the Real World.” Of course, I’m not going to make a case that a real world doesn’t exist, but, instead, I’m going to outline why the real world fallacy is a poor argument to make a point with.
Let me give an example. Imagine some people are sitting at a bus stop and comfortably chatting away. One person suddenly ejects a seemingly disproportionate amount of snot from her nose with a gigantic and loud sneeze and globules of the aforementioned snot end up dangling from her septum. As she wipes the debris away, she says, “Ugh, I HATE sneezing!” Then, one of her peers snidely says, “welcome to the real world.” Of course, sneezing really is a part of the real world, but so is the state of not sneezing. The action of welcoming someone to a real world based on a sneeze seems absurd, especially since that person had already been in the real world.
I know that example seems absurd, so let me give one that is perhaps more frequently used so you can make a connection between the two and hopefully see what I’m getting at. When a young person transitions from their teen years through their birthday when they turn 18 or through their graduation from High School, the end of their primary education here in the United States, it is often the case that the adults around them consider this their transition into the ‘real world.’ They have to hear this quite a lot. “Now that you’ve joined the real world, you have to go to college or get a job,” a parent might say. Or they may have to endure a graduation speech from one of their peers or a guest speaker about how the real world will be for them. Not to downplay this important transition in their life, it is certainly an important one in our society, but to refer to their new state of being as them entering a “real world” belittles their experiences in life previous to that transition. Which, one would hope, is the set of experiences they went through with the careful guidance of their parents.So by belittling the person’s life previous to graduation, a parent is (though not consciously) belittling what they have done in raising their child. They are downplaying the importance of the world during the time that they were guiding their child’s life within it. Certainly, that child was living in a real world before they graduated!
So, why is this important? Well, I’ve seen this fallacy a lot, lately. I also hear it quite often. I hear people telling scientists that they don’t live in a ‘real world’ or scientists telling people that they’re missing the ‘real world’ or that I’m not really a part of the ‘real world’ because my life is so different from the norm. Oftentimes, people really just are trying to tell others that their perception of what is really going on is different from those of others. Sadly, people don’t want to cite their perception as the source of their statement. If it really is perception, then it has to be determined who has the better perception. Most people don’t think they have a flawed view of “the world.”
My advice is, just be careful with this phrase. It gets used too often and is frequently an argument used that restricts the message you’re trying to send. The people we oppose are as much in the real world as we are. Our peers are also as much in the real world as we are. If their perception is somehow distorted, if there is something they need to see, then belittling their own view of things isn’t going to solve the problem. Instead, find a clearer way to send your message.
At least, that’s how we do it, in the ‘real world.’
This sounds very similar to the problem with using the phrase “common sense.”
It’s the kind of thing that shuts down conversation becasue one person is effectively communicating, “I know what’s true and right and you don’t.”
But they’re not explaining any details of what they mean. They’re not making a nuanced argument, they’re instead using a blanket generalization.
They’re making this assumption that the “real world” or “common sense” is something normalized. I don’t think there’s one right way to live our lives or one right way to solve every problem.
Then again, how dare I have my alternative lifestyle and think outside the box. I’m sure the world would be much more comfortable if I was “normalized.” ;)
Reminds me of a response to a criticism I made of a claim just today when I asked why it is okay for the claimant to not provide any support for his claim.
“Because it’s (expletive) self evidently obvious!”
I think the implication there is that I lack “common sense” and I don’t live in the “real world” or I wouldn’t ask such silly questions.
Darn…
Elizebeth,
Interesting that you should mention the idea of ‘common sense.’ I agree. I have, for a long time, told people that there was no such thing as common sense. What people claim is ‘common sense,’ is usually a learned behavior and if you ask various people what common sense happens to be, you will get a wide variety of answers taht are usually very vague. I’ve considered writing about that problem, as well. I might do that sometime in the future.
I was incredibly offended graduating both high school and university, when people told me that I was entering the real world. Was I part of the Trueman Show before then?
My only problem with this is that, some of the claims made by certain people who believe in some outlandishly whacky woo-woo either must NOT be living in the ‘Real World’, or they are so far gone that I am tempted to call someone to pick them up for their own good. ;)
I used to get told that a lot as a teacher, it was very confusing. As if teachers had never grown up themselves but were still children.
I know what you mean, but I do find there is a case for it with children or teenagers. They are definitely in a different world to the one they will spend the rest of their lives in, in general far more sheltered from consequences and with much less responsibility. But of course it is still real. ‘Independence’ probably expresses it better.
And there is a time to use it absolutely legitimately, usually when people are talking about the ‘shoulds.’ You know – the government should provide us all with the best health care and education and subsidised decent housing without increasing taxes. I think this is the Nirvana fallacy? In this case they are constructing plans or complaining about things that could never work in the real world. But you’re right, it can’t be extended from that legitimate usage, because unless you are pipedreaming we are all in the real world. Even when our perceptions and experiences are very different.
Derek, they may have a different perspective, but it is still a kind of insult to claim they’re not in the ‘real world.’ I think that’s my biggest problem with the phrase. When someone uses it, they completely dismiss another person’s context for anything as if it has no value to you or them.
Dash, I disagree that there are times when you should use it, for the reasons stated. Belittling other people’s experiences is an irrational and unproductive way of approaching an issue. I think what people intend to say with it is what I mentioned before, that there is a difference in perspective. If that is the case, that should be stated clearly in order to have an effect on whoever you’re communicating with. The problem with the real world fallacy is that it is a way of reinforcing ingroup/outgroup thinking. If you say that person needs to live in the real world, you’re saying they need to be in *your* world and are somehow in another. That’s not really true. Sure, they may have a different perspective on things, but that doesn’t mean that they’re oblivious to everything (as the phrase often implies) or that they’re somehow a part of an alien nation.
As for the teenager analogy. When I was a teenager, I was helping raise my little sister and I had a job. I was a very busy person and lived as much an adult life as I do now. I had several peers in the same situation. At least half the teenagers I knew had jobs and were contributing to supporting themselves. I think we easily dish out criticisms to teenagers trying to highlight their immaturity because we want them to be considered different and immature. They might be, but in many cases they aren’t.
It is true that there is a major growth spurt in the brain during the last part of a teenager’s life, but that lasts until the age of 25, meaning that many of our peers are still going through it. If that were motivation for separating us, then we need to perhaps rethink how we’re defining adulthood, which doesn’t seem rational, either.
I think this is related to the Nirvana fallacy. Not only do we think the grass is always greener, we somehow think our grass requires a different level of understanding for us to walk on it. For us, it is easy to think this way because it is easy to think that we’re somehow more special in our views than others.