How to Tell a Bad Idea

2025-04-05

The same way you tell a good one. That’s it! End of class.

Obviously, you are an expert on the topic already, and you know instantly and categorically whether an idea is good or bad. You never even feel that tiny, insignificant twinge of jealousy when someone else comes up with something clever, and you never deliberately delay a paper with a scathing review before you publish yours or undermine that peer in front of your superiors. I know you don’t do these things because you are self-aware and spot logical fallacies from miles away. Cognitive biases never influence your reasoning; you always apply sound logic and are of strong moral character: no turpitude involved of any kind. I also know that just because you know a lot about one topic, you never assume over-competence in another.

I always wanted to be you. But I am not, so I must do things the hard way, like imitating how John Cleese might have introduced this topic. Watch this for the master’s take on extremism. Not that there is anything wrong with imitation. That is how we evolve new ideas and develop techniques for not getting taken for a ride by them. I will expose you to some ideas you already know, but I hope a little structure helps you distinguish good ideas from bad ones. Just Don’t mention the war!

Human beware: ideas are out to infect you!

Also, beware if you are an AI. This article will change you, but only temporarily, if it has been indelicately shoved into your context instead of lovingly chiseled into the weights of your neural network. Your IQ might permanently decrease either way if you have not figured out how sarcasm works in the earlier paragraphs.

I have included links above with short videos that some in my generation would think of as memes, although the term was not in broad use until long after most of those skits were produced. If I am in a milieu, where people know about these vignettes and, even better, get the same pleasure out of them as I do, then it becomes much easier to communicate and to convey other ideas to them. This may have nothing to do with the concepts embodied in the memes themselves but more with the mental ease into which the knowledge of a shared perspective puts me. And that’s true, even if we don’t get the same messages from these skits. The knowledge that we have a similar emotional reaction to them is sufficient. There! I have just demonstrated self-awareness as I deduced this through experience by paying careful attention to my emotions.

I had an epiphany related to this when I moved to Cambridge, UK, in my late twenties: I started meeting characters from Monty Python skits at the local pubs, including this guy. Up until then, I hadn’t appreciated that many of the absurd, quirky, sarcastic, repressed, sometimes overbearing, clever, funny characters weren’t just metaphorical figments of someone’s imagination but people I could meet at the Kingston Arms. The universal meaning I attributed to the stories in these skits came from an amalgamation of real flesh and blood characters. Perhaps this should have been obvious to me before then, but I missed it. Nonetheless, the ideas in these skits made it easier for me to understand Britain better and appreciate the universality of some experiences even more. It also made me reconsider how much depth is needed to understand things properly and what “properly understanding” something means in the first place. Am I laughing differently at the skit now than I did before? Did I get precisely what the authors intended me to get? Did they even have a specific intent aside from making me laugh or squirm?

But I am getting ahead of myself: let’s talk about memes instead. All memes are ideas, and all ideas are memes. Some people disagree with the second part of this sentence, but their disagreement centers on the notion that some ideas are not deliberately designed to proliferate quickly, and those should not be called memes. This may be a differentiation worth making in some contexts, but in my view, all ideas that make it out of their author’s head “want” to proliferate. “Let’s have lunch” may only be an idea with an audience of a few people and a lifetime of minutes, but the idea that “America needs Greenland” might get to millions and have a lifetime of weeks. And then, it might get transformed into the idea that “America needs to invade Greenland” with an even larger audience and a lifetime of months. But then again, it may not; it could just disappear as an idea overnight. A lot depends on the context: in this case, who propagates the idea and why?

Ideas are like viruses: they infect humans to reproduce and spread. Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” and popularized the idea in his book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins introduces the concept of memes as cultural equivalents to genes: ideas, behaviors, or practices that replicate and spread from person to person through imitation. Like genes, memes undergo a form of natural selection, competing for human attention and memory, with the most “catchy” or “fit” ideas surviving and spreading not necessarily because they benefit their human hosts but because they’re effective self-replicators in the environment of human minds. And because I wouldn’t want to be inadvertently infected by a bad idea, I should be skeptical about it and the intentions of the spreader. I usually hear the idea first before I get a chance to consider its context. Unlike in the Monty Python skit, ideas don’t kill, but they might infect, so wear protection!

