# Appeal to tradition

*Also called: Argumentum ad antiquitatem*

- **Cluster:** Crowds and prestige — Numbers, custom and status standing in for reasons
- **Page:** https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/tradition/
- **In Arabic:** https://fallacy.wiki/ar/fallacy/tradition.md
- **Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

## What it is

Holding that something is correct or best because it is long established.

## In the wild

> We have always done onboarding this way, so it works.

## How to answer it

Ask what the practice was originally solving and whether that problem still exists.

## Origin and naming

Latin argumentum ad antiquitatem, 'argument from age'. Longevity is treated as a credential: if a custom has survived this long, it must be doing something right — a shortcut that can be true and often is, which is exactly why it gets abused.

## More places it shows up

- The clinic keeps booking appointments by phone because that is how patients have always done it, despite the missed-call queue out the door.
- A municipality defends a decades-old traffic junction on the grounds that it has served the town for generations, while the accident reports accumulate.
- A family business refuses invoices by email because the founder signed every bill by hand, and desks now buckle under paper.
- A music curriculum still spends its year on the syllabus its teachers inherited, because it produced fine graduates fifty years ago.

## How to spot it

- Listen for 'we have always' — the sentence compression of a practice that no longer needs to introduce itself.
- Notice when the defence cites the past's results but not today's conditions; old successes are offered as current evidence.
- Watch for the question of cost going unasked; a tradition can survive precisely because nobody was allowed to audit it.

## Nearby

- [Appeal to novelty](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/novelty.md)
- [Chronological snobbery](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/chronological-snobbery.md)
- [Argumentum ad populum](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/ad-populum.md)
- [Appeal to common practice](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/common-practice.md)

## Read more

- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition)
- [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://iep.utm.edu/fallacy/)

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From fallacy.wiki — a bilingual field guide to 91 logical fallacies, published by phi holdings. Licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): reuse freely with attribution to fallacy.wiki.