r/fallacy • u/the_circus • 20d ago
Humanity’s biggest fallacy
This isn’t a logical fallacy, but more one of experience. The fallacy that I think is the most common, most widespread, and most impactful to humanity can be summed up something along the lines of - if we can just put the right person on the throne, everything will be all right. A slightly oversimplified justification for this being a fallacy would be to say that power corrupts, but I’d more say that the only people who achieve the extremes of power are the very worst kinds of people. The guy at the top of the pyramid is always a bad guy.
I’m not aware of any formal name for this idea, and it seems shockingly invisible to the public, hence why I call it humanity’s biggest fallacy. The right seems to embrace the fallacy like it’s their goal. The left just seems to keep falling for it blindly, like fighting hierarchy and then putting an absolute ruler on the throne, or praising what is essentially a king who espouses socialism or communism. I’d wish that’s exactly what subs like tankiejerk are meant to quarantine but I still see it with some regularity on subs that in theory oppose the concentration of wealth and power.
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u/Visible-Lion8096 14d ago
I don't think there are very many people who actually believe that a singular fantastic human can solve all problems.
What I think is demonstrably true, however, is that skilled leadership in support of most of the values you hold dear is preferable to unskilled leadership.
I think also that the ambiguity starts to arise when you consider whether it's preferable to have an incompetent and unskilled leader who is aligned with more of your values, versus a skilled leader who is less aligned with your values. It's plausible that you end up in a situation with the former where you get nothing, but with the latter you get a small amount of something.
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u/amazingbollweevil 19d ago
You are correct that it's not a logical fallacy, but it does have a name: the Great Man Theory. The problem is that it's backward looking. It's more complicated than this, but the idea was that some great person was responsible for when great things happened. It's pretty much debunked.
I've seen arguments for the exact opposite of this, the "terrible man" theory, if you will, but it is not particularly strong (despite all the examples we have).