5 Ways 'Common Sense' Lies To You Everyday
Albert Einstein said common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of 18. It is also a result of some pervasive and extremely stupid logical fallacies that have become embedded in the human brain over generations, for one reason or another. These malfunctioning thoughts--several of which you've had already today--are a major cause of everything that's wrong with the world.
#5.
The Historian's Fallacy
You'll Hear it As:
"Hey I heard Lisa tried to stab you! You should have known that ho was crazy!"
How It Screws Us:
Remember that time you decided to jump off your roof and do a back flip into your little brother's kiddie pool? Remember how all your friends thought it was a great idea and it was going to be so cool? And do you remember when you regained consciousness three months later in the hospital, how suddenly they all laughed at you and said you should have known better? Congratulations, you were bitch-slapped by the Historian's Fallacy.
The problem is, there is something about our brains that just won't let us put ourselves in the other guy's shoes. We're the fat guy on the couch screaming about how LeBron James "choked" because he took that bad shot instead of driving the lane. We're all convinced that, had we been in the same situation, we would have made the right decision; the Titanic wouldn't have sank, the stock market wouldn't have crashed and the PlayStation 3 wouldn't have been priced at $599.
The moment we see their mistake in hindsight, we tell ourselves what morons they must have been. The problem, of course, is that when your reaction is to shake your head, laugh and call them dumbasses, it keeps you from learning from their mistakes.
It Gets Worse...
To see this happening on a grand scale, just open a history book, or watch the news. George Santayana famously warned in 1905 that, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" and people have spent the last hundred years ignoring him. It's not so much that we don't remember the past, it's that here in the future everything they did looks retarded.
What were they thinking?
People don't realize that given the exact same set of circumstances and foreknowledge as Hitler in 1941, we would have invaded Russia, too. If we had been Sylvester Stallone in 1985, we would also have made Over The Top and married Brigitte Nielsen.
#4.
The Nirvana Fallacy
You'll Hear it As:
"You gave that homeless guy a sandwich? Ha! Like that's really going to fix poverty!"
How It Screws Us:
The Nirvana Fallacy is when you dismiss anything in the real world because you compare it to an unrealistic, perfect alternative, by which it pales in comparison. It wouldn't be a problem, except it keeps us from getting anything done.
"We were GOING to write an album, but...Nevermind." The Nirvana Fallacy.
For instance, procrastination can happen for a lot of reasons--you drank too much the night before, or you're feeling uninspired, or it's your first time doing gay porn and you're having second thoughts--but one of the most common reasons we procrastinate is fear that the end result won't live up to the "perfect" idea in our heads. Think about the writer friend of yours who has never actually written anything, because they're "waiting for the right idea" for a book to come along.
This is why people wind up living in their parents' basement--waiting for the perfect job, the perfect girl, the perfect friendship--before committing to anything.
If you're not full of that kind of self-doubt, don't worry, there are plenty of assholes willing to supply it for you. Any incremental improvement on someone else's part is mocked as some kind of deluded hypocrisy, because anything short of perfect is not worth doing, so you might as well do nothing, like them. "Ha! You're drinking a Diet Coke with your hamburger? Like that's really going to make a difference!"
"A wedding dress. Right. Like THAT will attract a guy. You're pathetic."
It Gets Worse...
Politicians use this to attack any idea they don't like. "Sure, your plan is helping millions of families in poverty. But I found examples of people abusing it! So we might as well scrap the whole system!"
Or, you'll hear radical political types on the Internet say, "I'm not voting for any of those guys! They're no better than Bush! They're all corrupt agents of the NWO! I'm staying home until you can show me a perfect, incorruptible, intelligent politician who believes the exact same things I do!"
#3.
The Appeal to Probability
You'll Hear it As:
"Sure I bought a lottery ticket! Somebody has to win, might as well be me!"
Or
"They found another case of bird flu in China! If I see a bird, I'm gonna kill its ass before it can make me sick!"
How It Screws Us:
Our brains are stupid when it comes to calculating probability. As a result, we all have this fuzzy idea that if something can happen, it probably will. And we think this, while having no idea what "probably" even means.
This is why millions of high school kids think they're going play pro sports when they grow up, even though there are only enough available jobs for a tiny fraction of them. When the news says an asteroid may hit the Earth in the next 10 million years, people will watch the skies suddenly sure that an asteroid will hit that day.
And an asteroid that thinks it'll play pro sports is just the apotheosis of delusional.
