Contrarianism generally lines up with the “perversity” column in Albert Hirschman’s typology “The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy”. Here’s the thing: as history progresses, things change. And societies try to adapt to those changes. Experts come up with solutions to the problems the societies face. Those solutions often entail discomfiting established interest groups. And the solutions the experts come up with almost always entail some degree of perverse counterreaction, some kinds of problems or inefficiencies or whatever. It can be very interesting to focus on those counterreactions; it can generate fascinating, eye-grabbing journalism. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, the counterreactions aren’t as big as the first-order effects of the solutions.

This in theory is about the meltdown of Superfreakonomics, about which you can read elsewhere. But it’s an overdue — way overdue — reaction. The first order of business for journalism is to describe reality as thoroughly, diligently and intellectually-honestly as possible. There will be many cases when what the horde thinks is wrong, and deeply wrong, and it becomes a journalistic responsibility to say so. But elevating contrarianism to a first-order principle is to guarantee that journalism becomes superficially clever and substantively foolish. I have seen in practice how its wages are to simply restrict consideration of given policy options in a predictable and intellectually flabby way. Let’s just apply rigor to all things; the right uses of contrarianism will flow from there, and the wrong uses will wash away.

*Yes, this is a Jay-Z/Drake collaboration soundtracking this post, not “Die When You Die” by GG Allin, even though GG’s chorus is in my headline. The unfortunate truth is that the GG track, while being a great punk-rock song, is simply too racist, sexist, homophobic and all-around despicable for me to post here, even though every time someone writes a Death Of ______ article, my brain immediately spools up DIE WHEN YOU DIE WHEN YOU DIE YOU’RE GONNA DIE. Such is my cross to bear. GG was a horrible human being and yet some of his music was fucking right-on.