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Perfect Solution Fallacy
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Also Called: Binary thinking Nirvana Fallacy A subcategory of False Dichotomy, the Perfect Solution Fallacy is arguing that a course of action is no good because it is not perfect. This essentially assumes the opposite of the Golden Mean Fallacy; rather than assuming the extremes cannot exist and the middle is correct, it assumes the middle cannot exist and a solution is either absolutely perfect or entirely undesirable. This is then used to argue that the hypothetical perfect solution must be used, or that a solution is useless because some part of the problem will remain after it has been implemented. Since, outside of mathematics, a perfect solution to anything is unlikely in the extreme, this fallacy is usually combined with Begging the Question; a debater will assume a "perfect" solution is one which fits their argument and ideals, regardless of whether their opponent would view the result as perfect, or even desirable. A sneakier form is to not state what the idealised solution actually is, and instead dismiss a position purely because it has flaws at all: This will often incorporate "flaws" which are also flaws of the system that would remain if the solution were rejected. This is often the basis of an Appeal to Ignorance; the claim then is that because we don't perfectly understand something, our theories about it are necessarily false, no matter how good the models they generate are. This fallacy is the basis of the proverbial admonition, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." The inverse is to argue that something is a good course of action simply because it is "better than nothing," without explaining why it is better than nothing. Looks like this fallacy but is not: Assuming an opponent wants a perfect solution through use of a Slippery Slope / Hasty Generalisation Fallacy: for example, an opponent claims that minor things X, Y and Z in a videogame are unrealistic, and gets the response "well if it were really realistic you would only get to die once!" Rejecting a solution due to comparison to a concrete and achievable state which is argued to be superior. Rejecting a proposal to eat cold food when you are in a room which has a stove and you have time to cook it is not a perfect solution fallacy. Rejecting a proposal to eat cold food when you are in an ice cave at the North Pole with no method of starting a fire, on the other hand, is. Begging the Question applies here heavily: your opponent must agree that the state in question is concrete and achievable for you to be able to use this as a premise. Rejecting a solution which actually does prevent one agreed to be better from being implemented. Rejecting a solution based on a comparison to the status quo, such as a cost-to-benefit ratio. The fallacy is only committed when one side rejects a solution because it is inferior to an idealised one, not when they reject it because it is inferior to an existing one. Rejecting the presentation of something as an alternative to the current course of action when it is only actually suited as a complement to it; in this instance, the inability to provide 100% replacement means it cannot be regarded as an alternative. For example, "alternative" electrical sources are not capable of providing 100% of a country's energy needs, and therefore cannot be accurately described as an alternative to more conventional generating methods. Rejecting a "good enough" proposal when one desires to future proof. For example, building a city sewage system that can handle the exact needs of the city today is not satisfactory to a requirement for a sewage system that can handle the next thirty years of projected growth. Over the long term, "good enough" can become the enemy of the good. |
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In Bojack Horseman, a Fatal Flaw of Diane Nguyen is that she refuses to be pragmatic or compromise her position at all. This leads her into all kinds of trouble when she tries to take on the elites of Hollywoo, believing that the truth will make itself known if she only keeps pushing hard enough. Too bad that Hollywoo is such a Crapsack World that things don't work like that. | |
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There Was Once an Avenger From Krypton: Comes up as part of the big reveal in Chapter 34 of The Girl Who Could Knock Out the Hulk about the villains' motives: Doom and original Reed wishing to see Thanos defeated with little-to-no damage to Earth and humanity beyond what is necessary in the base MCU's "script" isn't really a bad thing, but the lengths they're willing to go to, including shoving new races into the Kryptonverse simply to serve as cannon fodder against the Black Order so Earth has less to deal with, shows that their (but especially Doom's) obsession with a "perfect victory" on their own terms has made it impossible for Kara to bring herself to work with them. | |
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In the Miraculous Ladybug fic How Not To Propose, Adrien refuses to propose to his girlfriend because he wants the moment to be absolutely perfect when he does: scenery, food, music, everything. Naturally, the universe conspires to ruin all his attempts at setting up such a moment, and Adrien's inability to compromise ends up prolonging the situation so badly that Adrien's girlfriend begins to wonder if he's serious about their relationship at all. | |
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Star Trek: Picard: In "Absolute Candor", Jean-Luc Picard is called out on this by Zani, having chosen to Resign in Protest from Starfleet and do nothing afterwards rather than listen to Raffi's suggestion that they find another way, however imperfect, to continue the relocation of Romulans without Starfleet's support. Soundly defied in "The Impossible Box" when Picard sees the work being done at the Borg Reclamation Project. He commends Hugh for doing an imperfect job the best way he can. |
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An episode of The Daily Show lampooned a group of Fox News personalities who claimed that a proposed tax increase on the super-rich was worthless in eliminating the federal debt because it would generate "only" an additional $700 billion over 10 years, a small fraction of the overall debt. (Stewart and Co. then went on to show that raising taxes on the lowest-earning 50% of the population could only generate the same amount by claiming HALF of all of their material wealth in taxes.) | |
