A Cowboy Painting a Bullseye Around His Shots Making Him a Sharpshooter!!

The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

Have You Ever Even Heard of It???

Advanced Google Gemini explains it to me. Then, I demonstrate my understanding of it.

What is the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy?

The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy is a logical fallacy that gets its name from a rather humorous image:

Imagine a Texan firing a bunch of shots at the side of a barn. Afterward, he walks over and draws a bullseye around the tightest cluster of bullet holes. He then declares himself a sharpshooter!

Of course, this is silly. The sharpshooter didn’t aim for the bullseye first; he created it after the shots were fired. This is the essence of the fallacy.

In more formal terms:

The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy occurs when someone:

• Ignores the randomness in data: They focus on similarities and patterns while ignoring differences and randomness.
• Cherry-picks data: They select only the data that supports their conclusion, ignoring data that contradicts it.
• Creates a hypothesis after the fact: They form a conclusion based on the data they already have, rather than forming a hypothesis and then testing it.