Appeal to novelty

“This year’s model”

Shopping for running shoes, someone passes over last year’s pair, marked down by 40 percent. “This year’s version just came out. It has to be better.”

Products get new versions for many reasons: a new look, a cheaper material, a design meant to stand out on the shelf. Some changes help and some don’t. The shopper hasn’t compared the two pairs on anything that matters to a runner, like fit, cushioning or how long they last. Only the release date has been compared.

“The latest science”

“A study came out this week showing that plants grow faster when you talk to them. I’ll go with that; it’s the latest science.”

This version sounds careful, because following current research is usually good advice. But a study isn’t more reliable for being recent. How much it should count depends on its size, its methods and whether anyone has repeated it, and a single new result is weaker evidence than a finding that many studies agree on. “Latest” describes the study’s date, not its quality.

The rebuild

A developer proposes replacing a small company’s order system, which works: “It’s built on a framework from 2012. If we rebuild it on the new one, it’ll be more reliable.”

“More reliable” is a prediction about a system that doesn’t exist yet, set against one whose record is known. There may be good reasons to rebuild, such as the old framework no longer receiving security fixes, but none has been given. The argument also has a second half: “from 2012” dismisses the old system for its age, which is chronological snobbery. The two often arrive together.

The bare argument needs a premise connecting newness to quality, and that premise is true in some fields and for some changes, but not in general:

Once the second premise is stated, the date no longer matters: an older design that fixed the same shortcoming would be just as good.

• “New and improved”: the two words make two different claims. “New” is a fact about the product; “improved” is a claim that needs its own evidence.
• The latest-evidence form: treating the most recent study, review or expert opinion as the best one simply because it’s the most recent.
• Upgrading for its own sake: replacing something that works with a newer version, on the assumption that the newer one must perform better.

The Latin name argumentum ad novitatem is sometimes attached to the bandwagon appeal (“more and more people are switching”). That’s a claim about growing popularity, covered under the appeal to popularity; the appeal to novelty needs no crowd.

The family. The appeal to novelty has close relatives that also use an idea’s date in place of evidence about it. They differ in whether the idea is old or new, and whether its age is counted for or against it:

Chronological snobbery, C. S. Lewis’s name for rejecting an idea because it has gone out of date, is the dismissive side of the same assumption. Praising the new and dismissing the old both assume that later is better; in any choice between an old option and a new one, they amount to the same bet. They get separate entries because they point in different directions: one is an argument for something new, the other an argument against something old.

Newness isn’t a reason by itself, but what changed often is.

• The argument says what improved. A newer version that fixes a known defect, measures more accurately or corrects an old mistake is better for that reason. The date is incidental.
• The newer work builds on the older work. A recent review that includes the earlier studies and adds later ones has more evidence behind it, not just a later date.
• The subject itself changes. Security updates, maps, timetables, prices and laws go out of date because the world moves on. Here newer information really is more likely to be accurate.
• The question is about newness. Whether something is in fashion, or which edition is the latest, is answered by its date. Sometimes novelty is the point: a new restaurant or a game you haven’t played can be worth trying precisely because you haven’t tried it.
• As a reason to try, not a verdict. Harpine suggests that new options not tested before may be “worthy of cautious trial.” Trying something new to see whether it’s better is how improvements are found; declaring it better before anyone has tried it is the error.

The test: does the argument say what’s better about it, or only that it’s newer?

The security update

“Install the update tonight. The release notes say it fixes a flaw in the current version that lets other apps read your saved passwords.”

This recommends the newer version, but not for being newer. It names a specific defect in the old version and says the new one removes it. If the old version had been patched in the same way, the argument would support it just as well. This is the says what improved condition above.

The new field guide

A birdwatcher replaces her 1998 field guide: “The new edition redraws the range maps from recent surveys and uses the current species names. Half the maps in my old one are out of date.”

She prefers the new edition, but her reasons are about content, not the date. Where birds live changes, and so do the names scientists use for them, so a guide from the 1990s describes a situation that has partly moved on. The new edition also builds on the old one rather than discarding it. This is the subject itself changes condition above.

In many areas newer really is better, often enough to make “newer is better” a sensible rule of thumb. Phones, cameras and measuring instruments improve because each generation builds on the last. The rule misfires when it’s applied to a particular new thing without checking whether this change is an improvement, or carried into areas where later doesn’t mean better.

Bjørn Hofmann, looking at arguments over a new cancer treatment, notes that belief in the new compared with the old “seems to be deeply rooted in our culture,” and suggests that an appeal to novelty may lie behind the arguments made for the treatment. He pairs it with the appeal to tradition, which he finds typical of skeptics’ arguments against new technology, and argues that both sides mishandle uncertainty: it is either ignored or treated as insurmountable. His point is not that the treatment was bad, but that flawed arguments for a new technology can end up hampering it.

The opposite reflex is just as old. In 1824 Jeremy Bentham listed the cry of “No innovation!” as a fallacy of its own, and answered it: “Whatever is now establishment was once innovation.” The point cuts both ways. If everything old was once new, then newness alone can’t count against an idea, and by the same reasoning it can’t count for one either.

• Ask what changed. What does the new version do differently, and is that difference an improvement for your purpose?
• Ask what’s known about it yet. A new product or finding has a shorter record than an old one; that’s a reason for a trial, not a verdict either way.
• Check whether the old thing was ever shown to be worse. If not, the comparison hasn’t been made.