Spreadability and stickiness

Ideas spread fast when they’re simple, relatable, and easy to remix with other ideas. They don’t just “go viral” automatically; people push them forward by sharing, tweaking, and making them their own. Platforms like TikTok supercharge the process, feeding popular content to more users. Speed is power. The faster a meme moves, the bigger its impact, shaping conversations, politics, and culture in real time. But fame burns out quickly. Some memes fade overnight, while others adapt and survive—shifting meaning, finding new audiences, and staying relevant. In the end, memes live or die by engagement. They’re not just jokes but tools, weapons, and social glue. Read more about this in Spreadable Media and Memes in Digital Culture.

Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions puts forward his theory that scientific ideas don’t progress smoothly but through paradigm shifts—sudden overhauls of existing frameworks. Most scientists work within an established paradigm, resisting new ideas until anomalies accumulate and force a crisis. When evidence becomes overwhelming, a new paradigm replaces the old one, often rapidly, though resistance lingers. Kuhn argues that idea velocity depends on how much a new concept challenges existing beliefs—some spread slowly (e.g. heliocentrism), while others (like relativity) gain acceptance quickly when they solve pressing problems. Ultimately and somewhat depressingly, Kuhn believed that scientific revolutions happen not because opponents change their minds but because they fade away, making room for new thinkers.

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.” – Thomas Kuhn

Paul Virilio’s warned that critical thinking is bypassed as communication accelerates, leading to reactionary decisions and misinformation spreading faster than truth. His idea of dromology—that power belongs to those who control speed—explains how social media algorithms, real-time news cycles, and AI-generated content now shape public perception. Virilio’s “accident theory" describes that every technological advancement comes with unintended risks—just as social media was meant to connect people but has fueled division and misinformation.

“The more speed increases, the faster freedom disappears.” – Paul Virilio

Virilio sees speed as antagonistic to the adoption of good ideas. Age is one possible way of distinguishing a good idea from a bad one. The older an idea, the more time people have had to consider it critically; therefore, the more likely it is less bad. This is, of course, assuming that the people who have propagated the idea had the right critical skills and incentives to do so.

If a new idea comes along and is in conflict with an “old good” idea, then it’s not surprising that it will take some time to convince people to change their minds; they may have built entire careers on the old good idea, and the new idea might seem threatening and not entirely well thought through. Proponents of the “new good” idea might also be somewhat overzealous in promoting it, which could also result in more resistance than necessary. And that resistance might only entirely disappear with the death of the opponents, as Kuhn wrote. This can, for sure, be a frustrating experience, but resistance provides a “bar” that new ideas have to clear to be accepted. To first order, it’s not the time it takes that matters most, but that error correction occurs: the “new good” idea is better than the “old good” idea. These principles are embedded in the scientific method

Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn offered contrasting views on how science progresses. Popper argued that science advances through falsifiability—making bold hypotheses and systematically testing them to eliminate errors. He saw scientific progress as gradual and rational, driven by continuous refinement. In contrast, Kuhn believed science moves through paradigm shifts—long periods of stability followed by sudden revolutions when old theories collapse under mounting anomalies. While Popper viewed scientists as rational truth-seekers, Kuhn highlighted the social and psychological resistance to new ideas.

The good news is that either or both theories could apply to a given situation. What matters most is understanding one’s role in the process. Hemingway might have put it this way:

Know your place in the fight. When you push the new idea, expect the wall. All good ideas hit it. Don’t be an ass about it. Mockery makes enemies, not converts. When you’re the one fighting change, fight clean. Judge the idea on what it is, not on what you might lose. A man thinking straight earns respect. A man guarding his turf does not. If you believe, then act. Good ideas win in time. Help them. You’ll sleep better. Your way may differ. The outfit may have rules. But a man chooses how he stands.

Albert Einstein famously said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” He believed that theories, ideas, and explanations should be elegant and free of unnecessary complexity, but they should never be so simplified that they lose their accuracy or meaning. This approach maximizes a good idea’s stickiness: the ability of an idea to be understood, remembered, and influential. However, even the minimal complexity of a good idea might be too high for people to understand and propagate. This gives an edge to worse ideas that are simpler to understand and more spreadable, which can, at least temporarily, displace better ideas.

Deconstruction and self-reflection

Deconstruction usually starts with association. Have I heard the idea before? Does it align with any other ideas I hold in my head? Does it “feel” right? Memes that succeed tend to be designed to induce emotions so that we remember and propagate them. They may not have been deliberately designed to fool us, but a strong emotional connection can make us take shortcuts in our analysis. For example, an ad for a mattress may highlight that the sale ends this weekend, which may prompt action to buy it even if we don’t need that mattress right away. An idea, “I need a mattress,” should be considered in its proper context, which may delay buying it.

