Or ‘magical thinking’ as Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini calls it. This is about making positive correlations even though the supporting data is weak. Sometimes we notice only data that supports our hypothesis and ignore data that doesn’t.
An example of magical thinking goes like this. We come across a few people who exhibit a certain symptom and also a certain illness, and we associate that symptom with the illness, such that if we see that symptom, then we decide that the illness is also present.
You see someone with red spots, and you diagnose measles.
We forget that sometimes the same symptom appears for a different illnes. Or the illness is present without that symptom.
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