Appeal to tradition

A close relative/variant of the appeal to tradition is the argument from inertia or appeal to inertia (sometimes called "Stay the Course"), which states a mistaken status quo, potentially related to existing customs be maintained for its own sake, usually because making a change would require admission of fault in the mistake or because correcting the mistake would require extraordinary effort and resources. Its name derives from inertia, a concept in physics representing the resistance of any physical object to any change in its velocity. ==Contrasting fallacies==

• Where appeal to tradition might seek to avoid expending resources and effort on making the necessary change, the sunk-cost fallacy resists change due to that which has already been expended in the past to contribute to the present condition. • The appeal to tradition counterpoints with the appeal to novelty (argumentum ad novitatem), where the alternative is sought simply on the basis that it is new, or that old customs are incorrect because of being traditional. == See also ==