The Appeal To Probability is the fallacy behind one of the most cherished tenants of common sense: Murphy's Law. For those of you who aren't familiar with comical posters from the 70s, Murphy's Law states that if something bad can happen, it will happen. And while that attitude may leave you depressed and irritable, believing the opposite can leave you having to sell a kidney to pay the rent.
It Gets Worse...
The Appeal To Probability might be one of the most ingenious ways people convince other people to give them money. The entire gambling industry runs on it. Well, that and mountains of cocaine. Any time we buy a lottery ticket, bet on a horse or enter into a financial agreement with the deposed president of Nigeria, we're being bent over by the Appeal to Probability.
Hollywood doesn't help us on this one, since every single movie is about the one-in-a-million shot going through. Nobody wants to hear about the underdog who lost the big game 49-0. So after hearing that same story several hundred times, we somehow come away with an unspoken belief that the unlikely underdog always wins. We don't stop to ask why, if that really happens, they are still called the unlikely underdog?
I belive you mean "the world is full of dicks PHALLACY"
ReplyThere are people who go through life thinking they're the hero of the story of life. These are the people that think everything should go their way, that nothing that goes wrong is their fault, and that they are the most important person in the world.
ReplyThe root of all evil stems from people that take themselves too seriously. Any time you start to think you're more important than someone else, is when you start down that path. Sometimes, it stays innocent. Maybe you just cut people off on the freeway, or block traffic at an intersection to save yourself 5 seconds when the light changes. Maybe you go a little further, and start stealing, or running rip-off schemes. Maybe you go a step farther and start murdering people, or maybe you go a step farther and convince an entire nation you're right and try to annihilate the entire Jewish race because you're right, and they're wrong.
You're not always going to win. You're going to fail. A lot. There is no writer there to put a lucky plot twist in at the last second. Sitting their cursing your luck and wallowing in a pit of despair at the unfair hand life has dealt you solves nothing. It's not a pit, it's a pothole. Pick yourself up and move on.
Realize that there are no main characters. There are people who accomplish amazing and heroic things, but we are all just supporting cast in this comedic tragedy we call life.
Like the subtle Hitler argument in there...I did.
That should also go for ppl who worship historical figures as if they're god
I've always been taught that number 5 was called hindsight bias. It's the primary reason why Columbine's security "obviously should've been better" or why airport security "obviously should have a better screening process." It's always been my favorite character trait to see in people, if not the most annoying when you're on the other end of it directly...
ReplyNo mom, you "obviously" would NOT have made the call that the guy in front of me was going to slam on his breaks for no reason. I don't care how much "mother's intuition" you have...
I believe the latter part of entry #1 can also be referred to as 'The Fundamental Attribution Error' - assuming everyone else is just a dick for doing certain things, whereas if you do the same, it's always for a reason.
ReplyIt was the only interesting lecture throughout the whole of my Psychology module. That, and talking about anal. Weird university.
I remember it had to do with internal and situational attributes. Everything you do is caused by the situation where everyone else does what they do because of their poor internal workings. The issue isn't realizing you're a dumbshit, it's not acting like a jackass when someone does something stupid. Most of what EVERYONE does is caused by the situation.
PS, anal?
To be fair, many cops who don't give tickets to other cops, don't give tons of tickets to everyone else either. Traffic violations are often treated as ways to discover more egregious behavior. This isn't true all the time or in all places, but much of the time if you're polite and cooperative, you'll get away with a warning.
ReplyThat's pretty much exactly what Special Pleading is right there. People really believe their offense is less egregious than everybody else who got the same ticket, and that's exactly what they plea to the cop once he gets to the window. What makes us so special that we deserve to float by with what we skewer others for? We're great at it.
Man, those people who do special pleading are a bunch of idiots with no self awareness. luckily I don't have any sort of problems with that.
ReplyGreat article, especially the bit on the 'Historian's Fallacy'. I like to call it 'Chronological Snobbery'; the belief that our age is enlightened, and that every human being from any other generation ever is an absolute dolt. You have no idea how many times I run into that one. Anyway...
ReplySigh. Truth sure hurts, but it is necessary.
ReplyGreat article, by the way.
Way too literal. Just because someone proclaims they have a lucky c**k ring, doesn't mean they actually believe it is lucky. Superstition is real in the sense that it can inspire confidence, or lack thereof, which can directly impact your performance.
