Wronger Than Wrong
I find this concept to be helpful in countering the epidemic of false equivalences, or the pennywise pound foolish contrarianism that you see so frequently in internet comment sections.<p>My favorite example is probably whenever there&#x27;s articles about sitting being bad for your health. You tend to get a couple of contrarians replying, &quot;Well standing more may sound like good advice but standing can cause lower back pain, so it&#x27;s not so simple!&quot; However, that reply completely loses grasp of the relative scale of the two things, inviting you to consider the inconveniences of lower back pain as being on the same level as heart disease.<p>I think the more serious examples of Wronger Than Wrong relate to authoritarian states. A year ago when the Russian invasion started, some people suggested the Russian crackdown on dissent was unremarkable, and compared it to the United States during the Iraq war. And it&#x27;s not wrong, in that they might fit into a similar category, but it represents a complete failure to assess the relative scale of those two things.