Ghost Pattern: The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy
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Our brains crave connections, but sometimes we end up connecting dots that don't exist.
Ghost Patterns are a collection of cognitive fallacies and biases. They are illusions which can trick us into believing they're real.
One Ghost Pattern that hijacks our decision-making is The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.
Let's dive in:
Seeing Bullseyes in Randomness
A cowboy riddles the side of a barn with random shots.
Later, he paints bullseyes around the closest clusters. It looks like he hit his targets with every single shot. This makes him look like a sharpshooter.
That's the fallacy — mistaking random events for meaningful patterns.
In business, this translates to mistaking random fluctuations in sales for significant trends or cherry-picking data to justify our pre-existing beliefs. You might see a rise in website traffic and credit a recent blog post. Or a spike in sales and believe it was your latest marketing tweak.
But was it truly the cause and effect, or just random noise you're mistaking for a bullseye?