Thursday, October 2, 2008

Sharpshooter's

The sharpshooter's fallacy gets its name from someone shooting a rifle at the side of the barn and then going over and drawing a target and bulls eye concentrically around the bullet hole. The fallacy is caused by overemphasizing random results or making selective use of coincidence. See the Fallacy of Selective Attention.

Example:

Psychic Sarah makes twenty-six predictions about what will happen next year. When one, but only one, of the predictions comes true, she says, "Aha! I can see into the future."

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