The Law of Excluded Middle
What is The Law of Excluded Middle?
For a claim with a clear boundary, under fixed conditions it either holds or it does not — there is no third state. Whether a project meets the contract is settled against the acceptance criteria; it cannot sit indefinitely in “basically done”, “close enough”, “complete on the whole”. Whether the household went over budget is settled against the figure agreed in advance, not against “barely over” or “fine overall”.
The Law of Excluded Middle: common mistakes and how to handle them
The law has a boundary of its own: it does not say everything is black and white. Some things genuinely come in degrees, such as customer satisfaction. Some cannot be judged yet because the evidence isn’t in, such as the cause of a fault nobody has tested. The law applies to questions that do have a clear boundary and are being dodged with vague wording. A great deal of friction at work and at home looks like an attitude problem and is really an undefined term, an unstated condition, or a standard nobody agreed on.
What the The Law of Excluded Middle questions test
spotting vague wording used to dodge a check; deciding whether the law applies to a given question at all (clear boundary vs matter of degree vs evidence not yet in); supplying the explicit standard a “close enough” claim is missing; telling “cannot be judged yet” apart from “refusing to judge”.