My Take On The Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc Fallacy.

I've heard people say there are a lot of logical fallacies people make in science. One problem people encounter to begin with is the social construction of reality. As I already said, I learned about this in 1988. In its simplest form it just has to do with how a culture constructs reality based on its information at the time. For example people once thought the world was flat because it cerainly looks flat and no one had been on it space yet. And social constructionism also can be influenced by imaginary concepts, beliefs, norms and values. And then there is the idea of the placebo effect, or a beneficial health outcome resulting from a person's belief in the treatment even if the treatment is an inert sugar pill or water injection.

But there's something else that I was thinking of for a while recently. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is Latin for “after this, therefore because of this”. And it happens when A just coincidentally follows B so you think that they are connected and one caused the other. I also heard of this in 1988. Another teacher was telling us the joke of the woman on the Titanic. She rang for room service and it hit the iceberg. And then she screamed, what have I done? But that comes into play in medicine too. Like when people thought bleeding cured the common cold because all disease was caused by the imbalance of four bodily humors. Actually many people just recovered, their body naturally healed itself. Yet for centuries there were reports of these treatments being successful.

But I was thinking, we use post hoc ergo propter hoc in daily life too. And I don't think it usually does harm. When your faucet leaks after you used Brand A latex washers and you think that must have been it and so you replace it with Brand B, there was no harm done. It still leaks but you get on with life. And maybe you'll never figure out why it suddenly started leaking. But there are some times when we use post hoc ergo propter hoc in more important matters. Like I was telling people a while back I have my don't buy the liverwurst example. It's from that well-know children's tune:

When you go to the delicatessen store,
Don't buy the liverwurst
Don't buy the liverwurst
Don't buy the liverwurst
I repeat what I just said before,
Don't buy the liverwurst
Don't buy the liverwurst.

My point was, sometimes you have to use this logical approach, even if it is wrong, for safety reasons and to err on the side of caution. Because as in my example a while back, if you go to three separate stores and buy the liverwurst, and each time they make you sick, your first assumption is that it was the liverwurst. But then the guy at the board of health explains to you those samples of liverwurst were all unrelated. And one was vegan you know, he tells you. Not even liverwurst IOW. But he also tells you at the end of the conversation that they will look into it. And in the meantime it probably would be a good idea to not buy the liverwurst. At those three stores, or anywhere. Just to be safe.

The point of my example was sometimes you have no choice. And as long as you don't act rashly, or make some radical plan, like giving away you life's savings to solve this problem. It should be all right. And as the song continues, which is why I chose it originally, there are many more food options at the delicatessen store.

 

A day without pattern matching, is a day without logic. The issue is logic must adapt to proprioception, or it contradicts your own brain, and becomes less efficient. For example, you are describing how to ignore yourself, and ignoring anything including ourselves, is what proprioception is all about. The more you can rely on your brain doing its own thing, the less likely you are to walk over a cliff, because you are not that distracted, and pay more attention to your senses.