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A side mission in Spider-Man (PS4) has Spider-Man try a cloaking device that allows him to become invisible, with the disadvantage that when the cloaking field is active it interferes with his web shooters, so he can't use them while he's invisible. After the mission ends, Spider-Man concludes that the device isn't worth it because he can't shoot web while using it, so he discards it, entirely ignoring all the advantages invisibility allows when he's not fighting (such as easy sneaking, which would prevent a lot of the problems he'll face later in the game) and the fact that he can turn it on and off at any moment, which means even keeping it for an emergency would have been a good idea. | |
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In The Owl House, Eda's mother Gwendolyn has trouble with this fallacy. She loves Eda, and genuinely wants to help her with her curse, but she wants a 100% cure rather than a treatment like the potions, which she distrusts. As a result, not only has she wasted a lot of time and resources, especially since her drive makes her vulnerable to scam artists, but she's alienated both her daughters, Eda for continually coming around for years with "cures" that don't work, and Lilith for neglecting her in favor of Eda. | |
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This is the main reason why Mercy in Overwatch was completely re-worked. Under her old ability kit, the developers noticed that players would play Mercy too passively and were more than willing to pocket her active ultimate (which resurrected any dead teammates in her vicinity). Instead of "wasting" it on one or two revivals, players would try to wait for a moment for a near-or-full-team revive, and usually wind up not using it and being unhelpful if a perfect scenario did not present itself. Thus, the developers reworked her character where she has a revival ability on a 30-second cooldown and an ultimate that enhanced her abilities, allowing players to be more aggressive in keeping players alive instead of being trapped in the fallacy. | |
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As far as Knowledge is Power (and Harry Potter badfic in general) is concerned, the fact that Dumbledore's plan to defeat Voldemort was not certain to work, and could not guarantee that Harry would survive the war even if it did work, makes him as evil as Voldemort himself. | |
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Halt and Catch Fire: In season 3, Cameron argues that they should hold off on taking Mutiny public for a year or two until they make what she considers to be vital improvements to the business. Donna argues that interest has peaked now and that they shouldn't risk a good thing for a chance at something better in the future. She explicitly accuses Cameron of making perfect the enemy of good. However, it seems that Cameron was right in the end. Mutiny's IPO flops, and the company goes under within four years. | |
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Voltaire's quote is paraphrased by Ben in Doc Rat when talking with Wilbur Fuzz about the latter's cardiac arrest. Wilbur is joking in his usual Pungeon Master way that a bull had to have been involved in his rescue. | |
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Solomon David in Kill Six Billion Demons is looking for someone to replace him as ruler of his part of the Multiverse so that he may focus on enlightenment and meditation, but because of his immense pride, rather than simply appointing a successor or training one of his sons to succeed him, he wants to find someone better than him, which he hasn't been able to in millenia. | |
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In Irredeemable the Fatal Flaw behind the Plutonian's Face–Heel Turn was the criticism he received from the population after all his acts of heroism. It is implied that he has a pathological desire to have everyone love him, and simply couldn't tolerate any criticism whatsoever, no matter how justified. Though given the nature of his powers, he may have had a self-defeating streak since he couldn't tune out the thousands of voices coming at him (he had to go to The Moon so he was far enough not to hear them.) | |
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In Cooking With Wild Game, Zattsu Tsun argues that because the law is racist in a certain few situations that have nothing to do with what he's on trial for, he should be allowed to get away with murder. His judges/fellow tribesmen, who suffered the same oppression Zattsu did and have been victimized by his sadism for generations, are not impressed. | |
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Dr Cocteau from Demolition Man turned Los Angeles from a dystopian, almost wartorn hellhole into a clean, prosperous and completely peaceful city in 30 years. There is only a small group who consider the place a Crapsaccharine World, almost everyone else seems perfectly content to live in the city. Then Dr Cocteau decides that small group is such a stain on his perfect society that he engineers the jailbreak of an Axe-Crazy Human Popsicle from that violent past, who goes on a muderous rampage through the city even before he breaks free of Cocteau's control, just to kill that group's leader. | |
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This is often used by people who complain about the Tribunal in League of Legends. "The Tribunal is supposed to punish trolls. There are still trolls in the game, therefore it doesn't work." | |
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From The Sandman (1989): | |
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A meta-example in a Star Trek: Voyager episode where the crew discards a new propulsion method, the quantum slipstream drive, because the field becomes unstable after a little while. Nobody brings up the possibility of using QSD for repeated hops until they get home. (Granted, the Anthropic Principle requires them to not consider this or else the show would be over.) | |
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Used in several episodes of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!. When discussing the Americans with Disabilities Act, P&T take a man and his iron lung for a walk through town, noting several ADA-compliant shops and facilities that cannot accommodate him. No matter what accommodations a business implements, they state, somebody will always be left out, so why should the government be allowed to set and enforce an arbitrary standard? | |
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Star Trek: The Next Generation: Discussed in "The Hunted." The Angosians had no idea what to do with their augmented Super Soldiers because Angosia is No Place for a Warrior. When they failed to figure out a way to completely remove the soldiers' combat conditioning, they just sent every single soldier to a lunar prison colony. Picard and his bridge crew call out the Angosian government for not even trying to help them. | |
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