ReplyI think the point was less having to do with personal superstitions and more on stuff it absolutely cannot control. It's not whether the athlete has his lucky socks on, it's the fan at home who thinks his team will score based on his wife leaving/entering the room. No athlete worth their salt has graced a Madden or SI cover fearful that it'll ruin their careers. And people are a lot more likely to deploy Probability when the fat woman farts, not by finding the slot machine that has a huge losing streak. People do what they mentally can do to feel comfortable, but it's the things they do that absolutely cannot affect the outcome that this article exposes. The c***ring thing was just an attempt at a witty one-liner. Then again, we don't know EVERYTHING about Michael Jordan...
LOVE this article. Special pleading, yeah. Saw an article on something recently reporting a survey that, 95% of us think most other people are rude, but that only 20% of us think that WE are rude ourselves. It's special pleading (I had to cut that guy off, he wasn't giving me enough room to merge politely!) combined with a refusal to acknowledge that everyone has a different version of what is polite to begin with (double dipping a chip when you've reversed it and dipped the saliva-free end, for example).
ReplyIn the psychology world it's also known as the actor/observer bias.
Surely people that manage to salivate on their potato chips have more important things to worry about like not drowning in their soup
WTF does empathy have to do with this article? Did you idiots miss the point? It's about personal justification, pattern recognition and cognitive attribution to explain behaviors in people. I thought it was very well written. Those who cry "I have empathy" obviously have a guilty conscience.
ReplyOne ounce of empathy debunks your entire article. I have empathy I guess I am a "special snowflake" right? .... That's sarcasm by the way, I don't think I am the only one. I can't be, the world is too big.
ReplyPeople are, in most situations, more than willing to dump their sense empathy for a good ole selfish satisfaction. They will throw in some cognitive dissonance (like the special pleading in the article) if their mind tries to remind them they behave like morons. Oh BTW, do you ever take the plane? Like, EVER? You ruin the environment. You really do. Now start the special pleading on how you actually deserve/need it. :-)
I commonly use "the rules don't apply because I'm awesome", but, then again, I'm a dick...
ReplyScrew the rules, I have money!
this article seems to imply nobody has empathy lol
ReplyAccording to "special pleading" we have empathy until we find it onerous to be that way and then we have an excuse. Well, y'know, I don't have to give to charity this month...I've given enough recently, so poor people can eat their memories of when I was more generous.
It's not about empathy: it's about lacking information in a situation you observe. When you see someone snap at the Starbucks barista, it's because that person's an asshole. You don't know about their day, you don't know what kind of stress they're going through, for all you know they may be a really nice person who just snapped that day.... But when you do it, you DO have all that information (your family pet died last night, your kid ran up the cell phone bill again, why the f**k can't this b***h ever get my latte right???). That's why people forgive themselves and are harder on other people: they lack the information on that person. Have you ever noticed that you are a little more forgiving of a close friend snapping at the waiter than the guy at the next table? Could be because you know what's going on in their lives.... (And, yes, there are studies demonstrating just that)
Re: Full of dicks, couldn't it also be reworded to just saying the average person is low on the scale of psychodevelopment according to Ericksons theory?
ReplyActually, Hitler was emphatically told by multiple sources invading Russia was a bad idea.
ReplyThats true, even his second in command Hermann Goering advised against it.
Yes but EVERY leader is told by his generals that invading a giant no-exit-strategy empire is a bad idea and plenty of them do it and succeed. Trick is you can always count a war as a success or failure depending on what you wanted to get out of it or how much you were willing, in hindsight, to lose.
good article! too bad cracked keeps editing my comments when i'm not looking >.>
ReplyThe world is full of dicks, approx 50% of the population has them.
ReplyThat's not counting animals either.
Gotta be over 50% though, because a lot of women are full of dick.
I think eveyone's a dick BECAUSE they're unable to put themselves in anothers shoes. I get pissed off when someone is obviously having a bad day and I hear people talkin s**t about him/her because they "didnt cook this right" or "is a dumbass" or "needs to be hung by the balls off of a swinging pendulum while a tub of acid is slowly being raised" that last part was made up but still or maybe i didnt make it up maybe I saw it off of Saw XVIII or some s**t and thought I did who knows I dont even remember what I was talkin about so whatever it was I bet you ten bucks I did b***h lol jk idk brb
ReplyWoo there, people can and do oftn put themselves into other's shoes. We just avoid doing it often. If we couldn't do it, it means we lack EMPATHY, and having no empathy makes you a psychopath, litteraly.
I still don't know what the f**k u guys have against lottery.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesMath. Math is what we have against lottery.
Although I do wonder what you have against spelling.
I don't have anything against lottery. I have something against poor people who waste their money on it and then complain about everyone but them taking all their money.