Positions come in ladders where the third level agrees with the first for different reasons, and holding it signals membership of the sophisticated group rather than the view itself.
Alexander's structure is that the uneducated hold one view, the educated the contrary, and the very educated something resembling the first. Since the third position is only available to someone who knows the second, adopting it signals having passed through it. The uncomfortable implication is that some apparently sophisticated views are selected for their signalling value rather than their content.
In practice
- An expert who returns to the naive answer is agreeing with the layman and not saying the same thing.
- A contrarian position adopted by everyone in a field is no longer contrarian and is still being held for that reason.