Title at the top reads Nirvana Fallacy. Cartoon with two stick figures. The first says you should wash your hands after touching raw meat. The second says nah, it doesn't guarantee against food-borne illness, so why bother. Website critikid.com appears in the bottom corner.

Nirvana Fallacy

“There’s no point in eating a healthy dinner because I already ate junk food for lunch.”

You commit the nirvana fallacy when you reject a realistic option because it falls short of an ideal. It’s expressed by the famous proverb, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” If we compare achievable options to an unrealistic ideal, and then reject them for falling short, we may end up doing nothing.

Examples:

“I don’t budget my spending because something unexpected could come up and ruin it.”
A budget won’t make your spending perfectly predictable, but it still makes overspending less likely.
“Why bother exercising today? I don’t have time to do my full routine.”
A shorter workout won’t be ideal, but it’s still better than nothing.

The perfect solution fallacy is a type of nirvana fallacy. It happens when someone rejects a proposed solution because it does not completely solve the problem. For example, “Even with proper road planning, we won't eliminate traffic, so we shouldn't bother with road planning at all.”

Demanding perfection blocks progress. Small improvements make things better even if some problems remain. If we wait for a zero-flaw option, we typically preserve the flawed status quo.

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