All right, I’m about to go on a rant, and I’m gonna reference an MCU movie in doing so. I don’t like doing it, but I think it’ll help clarify what the fuck I’m talking about, and provide a decent parallel. And maybe this is already a logical fallacy with a name, I don’t know, I haven’t memorized all the logical fallacies and their respective names.
So, in the movie Infinity War, an evil being called Thanos wants to kill half of the life in the universe, and Doctor Strange wants to stop him. Strange has a magic stone which allows him to see into the future. And that’s exactly what he does. Strange sees all 14,000,605 possible outcomes of the battle. Thanos wins 14,000,604, and the good guys win 1. So they have a 0.000007% chance of winning, which they do, of course.
The “Doctor Strange Argument” is when a person hyper-focuses on the 1 [metaphorically speaking] and ignores or downplays the 14 million [metaphorically speaking]. This often happens when one person mentions a wider societal issue that affects many people, and the second person responds with a snarky “solution” for a single individual suffering from that issue. They might both be snarky, to be fair. Lotta snarky people these days. Since the second person is providing a “solution” they feel a few things. First, they won the argument. Second, they can ignore the wider societal issue and pretend that it’s not even an issue at all. Third, they feel that the first person is just whiny.
Let me give you an example so you can get what the fuck I’m talking about. This happens all the time with the issue of the minimum wage in the United States. Person A says, “Hey, society would be better if people who are working full time can afford to live, especially since places like McDonald’s and Walmart earn billions in revenue and can easily afford it. People who are working shouldn’t have to work 60+ hours to survive.” Then Person B snarkily comments “Just quit your job and get a new one [smirk face]” Person B is hyper focusing on the 1 [quitting your job and somehow getting one with a livable wage] and acting like 1 proves that the 14 million [millions working long hours for non-livable wages] is not a problem.
See, Person B is not engaging with the actual issue. They’re not saying “No, I don’t think that people who work full time should be allowed to live because *some bullshit excuse*” That would be actually engaging in the issue. Person B is not engaging in the issue of millions of people working for wages that do not support life. Person B is engaging in the issue of 1 person not liking their job.
So what if we take Person B’s advice? If anyone upset with their minimum wage job should “quit and get a new job” then every single person working at McDonald’s, Walmart, Target, Wendy’s, Burger King, Amazon, Carl’s Jr., Chipotle, etc. should all quit right now. They should all just walk right out this very instant. And maybe, realizing they have a common bond in this society, they can form a union of sorts. And they can develop a system of support for each other. And, realizing their labor is what generates profit for these giant corporations, they decide to support each other while they demand better wages, better working conditions, more vacations, and more democratic control of their workplace, and so on. And the companies, realizing their profits won’t materialize out of nowhere, concede to the demands of the united workers.
Somehow I don’t think Person B wants all of that to happen, even though they tell minimum wage workers to simply quit their jobs. They only want Person A to shut up, so they provide the illusion of a solution to the problem. Person B wants people to work minimum wage jobs, doesn’t want them to be paid enough to live, and wants anyone who suggests otherwise to shut up.
It’s common with older people too. When you criticize the United States, you often hear “If you don’t like it, move to [insert country here].” Really? So, because the electoral college is a bad system, I’m supposed pack up my things, sell my possessions that I don’t need, quit my job, say goodbye to all my friends and family, and move thousands of miles away to Russia, where I don’t know anyone, have a job, or even know the language? Seems like an extreme reaction.
I’ll talk about one more example: the student loan debt crisis. The average 2019 graduate had around $28,000 in student loan debt, which of course means many students had much higher debts. Tuition costs have risen drastically, interest rates are high, jobs for graduates are scarce, and they don’t pay as well, the cost of living has increased, and wages.. haven’t. This puts young people in a sort of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation where if they go to college, they’ll be crippled by debt, and if they don’t go to college, they’ll likely have to work for minimum wage.
It’s a big deal that affects millions of people, preventing them from buying homes or starting families or other things like.. paying for healthcare, but that’s another issue.
Given that the U.S. is the richest nation on Earth, and considering that other nations don’t have this problem, we don’t have to have this problem.
So, whenever someone makes a post about this, on youtube or instagram or wherever, there’s always a smug guy commenting something like, “stop majoring in gender studies,” the implication being that if people simply stopped studying gender studies [or other “bullshit” degrees], then the student loan crisis would somehow disappear. Back to the Dr. Strange analogy, they’re ignoring the huge problem of the student loan crisis [14,000,605] and providing a “solution” of not majoring in gender studies [1]. Are they right, though?
Well, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, of the 1.98 million graduates in their study, 44,262 majored in “Liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humanities,” and 7,717 majored in “Area, ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies.” So a combined 2.6%. There might be a couple more so-called “bullshit degrees,” but the most popular, by a wide margin, was business. The second most popular was health profession programs, and engineering and biology were also very popular. Yet according to educationdata.org, 52% of students with loan debt feel it was not worth it, and 53% half not bought a home due to their loan debt. That is.. a lot different from 2.6%. Not majoring in gender studies is not a real solution for this issue.
So why do people comment about gender studies all the time? First, the Dr. Strange argument. Commenting “gender studies” allows them to ignore or downplay a large, serious issue by providing a phony “solution.” That’s what all these Dr. Strange arguments are about. Second, it adds to the caricature that they’ve constructed in their mind. Anyone who criticizes our society must be a blue-haired, shrill-voiced, white woman with scary pronouns in her bio, who has a gender studies degree and uses scary terms like “patriarchy.” And if they’re all like that, they can all be dismissed outright, they think. Thirdly, it makes them feel superior. Gender studies people are stupid, and if they’re the ones complaining, they’re wrong, and I’m right, and I’m smart.
Why am I writing about this? Well, because it’s extremely common, and people think they’re “winning” by using this Dr. Strange argument, and if we can recognize this, we can [hopefully] force them to actually engage in a discussion instead of giving a pathetic, inadequate “solution.” Explain to them that they’re not really giving any position at all, or engaging in the discussion, and ask them to elaborate what their actual position on the matter is. Now it likely won’t work often on the internet, but I’ve seen it work a lot in person. Oftentimes these Dr. Strange arguments are easy one-liners that people have used over and over again without challenge, but once they actually have to flesh out a full idea and say it out loud, they’re forced to actually think about it. And that will open up actual discussion, and hopefully, growth.
https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics/
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_322.10.asp
Lefty Forrester 