5 Ways 'Common Sense' Lies To You Everyday
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#2.
The Regression Fallacy
You'll Hear it As: "If this cock ring isn't lucky, then how come I got that new job when I was wearing it?" How It Screws Us: Human beings are hardwired to see patterns. Seeing links and connections between various stimuli is a big part of how people navigate complex environments. Back in the earlier days of our evolution, it helped us to hunt and find food; today it helps us deal with people, keep track of large amounts of information and figure out just what the fuck is happening on Lost.
But misfires in pattern recognition create all sorts of weirdness, particularly in the form of superstition. You're playing the slots, losing and losing, when suddenly an obese woman next to you farts. You hit the jackpot, and suddenly you're convinced her colon houses gaseous magic. You're following her around the casino the rest of the day, continually asking if she wants one of these extra burritos you happen to have lying around. It Gets Worse... A great example of The Regression Fallacy is the alleged "Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx."
The Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx is a supposed curse where athletes who appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated will then become terrible or have a run of bad luck afterward (there's a similar belief about Madden Football). Forgetting that Michael Jordan was on the cover 49 times and never had a slump, everyone fails to realize that people are often on the cover of the magazine at the height of their careers, so they're bound to get worse. Big fluctuations are natural in an athlete's career, as is a downward level of skill. That's why they call it the Regression Fallacy, because any trend is going to regress back to where it normally is. Crime goes way up in the city, they elect a new mayor, and crime goes down. Wow! This mayor is magic! Or maybe he's secretly Batman! Actually, the crime increase was out of the ordinary and crime was destined to fall back to its normal level. But the mayor--and countless other politicians and gurus--will make an entire career out of exploiting the Regression Fallacy. #1.
Special Pleading
You'll Hear it As: "I know I was a heroin addict, but this is different. It's meth." How It Screws Us: Although it sounds like what you'll need to do to get your significant other to, just this once, try on a rubber hood and call you "Duke," Special Pleading is actually when we allow something to be an exception to a rule, for no logical reason. In every day life, people use Special Pleading to make them feel less guilty about doing shitty things. When someone else eats the last doughnut, they're a classless motherfucker who deserves to rot in Hell; when you or a friend does it, it's because you were really hungry and you've had a bad day and you didn't get any doughnuts the last time. Special Pleading is the lettuce in mankind's hypocrisy salad.
It Gets Worse... You don't need us to point out examples of hypocrisy, from cops who won't write traffic tickets to other cops, to politicians who talk about how important the public school system is while putting their own kids in a exclusive private schools. What's interesting is how everyone excuses it in their own mind. You can't find anyone who simply says, "The rules don't apply to us because we're awesome!" Thanks to Special Pleading, there are elaborate mental gymnastics that happen inside them that eliminate even their feelings of guilt. And the thing is, sometimes they're right; you did call your boss a motherfucker because you were having a bad day. You do have bad habits due to your childhood upbringing. You were abrupt with your girlfriend because you were running late.
But what's strange is we don't let anyone else have those excuses. The girl behind the counter at Starbucks wasn't rude because she was having a bad day. She's just a bitch. The kid at Best Buy wasn't just clueless about the return policy, he was intentionally evil and trying to steal your money. Some of us have held grudges for years, based on actions by someone else that we've forgiven ourselves for doing countless times. They might as well call it the "This Is Why The World Seems to be Full of Dicks" fallacy. Don't miss Michael Swaim's look at The 4 Most Impressive Wastes of Time on Record. And find out how else you continue to be your own worst enemy, in 5 Ways Your Brain Is Messing With Your Head and Sleep Jerk to Piss Shivers: 5 Body Mysteries Explained. And visit Cracked.com's Top Picks because your brain will force you to, anyway. |
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Number 1 is the Fundamental Attribution Error. I've never heard of "special pleading" but it could just be another name for the same phenomena that I've never heard. I think this article should have included two more items: False Consensus Effect, and Confirmation Bias. The former is best described as: my and all my friends believe X, therefore most people must believe X as well. This forgets the idea that your friends are more likely to share your opinions that not, and don't reflect a good sample of opinions. The latter is described as a person taking any information that reinforces an existing opinion as being well documents, from reliable sources, and made by learned individuals. On the other hand, ideas that conflict with your opinion are at best from unreliable sources, but more likely just made by idiots, or Fox News.