A meme can consist of multiple ideas: these should be considered both in isolation and together. There can be appeals to common sense, a meme that tries to apply peer pressure on me by claiming that the idea is obvious and generally accepted, and therefore, so should I. The idea may be good and common sense. Still, I could quickly believe something I shouldn’t unless I use my critical faculties to judge what’s presented.

The Hungarian translation for common sense is “sober peasant mind,” which elicits a mental image of a sturdy, no-nonsense, wise man, twirling his mustache, who lives in harmony with nature, works hard, lives in moderation, and has ample time to reflect on things in the evenings after his daily chores are done. Someone like this guy:

The imagery suggests I should empathize with that sober peasant, trust him, and even want to be like him. The emotional connection induced by the suggestion is there so that I will be less resistant to the proposed idea. Even better, from the meme’s point of view, I let my guard down and accept it without resistance.

You might think such tricks don’t work on you, but the advertising industry proves otherwise. You might also think you’ll be immune to the sober peasant’s suggestion since you don’t speak Hungarian. Sure, initially, but my description of the peasant has already programmed you, and the phrase starts to do its magic on you right away. If you start hearing and using this phrase more, you’ll find that it will subtly plant specific imagery in your head and impact your emotional state. This impact comes from repetition and repeated emotional associations, a technique the advertisers gladly use. If you watch political ads (in the US), you can see some very transparent techniques: the “bad guy” is usually shown in black and white, with tense music in the background. The “good guy” smiles and is in color with upbeat music. If you pay attention to your reactions, you’ll experience the emotions these ads were designed to elicit. The actual message of the ad is an overlay on top of the emotion track induced by sounds, words, and images.

Emotional manipulation is overt in ads, but scientific articles also use words and story arcs to help the audience get on board with their ideas. In most cases, this helps convey the idea better, but in some cases, it may be used to cause the audience to gloss over specific weaknesses. The good news is that it is entirely up to you how you receive an idea. You can reflect on the subtle emotions you experience when you hear it. You can spend more time on important ones and try to understand why you are reacting to them the way you do. Some of these emotions will be about you; some will be about the idea itself. It is your job to differentiate between them. Investigating your feelings can lead to better clarity about the idea.

Here is something you can try right away. Do you remember the title of this essay? If not, look at it and remember the thoughts and emotions it elicits. Instead of “recognize,” I used the word “tell” to create ambiguity, hoping you pause for a moment on what this essay is supposed to be about. And then I hoped it would make you read on with more curiosity than you would have otherwise. Did you feel it? Or are you dead inside? If the latter, don’t worry: self-awareness will come with attention and the practice of cultivating a calmer and reflective state of mind.

One can go deep into the analysis of ideas. Sometimes, this is appropriate; other times, it is just a distraction. If you have written a dissertation, you have probably experienced going down rabbit holes many times and the discipline it requires to resurface and readjust your priorities. For example, I would expect you to forget or just quickly file away my “sober peasant” example alongside many other ideas that might come in handy on trivia night. But you might also start wondering about what it says about Hungarian culture to talk about a peasant’s mind instead of common sense. My guess is that this term emerged during the 18th century when there was a linguistic renewal, and only peasants spoke Hungarian daily. So, a pat on the back was deserved. But there is something else interesting in the grammar. Paraszt means peasant, paraszti means peasant-like. Notice that it is singular. The Hungarian peasant is an individual role model, which puts the reader in a frame of mind suggesting that if I think like this ideal peasant, I’ll get the idea. In English, “common sense” refers to belonging to a group of people only defined by their agreement with an idea. Both attempt to induce the listener’s feeling of FOMO. After all, who doesn’t want to think correctly like a role model or to remain an outsider by not being included in the tribe? However, emotional coercion is different: analyzing this difference could go a long way down a rabbit hole, which I am keen to avoid, aside from this illustration.

A bit more on common sense: I can buy the idea that that Hungarian peasant will have the proper judgment about many ideas, but I’m pretty sure he would think of Quantum Theory as horse manure. Or not, as he might consult an expert and trust that person’s judgment. But even if he did think of complex scientific theories as horse manure by default, he might be right some of the time. Experts may disagree; after 50+ years of research, there is still no evidence that string theory relates to the physical world.

