Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: March 28, 2024, 11:54 am

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
The gunslinger fallacy
#1
The gunslinger fallacy
Thought I'd share an illustration of this, which is germane to the thread on numerology and lots of other stuff.

Quote:Ancient man had his own form of 'sat nav' that helped him find his way across Britain, according to new research.
The sophisticated geometric system was based on a stone circle markers.
Our ancestors were able to travel between settlements with pinpoint accuracy thanks to a complex network of hilltop monuments.

These covered much of southern England and Wales and included now famous landmarks such as Stonehenge and The Mount.

Researcher Tom Brooks analysed 1,500 prehistoric monuments, including Stonehenge and Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, and found them all to be on a grid of isosceles triangles - those with two sides of equal length - each pointing to the next site.

He believes this proves there were keen mathematicians among the ancient Britons 5,000-6,000 years ago, at least two millennia before the Greeks who were supposed to have discovered geometry.

Many monuments are 250 miles or more away but GPS co-ordinates now show all are accurate to within 100 metres and provided a simple map for ancient Britons to follow.

Incredibly, the triangles still exist today as many medieval churches, abbeys and cathedrals were constructed on top of the original stone circle markers.
'Such is the mathematical precision that it is inconceivable that this work could have been carried out by the primitive indigenous culture we have always associated with such structures.

'Such patterns could only have been the work of highly intelligent surveyors and planners which throws into question all previous claims as to the origin of mathematics.

[Image: article-1240746-07C3725A000005DC-665_634x377.jpg]

Quite a compelling pattern! Inconceivable that it could be a co-incidence. Could even be ancient aliens...

The response to this came from A proper mathmetician, tom brooks form the School of Mathematical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London. He has applied the same techniques used by Brooks to another mysterious and lost civilisation. Namely, the "woolthworths" chain of shops (now defunct). I have such a nerd boner for this guy!

Quote:"We know so little about the ancient Woolworths stores," he explains, "but we do still know their locations. I thought that if we analysed the sites we could learn more about what life was like in 2008 and how these people went about buying cheap kitchen accessories and discount CDs."

The results revealed an exact and precise geometric placement of the Woolworths locations.

"Three stores around Birmingham formed an exact equilateral triangle (Wolverhampton, Lichfield and Birmingham stores) and if the base of the triangle is extended, it forms a 173.8 mile line linking the Conwy and Luton stores. Despite the 173.8 mile distance involved, the Conwy Woolworths store is only 40 feet off the exact line and the Luton site is within 30 feet. All four stores align with an accuracy of 0.05%."

Parker used an ancient technique: he found his patterns in 800 ex-Woolworths locations by "skipping over the vast majority, and only choosing the few that happen to line up".

With 1,500 locations, Brooks had almost twice as much data to work with, and on this issue Parker is clear: "It is extremely important to look at how much data people are using to support an argument. For example, the case for global warming covers vast amounts of comprehensive evidence, but it is still possible for people to search through the data and find a few isolated examples that appear to show otherwise.
[Image: woolworths-patterns-300x172.jpg]

So there you go. That's the gunslinger fallacy. If you look at a large enough collection of data, of course you are going to find some patterns. To extrapolate from that that there is a guiding intelligence is, well, unintelligent.
"Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken."
Sith code
Reply
#2
RE: The gunslinger fallacy
Quote:Parker used an ancient technique: he found his patterns in 800 ex-Woolworths locations by "skipping over the vast majority, and only choosing the few that happen to line up".

You owe me a keyboard! The coffee was bad enough but then I laughed so hard I head-butted it.
Kuusi palaa, ja on viimeinen kerta kun annan vaimoni laittaa jouluvalot!
Reply
#3
RE: The gunslinger fallacy
Yes, the trick is knowing which data points to include and the vast majority of them to exclude. In other words, knowing which bullet holes to draw the circle around.
Christian apologetics is the art of rolling a dog turd in sugar and selling it as a donut.
Reply
#4
RE: The gunslinger fallacy
Hmm I saw something like this a few weeks back. My JW brother-in-law posted an article on Facebook about evidence that JW's who refuse a blood transfusion heal faster and with less complications than non JW's who do have transfusions. After shaking my head and facepalming a little I did some digging and found the original paper which had some interesting details. The numbers of participants was 322 JW's vs 87,543 non-JW's and the article also neglected to mention the footnote in the paper saying that any surgeon knowing the patient would refuse a transfusion would only consent to the procedure for the patients most likely to have less complications, thereby skewing the results considerably.

Edit: here's the abstract if anyone is interested.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22751620
Reply
#5
RE: The gunslinger fallacy
This is why peer review is the most important thing in Science. If not for pedantic arseholes like me, people will wittingly or unwittingly write some very misleading research. I have a lecture / workshop on this which I deliver as part of an MSc program in which I give 2 groups of people the same data and challenge them to derive different conclusions from it. Its horribly easy.
"Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken."
Sith code
Reply
#6
RE: The gunslinger fallacy
I am not familiar with the gunslinger fallacy but this really just seemed like good old-fashioned cherry-picking.
[Image: giphy.gif]
Reply
#7
RE: The gunslinger fallacy
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/09/11/t...r-fallacy/

Counting the hits and ignoring the misses.
Reply
#8
RE: The gunslinger fallacy
So-called psychics are well-known for using the sharpshooter fallacy. Jeanne Dixon was well-known for her "predictions" she put out every year, and she always reminded everyone that she predicted the JFK assassination (not really, she actually made a vague prediction in 1956 that an unnamed Democrat would win the 1960 election, but would either be assassinated or die in office, but not necessarily during his first term). However, the hundreds if not thousands of other predictions she ever made never came anywhere close to being true, like that the Russians would get to the moon first (hardly a tough prediction, since they were way ahead of our space program) and in 1960 she wrongly predicted that the aforementioned JFK would not win the election. But every year she continued to churn out more and more predictions, usually in the National Enquirer, which never came to pass. I specifically remember one in the 80's where she claimed that many drug kingpins would die from AIDS. I think I happened to keep that particular page from the National Enquirer for a year to see if any of them would come true, which none of them did. But yet year after year she'd appear on the Johnny Carson show and remind everyone that she predicted JFK's assassination.

Source: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read...assination
Christian apologetics is the art of rolling a dog turd in sugar and selling it as a donut.
Reply
#9
RE: The gunslinger fallacy
Some people call it the "Texas Sharpshooter" fallacy.
Reply





Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)