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Only problem is you used Finagle's Law, the more well-known variant of Murphy's Law. Murphy's Law actually states, "If there are two ways to do something, and one way results in a catastrophic failure, then someone will manage to do it that way."
this has got to be the best article on cracked, 'cept for the ones about boobs, they're good too.
haha, this just summarized a part of my psychology class. Definitely gonna watch out for these.
I think this is one of my favorite articles.
was that a G.I. Joe reference?
#5 is actually called the self serving bias in Psychology, wherein the self is the exception to the rule due to the "knowledge of special circumstances." Of course, this means ignorance of facts due to desire to see a different outcome.
You know someone has to eat the last doughnut. Just saying.
I'm late to the party, but I'd like to expand on the points made about Hitler. Not only did lots of Germans know that attacking Russia was a bad idea, but Hitler's generals knew it too. He wouldn't listen and ordered them to attack.
In addition to Napoleon breaking his teeth on Russia, a lesser-known example is that of the Swedish Empire. They were the big noise in Europe for a while, until they tried to conquer Russia. It didn't work out so well, with Russia employing their famous scorched-earth retreats.
No, the people who had the same information Hitler had and whose brains hadn't been eaten by syphilis would not have attempted to invade Russia in his shoes.
I'm proud to say I'm honestly not guilty of any of these.
Fantastic article, well done! I hate to point this out but in #3 (Appeal To Probability) "most cherished tenants" should be "tenets".
Otherwise, SOLID.
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Wow, good thing I read that; I love starting off my day knowing that everything I do is a fallacy. Thanks.
By the way, do you thinks that there's a market for movies where the underdog loses? I'm sort-of a writer, and I think that might work. What's your opinion on it? I should probably get out my lucky pen for this one.
What I find funny about things like this is the fact that this article didn't just appear out of nowhere like a sign from the gods, another person wrote it. Meaning, some person speaking about other people's thought patterns, obviously excluding themselves (you can tell by the way everything is phrased that it's written from an elitist perspective), wrote an article explaining their so-called observations on the human race. The entire thing is hypocritical. (But then again, the writer never really said anything about these things not happening to them)
.
Now, I'm not necessarily saying that it's wrong, but I'm not saying it's right either.. humans aren't just some lab rats that one can view from a distance and record results on. Everyone is different. Some may fall victim to some of the things listed in the article. Some may not. My point is, you can't say "humans do this and humans do that," especially in this specific article. Why? Because it is a direct example of the #5 point in this article: You witness everything else from hindsight and criticize all others due to what went wrong.
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Anyway, I think I ranted enough. I just find these sorts of articles comedic, is all I really wanted to point out. :V
The Nirvana Fallacy
You'll hear it as:
'And while someone, probably in our very comment section, will cry that if even one child's life was saved by the system then it was all worth it. But in the case of every "feel good" solution that doesn't actually solve the problem, you have to ask if the time and energy devoted to it couldn't be spent on something that actually works.'
http://www.cracked.com/article_17216_5-most-popular-safety-laws-that-dont-work.html
Cracked = Failed
"I know I was a heroin addict, but this is different. It's meth."
Boy, if I had a nickel for every time I said something like that....
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"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.
Could someone translate this for thouse of us taht dont speak American"
LeBron James fucked up (in the game of basketball) by trying to throw the ball into the hoop from a distance instead of trying to make his way closer to it in order to (most likely) dunk it.
Wait - do you guys know what a "dunk" is?
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"What I find funny about things like this is the fact that this article didn't just appear out of nowhere like a sign from the gods, another person wrote it. Meaning, some person speaking about other people's thought patterns, obviously excluding themselves (you can tell by the way everything is phrased that it's written from an elitist perspective), wrote an article explaining their so-called observations on the human race. The entire thing is hypocritical. (But then again, the writer never really said anything about these things not happening to them)
.
Now, I'm not necessarily saying that it's wrong, but I'm not saying it's right either.. humans aren't just some lab rats that one can view from a distance and record results on. Everyone is different. Some may fall victim to some of the things listed in the article. Some may not. My point is, you can't say "humans do this and humans do that," especially in this specific article. Why? Because it is a direct example of the #5 point in this article: You witness everything else from hindsight and criticize all others due to what went wrong.
.
Anyway, I think I ranted enough. I just find these sorts of articles comedic, is all I really wanted to point out. :V"
You'd be right if all of these theories were the product of the author, but they're not. Fact is, each one is a well documented human habit. What's really funny is that your comment ended up displaying symptoms of atleast two of the traits on this list.