Institutions converge on the acceptable account rather than the accurate one, because the acceptable account is what can be said without cost.
Galbraith coined the phrase in 1958 in its modern pejorative sense. His point was about the cost of dissent, not about stupidity: the acceptable account is what can be said without penalty.
In practice
- Every board paper says the market is consolidating because every previous board paper said so, and nobody has cost the alternative.
- A profession's standing advice survives a decade after the evidence changed, because the cost of being unconventional and wrong exceeds the cost of being conventional and wrong.
- Standing
- Galbraith coined the phrase in its modern pejorative sense.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- Theories of what stands between an event and its audience