Talk:Vicious circle

(Redirected from Talk:Virtuous circle and vicious circle)
Latest comment: 1 year ago by Otr500 in topic Clarification needed

Requested move 12 July 2022

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved per request. Favonian (talk) 09:07, 27 July 2022 (UTC)Reply


Virtuous circle and vicious circleVicious circleThis archived 2019 comment from User:Nareek suggests that the title should be the other way around, as "vicious circle" is the much more common phrase. I'd go further and suggest moving the article to vicious circle and noting the (presumably later and derived?) variant in bold in the lead, per WP:OTHERNAMES. Lord Belbury (talk) 17:06, 12 July 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:24, 19 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clarification needed

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The unsourced single sentence: A virtuous circle is an equivalent system with a favorable outcome, was moved here for discussion. Other than sharing some words I cannot see a correlation.
I see a move request comment indicating that the first (vicious circle) is the more common and the second (virtuous circle) is a variant, with the sentence showing equality. A closer example would be hamster wheel[1], except the end result is usually that a situation becomes worse, more serious, or more severe, resulting in deleterious effects.
I think this move was an error because the words actually have a different meaning so are antitheses to each other or oxymorons. Consider: virtuous versus vicious.
The metaphor rabbit hole (no, not the animal behavioral enrichment) that people fall into usually involves a revolving downward spiral. People in this situation often feel despair seeing no way out.
The term vicious circle is not generally (actually in the real world -- not at all) associated with having a favorable outcome. By definition, and according to the opening in the lead, "A vicious circle (or cycle) is a complex chain of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop, with detrimental results. The term, as commonly used, does not have an uptick, or "favorable" outcome.
  • Webster's definition of "vicious circle": "A chain of events in which the response to one difficulty creates a new problem that aggravates the original."[2]
  • Webster's definition of "virtuous circle": "A chain of events in which one desirable occurrence leads to another which further promotes the first occurrence and so on resulting in a continuous process of improvement".[3]
In economics it is a system with no tendency toward equilibrium. The words are contradictory. Wiktionary lists them as antonyms because they are actually opposites[4] so one cannot be a variant of the other.

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