Post Hoc Fallacy

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Most of the time, errors committed by us are so frequent that one doesn’t even recognize them. After reading the book, I realized most of these are the errors we make, not just in our daily conversations but also in our works. These errors very often mislead us from the truth and allow emotions to take over logic. The error I chose from chapter 10 is post hoc fallacy. Post hoc fallacy basically works on after this therefore because of this phenomenon. It is based upon the mistaken concept that simply because one thing happens after another, the first event was a cause of the second event. This is something very commonly observed throughout the world. From superstars to ordinary people, post hoc fallacy is part of everyday life. Post hoc fallacy is most commonly observed in people who believe in superstitions. I am not a believer in them now but yeah I have to admit that I was, when comparatively younger. When I think of it, I laugh at myself but gosh, it is true. In 2005, I played football for my state, back in India. I was very passionate about it and took the sport pretty seriously. Because of this seriousness, I fell into the trap of post hoc fallacy. If I performed very well in a game or scored more than once, I became a little superstitious and wore the same pair of socks (after washing it of course) for my next important game. Coincidently that used to work for me and I actually started believing that the socks were the secrete of my performance. To cement this belief in me, there was this one day that brought dark skies over me. My mom couldn’t get that particular pair of socks ready for the most important game of that year, the finals. Well my moral when diving down after I heard that but had no other choice and the result of my performance was very predictable. I was a little sloppy in the start but surprising I got better as time passed by. I had one

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