“Conventional” = Generally accepted as true.
“Wisdom” = Scholarly knowledge and judgement exhibiting discernment and insight.
Because Conventional Wisdom is so – conventional – it is often unexamined or held to any scientific scrutiny and is thus not an example of wisdom at all.
Any truly wise individual would have the discernment to question conventional wisdom. Nuggets of so-called conventional wisdom are not only mostly unexamined, the are often dead wrong.
One famously debunked piece of conventional wisdom holds that watching violent movies or television causes violent acts in real life. A 2008 study [ http://nyti.ms/YP1DI ] found that violent movies actually tends to decrease violent real life acts.
oxymoron: a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in "cruel kindness" or "to make haste slowly."
