tl;dr– Sounds like the basic premise behind conservativismconservativism (as opposed to liberalism). In general, both conservatives and liberals favor intelligent consideration when able; but, when it's unclear if a tradition has due motivation, more conservative positions weight the tradition's possible wisdom more heavily while more liberal positions weight the tradition's possible wisdom less heavily.

"Conservativism".

Consider the 5-monkeys thought experiment (which apparently wasn't actually conducted):

1. Four monkeys are put into an enclosure with a bunch of bananas hanging around. But whenever anyone goes near the bananas, they're hosed down with cold water.

2. New monkeys are introduced into the enclosure over time. Whenever a new monkey goes near the bananas, the others attack it.

3. Monkeys are also removed over time. Eventually, the enclosure contains no monkeys who were hosed down, but they all still observe the taboo against going near the bananas, even after the hose is removed.

Do real monkeys behave this way? Unclear. Still, the thought experiment's interesting: how should monkeys behave in this situation? What about humans?

There're two extreme positions to take:

1. Pure conservativism: We should respect the traditional avoidance of the bananas, which probably had good reason even if we're not aware of it.

2. Pure liberalism: If the bananas look yummy, let's get them! Traditional superstitions don't matter.

Obviously, neither approach is perfect. Conservatives will unnecessarily avoid the bananas even after the cold-water hose is removed, while liberals will keep trying for the bananas and getting hosed with cold water.

Obviously, using intelligent consideration of historical rationality is better. For example, if the monkeys could record their reasons for avoiding the bananas, then they could weigh their desire to try for the bananas vs. their desire to not get hosed to inform future behavior.

However it's not possible to fully record all history and reasoning, so intelligent-consideration is a limited technique; eventually, folks have to decide to what degree traditional reasoning ought to be observed despite not knowing a reason for it.

Point being, it's conservativism to observe traditional biases, while it's liberalism to disregard them. While imperfect, conservatism isn't really a fallacy because liberalism isn't perfect, either; limited information about history forces guesswork.

Summary: Relying on a presumption of tradition having valid motivation is conservatism; while imperfect, it's not really a "fallacy".

Intelligent consideration of history is always superior to either conservativism or liberalism.

For example, if we can look up the historical reasons for driving on the right/left side-of-the-road, then we can intelligently consider them. But, if we don't have access to that information, then:

• the conservative tactic would be to favor the traditional approach, as it may've been based on a good reason;

• the liberal tactic would be to disregard the traditional approach, because we don't know if there was a good reason for it, or even if there was, if such a reason continues to be meaningful today.

That said, someone who absurdly insists on respecting/contradicting tradition when intelligent-consideration is viable is just being silly. We might regard such silly positions as straw-conservativism and straw-liberalism.