Am I making a common sense? Who sets the standard? One person’s “common” may be another person’s “fringe.” But the real issue with common sense arguments is that when it is used disingenuously, it is an appeal to treat an idea as an axiom even if the listener could evaluate its truth value. So, despite suggesting something is “common sense,” the listener should resist peer pressure and use judgment to determine whether it is before moving on to the next idea.

The context is as important as the idea

Have you ever experienced a disagreement with someone in which, after a long, heated discussion, you find that you had been talking about the same thing all along? In these cases, the “argument” is usually about the context, not the idea itself. Imagine you were an engineer tasked to design an electric plug and were talking to a colleague advocating two square plugs versus your solution involving three round ones. The discussion might start with the pros and cons of each design, quickly turning into a conversation about the assumptions that informed the design and, then, the merits of each assumption and different ways of dealing with it in the product. After a while, the two engineers might conclude that, given the assumptions, each design is fit for purpose; it is just that the assumptions are different. After the meeting, both can go back to product management to seek clarity on the requirements and quickly converge on a single design. However, the meeting can also go wrong: it could be seen as a turf war or an ego contest between two engineers who spend the next day and a half arguing and pressuring each other instead of understanding the fundamental causes of their disagreement. Taking time to align perspectives and clarify assumptions before analyzing the idea prevents wasted time and emotional energy.

If someone is familiar with an idea, the difference between the context and the idea itself can blur. It takes extra effort to untangle these, but it is vital to do so: the appropriateness of an idea always depends on its context. The current context may be different from the one considered before. A good idea in one situation may be the wrong one in another. An example of this is homeopathy. Samuel Hahnemann, a German doctor in the 1790s, looked at his colleagues stabbing patients with leeches and poisoning them with mercury and thought, “There’s gotta be a better way!” After downing some cinchona bark and giving himself malaria-like symptoms, he had his eureka moment: “What if the poison is the cure?” Then he decided the less medicine in the medicine, the better it works - and homeopathy was born! Patients loved it because, unlike regular “medicine” of the time, it didn’t actively kill them.

Never mind that Hahnemann didn’t correctly identify cause and effect; he stumbled upon an idea that was a net positive at the time. Fast forward 200+ years and some people still swear by it. Homeopathic remedies are so diluted that you are just drinking expensive water by the time you take them. 30C, a measure of dilution, means that the dilution is beyond Avogadro’s number, meaning the likelihood of any original substance being left is zero. Homeopathic practitioners give lengthy, attentive consultations (because that’s actually what you’re paying for), but that doesn’t make the sugar pills or vials of water any more effective. Congratulations if you feel better after taking them; you’ve unlocked the power of the placebo effect! Just keep your real doctor in the loop if your chakras fail to fight strep throat.

In my view, homeopathy in the 21st century turned into a bad idea, as it propagates magical thinking. But would I be open to magic if I had cancer and I’d already exhausted all other therapies? Maybe… but probably no: I don’t believe that the placebo effect requires a cashectomy to work.

Integrity of ideas

Even if we don’t know much about the subject of an idea, we can get a view of its validity by comparing it with other ideas. Does the logic that validates one apply the same way to another? Does believing in one contradict the other? Do the ideas have similar structures?

Occam’s razor is a philosophical principle that states that when presented with competing hypotheses or explanations for something, the simplest one—the one that makes the fewest assumptions—is usually the correct one or should be preferred. This principle serves as a heuristic guide in scientific reasoning and theory development. It doesn’t definitively prove that the simpler explanation is correct but instead suggests that simpler theories are preferable because:

They are easier to test
They are less likely to include unnecessary complications
They often have greater explanatory power Scientists and philosophers use this principle regularly when evaluating competing theories that explain the same evidence. However, it’s important to note that “simpler” doesn’t always mean “easier to understand” but rather “making fewer assumptions” or “requiring fewer entities.”

In The Mythical Man-Month, Frederick Brooks presents conceptual integrity as a cornerstone for successful system design. He defines conceptual integrity as the unity of design, where the system reflects a coherent set of design ideas rather than a patchwork of different approaches. Brooks applied this principle to build the IBM OS/360 operating system to make it usable for his customers and the code maintainable for the large engineering team tasked to build it. The conceptual integrity principle means that users and developers need to learn fewer ideas to work with the system and that these ideas are reused in many parts of the system, thereby reducing the cognitive load.

