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Human beings are hardwired to see patterns. Seeing links and connections between various stimuli is a big part of how people navigate complex environments.
But misfires in pattern recognition create all sorts of weirdness, particularly in the form of superstition. You're playing the slots, losing and losing, when suddenly an obese woman next to you farts. You hit the jackpot, and suddenly you're convinced her colon houses gaseous magic. You're following her around the casino the rest of the day, continually asking if she wants one of these extra burritos you happen to have lying around.
(religion)
You don't need us to point out examples of hypocrisy, from cops who won't write traffic tickets to other cops, to politicians who talk about how important the public school system is while putting their own kids in a exclusive private schools.
What's interesting is how everyone excuses it in their own mind.
You can't find anyone who simply says, "The rules don't apply to us because we're awesome!" Thanks to Special Pleading, there are elaborate mental gymnastics that happen inside them that eliminate even their feelings of guilt. And the thing is, sometimes they're right; you did call your boss a motherfucker because you were having a bad day. You do have bad habits due to your childhood upbringing. Youwere abrupt with your girlfriend because you were running late.
Special Pleading
"I know I was a heroin addict, but this is different. It's meth."
How It Screws Us:
Although it sounds like what you'll need to do to get your significant other to, just this once, try on a rubber hood and call you "Duke," Special Pleading is actually when we allow something to be an exception to a rule, for no logical reason.
In every day life, people use Special Pleading to make them feel less guilty about doing shitty things. When someone else eats the last doughnut, they're a classless motherfucker who deserves to rot in Hell; when you or a friend does it, it's because you were really hungry and you've had a bad day and you didn't get any doughnuts the last time. Special Pleading is the lettuce in mankind's hypocrisy salad.
Appeal to Probability
"Sure I bought a lottery ticket! Somebody has to win, might as well be me!"
Or
"They found another case of bird flu in China! If I see a bird, I'm gonna kill its ass before it can make me sick!"
How It Screws Us:
Our brains are stupid when it comes to calculating probability. As a result, we all have this fuzzy idea that if something can happen, it probably will. And we think this, while having no idea what "probably" even means.
The Nirvana Fallacy is when you dismiss anything in the real world because you compare it to an unrealistic, perfect alternative, by which it pales in comparison. It wouldn't be a problem, except it keeps us from getting anything done.Politicians use this to attack any idea they don't like. "Sure, your plan is helping millions of families in poverty. But I found examples of people abusing it! So we might as well scrap the whole system!"
Or, you'll hear radical political types on the Internet say, "I'm not voting for any of those guys! They're no better than Bush! They're all corrupt agents of the NWO! I'm staying home until you can show me a perfect, incorruptible, intelligent politician who believes the exact same things I do!"
For instance, procrastination can happen for a lot of reasons--you drank too much the night before, or you're feeling uninspired, or it's your first time doing gay porn and you're having second thoughts--but one of the most common reasons we procrastinate is fear that the end result won't live up to the "perfect" idea in our heads.
This is why people wind up living in their parents' basement--waiting for the perfect job, the perfect girl, the perfect friendship--before committing to anything.
If you're not full of that kind of self-doubt, don't worry, there are plenty of assholes willing to supply it for you. Any incremental improvement on someone else's part is mocked as some kind of deluded hypocrisy, because anything short of perfect is not worth doing, so you might as well do nothing, like them. "Ha! You're drinking a Diet Coke with your hamburger? Like that's really going to make a difference!"
The problem is, there is something about our brains that just won't let us put ourselves in the other guy's shoes.
We're all convinced that, had we been in the same situation, we would have made the right decision; the Titanic wouldn't have sank, the stock market wouldn't have crashed and the PlayStation 3 wouldn't have been priced at $599.
The Nirvana Fallacy is when you dismiss anything in the real world because you compare it to an unrealistic, perfect alternative, by which it pales in comparison. It wouldn't be a problem, except it keeps us from getting anything done.
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