Rob is blowing a whistle, over and over.
Bob: “Why are you blowing that whistle, Rob?”
Rob: “To keep the dragons away.”
Bob: “I see no dragons.”
Rob: “It works!”
Why is Robert talking to himself?
Sounds like how dogs chase the mailman away.
Average person Buying or Selling stock has an impact on the price of the stock.
yeah I do, when I buy the stock goes down when I sell the stock goes up
I X and it rained; for X in:
- Washed the car
- Hung out the washing
- Watered the garden
Post hoc ergo propter hoc, or the post hoc fallacy, in general.
Basically in OP’s case, I did this and something did or didn’t happen. Therefore, what I did caused that something to happen or not happen.
Another comment used a survivorship bias with people that survived when others died or just living longer than other people. That’s also an example of the post hoc fallacy. The idea that the survivor did something that caused them to live isn’t necessarily true. They couldn’t just got lucky.
It’s also the foundational fallacy that connects the president to economic outcomes. Ask any economist: the president can’t control the economy, and his influence is severely limited.
Taking echinacia (sp?) to get rid of a cold. I’ve given up trying to tell my friends they’re wasting their money because they believe it works, because they start feeling better, and won’t be told that that was going to happen anyway.
Only cure that works on a cold is organic mercury. One drop per day for a week will make your body virus immune within a year (approximately)
That sounds very wrong. And probably dangerous.
Can’t catch a cold of you’re dead!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Specious reasoning” is all I can think of. That’s what Lisa Simpsons says when Homer thinks the Bear Patrol is working like a charm (because there’s not a bear in sight).
All the rituals that baseball players perform.
Tapping the top of a can of soda to prevent it from making a mess when you open it.
This totally works. If you make a mess… You didn’t tap it enough. /s
Pretty sure they showed on Mythbusters that tapping the side of the can is actually much more effective. The reason is that bubbles form all around the edges (and top) of the can and they cause the massive bubbling up when the can opens.
and if you make an even bigger mess… you tapped too hard
“that’s the way we’ve always done it” at any job ever.
Well there’s the optimal way to do it for individuals working alone. And there’s also the optimal way to do it when working in a group. They can be pretty different.
And the way they tell you to do it is never either one of those.
I can’t believe nobody has said religion. All of it. Praying to god being a prime example.
That depends on experience. Plenty of people have seen religious stuff while tripping, meditating, NDE etc.
And plenty of people believe stuff just because it’s popular to think that way. Which is arguably just as bad.
Placebo buttons.
Some appliances like elevators or traffic crossings cycle automatically, but they still have (non-functional) buttons. If the buttons are removed, people complain that the wait is too long. Let them push a button while they wait, and they’ll think it’s much quicker.
I’ve never encountered a traffic crossing that cycles when there’s no one waiting.
Some of these actually do have an effect, but it’s difficult to impossible for a person to know whether this particular one is a placebo button or not.
This is especially the case with elevator close door buttons. Those buttons are always hooked up, because they are needed during emergency operation with the fireman’s key. They are sometimes programmed to cycle the doors marginally faster under normal circumstances, but more often aren’t.
Also, some of the traffic crossing buttons don’t make the walk cycle come sooner, but they occasionally are needed to insert a walk cycle at all, because some intersections don’t trigger a walk cycle unless the button has been pressed.
I always liked the expression “asteroid insurance”
