Reality Buffett Reductionism Fallacy Don’t Causal Reflects Closely

This reflects closely on Nassim Taleb’s work and the concept of the Narrative Fallacy — an undue simplifying of reality to a simple cause–> effect chain.

Example: “Warren Buffett was successful because his dad was a Congressman. He had a leg up I don’t have!”

Problem: This form of argument is used pretty frequently because the claimant wishes it was true or is otherwise comfortable with the narrative. It resolves reality into a neat little box, when actual reality is complicated. To address this particular example, extreme success on the level of a Buffett clearly would have multiple causes acting in the same direction. His father’s political affiliation is probably way down the list.

This fallacy is common in conspiracy theory-type arguments, where the proponent is convinced that because they have some inarguable facts — Howard Buffett was a congressman; being politically connected offers some advantages — their conclusion must also be correct. They ignore other explanations that are likely to be more correct, or refuse to admit that we don’t quite know the answer. Reductionism leads to a lot of wrong thinking — the antidote is learning to think more broadly and be skeptical of narratives.