During a discussion with students at a famous Texas university, the extraordinary mathematician Stanislaw Ulam argued that our lack of understanding to understand complex issues is one of the greatest threats to the future of our species.
The Texan Sniper Fallacy
Around the same time, an anonymous Texan sniper had achieved a certain celebrity in the area.
He boasted of being able to hit the center of a target from a distance of one mile (1,609 meters) shooting with an old rifle without a scope.
Expert marksmen claimed it was an impossible feat. But as targets began to appear painted on the walls of numerous abandoned sheds with a rifle bullet hole in the center, the police took action on the matter.
They managed to arrange a test with the sniper.
On the chosen day, the Texan sniper met the police on a small hill overlooking an old abandoned barn a little over a mile away.
In front of several agents, he fired 3 bullets with his old rifle.
The sniper had set a condition: no one would use binoculars. And at such a distance the agents were incapable of even distinguishing the targets.
After the shots were fired, officers walked toward the barn. When they arrived they were stunned. There were 3 targets painted on the wall at different heights, and all of them had a hole in their exact center.
To make sure, a shrewd agent removed the bullets and sent them to the forensic department.
It didn’t take long for him to receive proof that the bullets had indeed been fired from the old sniper rifle.
Thousands of explanations were immediately unleashed – each one more absurd – to explain the incredible marksmanship of the Texan sniper.
– According to some, he was right thanks to oriental meditation techniques.
– Others claimed that he was a kung fu practitioner.
– Of course, there was no shortage of those who saw a divine warning in the Texan sniper or those who believed that he was some kind of miraculous saint.
– There were even those who were convinced that it was the reincarnation of an Apache warrior.
But the most popular were sophisticated conspiracy theories of the most diverse nature.
· Among them were those that claimed that the Texan sniper was a kind of cyborg who had a brain implant of Soviet technology that gave him superhuman abilities.
· It even spread that the Texan sniper was an alien or had help from another planet.
Then the Texan sniper revealed his secret, which was much simpler.
The day before he was to meet the police, he chose a wall of an abandoned barn. He moved away from her a bit and fired 3 bullets at her.
Then he painted 3 small targets taking the place where the bullets had hit as the center.
On the day of the test, the Texan sniper met with the police on a ridge about a mile from that wall. In front of the agents, the sniper fired 3 bullets against that wall.
He just had to make sure the bullets fell far away from the abandoned barn.
The multiple targets with a bullet hole in the center that appeared on the walls of so many abandoned structures in Texas had been painted over after a bullet had pierced a random spot on the wall.
What are logical fallacies?
All this ended up giving name to one of the most common logical fallacies: the fallacy of the Texan sniper.
· Fallacies are arguments that initially appear to be valid but contain a bias that makes their content false.
Human beings often erroneously relate data, phenomena or experiences.
· We believe we find patterns where there are only events that occur randomly.
· We integrate these supposed patterns into a false theoretical framework and ignore the multiple evidence that exists against them.
On the fallacy of the Texas sniper trying to make sense of a hypothesis in which we like to believe
– (the extraordinary marksmanship of an individual)
Ignoring the real data that refute our hypothesis
– (A mile away without a scope no one can even see a target the size of the one used by the Texas shooter,
– no sniper always hits the center of the target,
– an old rifle will hardly hit the target at that distance…),
giving value to only a few data or examples
– (a target with a target in the center).
As Ulam said, we exhibit a remarkable clumsiness in understanding the true nature of things that gets us into trouble.
Lesson 4
Government and media misinformation cost lives
Now that the passage of time allows us to have a broader perspective of what we did well and what we did not when we faced COVID-19, the rigorous study the Commission lancet about “”, highlights that – as Ulam prophetically argued more than 60 years ago:
· “Our difficulty in understanding the complex reality of how SARs-CoV-2 works cost millions of deaths.”
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