The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable · chapter 3 · id the-black-swan-c3-08-people-compress-complex-causal
“People compress complex causal chains into simple stories. The brain is wired for narrative -- we remember stories better than statistics, and we instinctively assign causation to correlated events (post hoc ergo propter hoc).”
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Medium: The Narrative Fallacysource alive
The narrative fallacy encompasses post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this), confirmation bias, and the availability heuristic. Humans are fundamentally story-telling creatures who compress complexity into narratives.
Roese & Vohs (2012), Perspectives on Psychological ScienceDOI registry: valid
Narrative processing facilitates memory encoding and retrieval. Information presented in story form is retained better than information presented as isolated facts or statistics.
QuillBot: Post Hoc Fallacy Definition and Examplessource alive
The post hoc fallacy erroneously assumes causation between two events solely because one follows the other in time. Its Latin name translates as 'after this, therefore because of this.'
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