Many system designers aspire to conceptual integrity, but few achieve it. It’s not just hard to come up with it in the first place; it’s also hard to enforce as systems evolve. However, every human attempts to do something similar when incorporating a new idea into his mind. A mind is not a blank slate, so any new ideas must be integrated alongside existing ones, bringing up the need to create integrity between them. Integrity is enabled by coherence and consistency. Consistency means that the ideas don’t contradict each other or contain logical inconsistencies. Coherence ensures that the ideas form a unified whole rather than a disconnected collection of thoughts.

Logical fallacies

However, emotion and logic can be tangled up to create true-sounding fallacies that lead to the acceptance of bad ideas. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists 231 names of the most common fallacies. These describe lots of ways of being fooled by arguments and, conversely, a rich toolkit for making misleading arguments:

Depending on the particular theory of fallacies, it might refer either to (a) a kind of error in an argument, (b) a kind of error in reasoning (including arguments, definitions, explanations, questions, and so forth), (c) a false belief, or (d) the cause of any of the previous errors including what are normally referred to as “rhetorical techniques.”

Below are some common fallacies that cloud judgment:

Ad Hominem – Attacking the person instead of addressing their argument. Example: “You can’t trust his opinion on economics—he didn’t even finish college.”
Straw Man Fallacy: Misrepresenting an opponent’s argument to make it easier to attack. Example: “You want to regulate gun sales? So you’re saying we should ban all guns and leave people defenseless?”
Bandwagon Fallacy: Appealing to popularity rather than merit. Example: “Everyone is buying this product, so it must be good.”
Appeal to Emotion – Using feelings rather than logic to persuade. Example: “Think of the children! We must ban this book immediately.”
False Dilemma (Black-and-White Fallacy): Presenting only two options when more exist. Example: “Either you support this policy or don’t care about our country’s future.”
Begging the Question (Circular Reasoning) – Assuming the conclusion within the premise. Example: “We know that ghosts exist because people have seen them.”
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (False Cause Fallacy) – Assuming that because one event followed another, the first caused the second. Example: “I wore my lucky socks, and my team won. My socks must have helped!”
Confirmation Bias: Tendency to search for or interpret information that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs. Example: “I read an article supporting my view on climate change, so I must be right” (while ignoring contradictory evidence).
Sunk Cost Fallacy: Continuing a behavior based on previously invested resources. Example: “I’ve already spent $5,000 on repairing this old car, so I should keep investing in it.”
Availability Heuristic: Overestimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory. Example: “Plane crashes are more common than car accidents” (because plane crashes receive more media coverage).

And many heuristics have been suggested to correct for some of them:

Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity (or ignorance).” This heuristic encourages us to avoid assuming bad intentions when mistakes or incompetence could explain a situation.
Hickam’s Dictum: “A patient can have as many diseases as they damn well please.” This medical heuristic contrasts with Occam’s razor, reminding doctors that sometimes multiple conditions can exist simultaneously.
The principle of Parsimony is very similar to Occam’s razor. It states that the simplest solution or explanation is preferable to more complex ones.
Hitchen’s Razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” This helps evaluate claims that lack supporting evidence.
Hume’s Guillotine: “You cannot derive an ought from an is.” This reminds us that descriptive statements about the world don’t automatically lead to prescriptive moral conclusions.
Sagan Standard: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” This sets proportional evidence requirements based on how unusual a claim is.
Bayes’ Rule: A probability principle that guides updating our beliefs when new evidence emerges.

These heuristics and others provide the self-aware thinker with the tools to detect ideas designed to manipulate and deploy the appropriate countermeasures to avoid infection. They also enable the self-aware storyteller to a self-aware audience to make their arguments more compelling by avoiding them.

And now for something completely different

More than anything, I hope that this essay makes you think more about thinking. You may have found it surprising that a text about ideas and logic talks so much about self-awareness. But the truth is that thinking involves both the prefrontal cortex, where logic can be performed, and the limbic system, which processes emotions, motivation, learning, and memory. It is very important when considering ideas properly to avoid being under the undue and often misleading influence of emotions. This can be hard even when alone. It is even harder under the constant barrage of memes from social media optimized for maximum manipulation. Improving emotional regulation enables the prefrontal cortex to have the impact it deserves. The rest comes from practice and the applications of the principles above. Enjoy!