Do you know what the sniper error is? In this article we will explain the origin of this phenomenon of thought and how it can influence the mind when selecting information.
Before explaining what the sniper’s mistake is, let’s start by explaining what the errors are, in philosophy, and especially in the field of logic, errors are arguments that initially seem valid, but contain a bias that completely overrides their content. in debates, in discussions, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously.
- In this article.
- We will talk about a very common mistake; The sniper error.
- We will know its origin.
- What it is and how it changes the way information is interpreted and selected.
- In order to verify our ideas or beliefs.
- In addition.
- We will also see examples of this in order to better understand this error and some ideas to prevent (or combat it).
Sniper error is very common. Some information (without initial meaning) is interpreted, invented or manipulated until it seems to make sense or until it complies with our original assumption. It is also known as the Texas shooter’s fallacy.
Through this phenomenon is carried out a reasoning that eliminates any suggestive evidence that one of our ideas is false, emphasizing the information that seems to underpin our hypothesis, in this way, through this error, we can distort reality and interpret it as we see fit, disfiguring what is observed to bring together what we want to defend.
To better understand the phenomenon of sniper error, let’s talk about its origin, the name of this error comes from the following story: a sniper fired several shots at a random barn, then painted a target on each of them and ended up calling himself a sniper.
In other words, after acting, the sniper took the necessary steps to make this action logical or meaningful, in order to “win” or feel “victorious”. In other words: you changed the data (paint the goals) to confirm your hypothesis (win).
Then, according to this error, we would take the observed data and modify it to confirm our assumptions (just as the historical sniper did).
To continue to understand the phenomenon of sniper error, let’s think of an example that we could find perfectly in our daily lives.
Let’s say we dreamed of number 7 and that day we were in a hotel, in room 362 (which we didn’t know before), if we applied here the sniper error we would say we had a feeling in sleep. , since 3 6-2 – 7, and 7 was the number we dreamed of, that is, we manipulated the data to confirm our hypothesis.
Another example of this error is the interpretation of stellar constellations: we tend to draw a succession of imaginary lines to connect the stars and form figures, when in fact their position is determined by chance, in this case we would ignore the celestial bodies that could distort the figure we “seek”.
As we’ve seen, through the sniper error, people can devalue information that doesn’t fit their ideas, as well as manipulate or adjust information to convince someone (or themselves) of something. In addition, through this phenomenon, we have expanded the importance of what we intend to defend.
Another way to interpret the sniper error, in terms of information selection, is this: we ignore the differences that may exist in our data and emphasize the similarities, after making the reasoning in question we infer a conclusion that can be considered false.
The phenomenon of sniper error is linked to what in cognitive psychology we call the illusion of grouping. The illusion of grouping is this trend that we must consider (or see) models or groups that, in fact, do not exist.
Moreover, this error also has to do with another concept, apofenia, a term that is used to describe the experience of seeing patterns and connections in random or meaningless events, something very similar to the previous one.
However, it should be noted that these two introduced concepts can be interpreted from cognitive and statistical psychology, acquiring different nuances in each discipline; from cognitive psychology, we link them to the sniper’s mistake, because through it we can manage to set standards that do not really exist, to justify or demonstrate our ideas or convince others of (or over) something . . .
The sniper error, like many others, is not always used consciously, whether we do it consciously or not, here are some key ideas to avoid the appearance of this error:
With these two small actions and, being aware of the risk of making the sniper’s mistake, we can minimize the risk of his appearance and discuss our ideas much more safely, yet we all run the risk of doing so. In this sense, it will also be important to know how to detect it in others!
“The logic is to reason discreetly. -Anonymous-