Charles Murray: Bachelor's Degrees are Evil

Following up on his recent argument for education futility, Charles Murray has taken to the virtual pages of CATO Unbound to argue that, quote, "The BA degree is the work of the devil." I disagree, and you can read why here, along with responses from Pedro Carneiro here and Bryan Caplan here. Further back-and-forth will follow this week. 

Murray's thesis is a good excuse to spend a little time talking about shockingly counter-intuitive arguments. Briefly: there are too many of them. People who are in the business of publishing articles and essay have a weak spot for this kind of thing, because it's grabby and attention-getting and holds out the promise to the reader that everything you ever thought you knew about [insert topic here] is exactly wrong. There's a certain instant drama to it, in other words. 

Which is not to say that the conventional wisdom is always right--it often isn't--but it's not usually 180 degrees wrong. Rather, the most correct and well-considered arguments often boil down to "X thing you thought you knew is only somewhat true, or not always true, or true but really needs to be considered in the context of Y larger truth, or is becoming less true as time goes on because of Z." But those arguments can be harder to sell and require more attention from the writer and reader both. Meanwhile, I think people are on some level vulnerable to up-is-down/night-is-day argumentation precisely because it seems illogical; in the backs of their minds they're thinking "Nobody would say something so obviously crazy unless there was some truth to it." There's a strong element of Albert O. Hirschman's reactionary "argument from perversity" in all of this as well.