March 4, 2022
5,531 words (~27 minutes)
Tags:
opinion
fallacies
statistics
psychology
philosophy
third-person
Generic thinking is unquantified belief about large populations of individuals, a profound and terribly mistaken fallacy that has little use other than prejudice.
January 18, 2022
16,214 words (~81 minutes)
Tags:
opinion
fallacies
statistics
second-person
When encountering a statistic, you should inquire about its provenance, its scope of inference, its practical significance, and the estimation error associated with it.
January 31, 2021
7,817 words (~39 minutes)
Tags:
opinion
fallacies
statistics
psychology
third-person
Anecdotal evidence has flaws that make it useless for inferences about populations or about cause and effect. Valid uses of anecdotes exist, but anecdotes should be scrutinized even in such cases.
December 7, 2020
3,320 words (~16 minutes)
Tags:
opinion
fallacies
statistics
third-person
Advocating a belief by finding supporting examples and listing them is fallacious because of selection bias; examples are selected because they illustrate the belief and contradictory cases are ignored.