One of the weirder features of modern life is that, the more widespread a belief is among the educated, the less likely that belief is to be true.

Examples of this abound, but I think the first one I noticed was Arlene Daniels' concept of "invisible work," or the idea that women are uniquely saddled with unseen and unacknowledged labor. "Invisible work" is, today, an article of faith among feminists.

One of my only vivid college memories is watching my class of (mostly female) students listen to our (female) professor explain that women's work was "invisible" while, just outside, a male gardener worked in the dirt on his hands and knees pulling up weeds.

Needless to say, that gardener, sweating in the sun, dirt under his nails, was totally invisible to the room of air-conditioned co-eds.

I remember this episode because, in a different class that semester, I'd just learned about the idea of situational irony.

I recognized then that, contrary to everything the professor said, women's labor was enormously, overwhelmingly visible. Virtually every appliance advertised on TV—dishwashers, washers, microwaves, whatever—was designed to ease labor traditionally performed by women.

Similarly, every complaint and concern women have—no matter how trivial—is treated with grave seriousness. The truly "invisible" labor—dirty, dangerous, decidedly not glamorous—is performed almost entirely by men who you have never heard of and will probably never meet.

People claiming women's labor is "invisible" wake up each day in enormous cities made habitable only by the work of (overwhelmingly male) plumbers, garbagemen, firemen, police, delivery men, taxi drivers, janitors, truck drivers, longshoremen, etc.

To take just one example, think of the New York subway, which before COVID carried millions of people per day, and which exists only because of men who toil in the system's ancient, dark tunnels, quite literally out of sight underground.

If you're looking for a reliable heuristic, figure out what all the college-educated people "know" to be true, and assume the opposite.