Among the many mistakes we make you may recognize the Texas sharpshooter’s fallacy: People make an argument based on certain information, then use that same information to confirm it (ignoring the rest).

Put it into a more academic fashion, the Wikipedia entry:

“The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are overemphasized. From this reasoning, a false conclusion is inferred.”

Barbara Connors, an author and poker player, explains its origin in her article since this fallacy is a a sin among those of us who are poker players.

” Picture a man, sitting on a hillside. He has a gun and he’s firing random shots at the side of a barn some yards away. Before long, the wall of the barn will be riddled with bullet holes. Despite the randomness of the shooter’s aim, the holes will be unevenly distributed. Inevitably, there will be gaps and clusters. If he wants, the shooter can walk up to the barn and paint a circle around the biggest cluster of bullet holes. To the casual observer, it will now appear that the man is a terrific sharpshooter. ”

Barbara Connors

But this mistake is common outside of the world of poker as well. In fact, it is one one the pillars of support leaders and CEOs rely upon. What you don’t know will hurt you. Leadership relies on so many things, Texas sharpshooter fallacy is one of them. (the other name for this fallacy is the clustering illusion)

While researching the subject I came across a resource book by Dr. Bo Bennett, Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies, which I plan on reading.

Leaders, influencers, CEOs and bosses have been baking hot potatoes out of mushed leftover flakes for as long as I can remember.

I’d like to introduce you today to Free Resources for the Free Mind recommendations, where the recommendations come from the readers…for the readers.

This week, reader Hank recommends a free course from IAI TV

Why The World Does Not Exist

by professor Markus Gabriel

About the course: “Can reality be described by a single theory? Does our failure to find a theory of everything expose the limits of knowledge, or might the world not exist at all? With philosopher Markus Gabriel. (Markus Gabriel specializes in epistemology and Post-Kantian Idealsim. He is the Chair for Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy and Director of the International Center for Philosophy at the University of Bonn. He is also a visiting professor at UC Berkley and a Senior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Study.)

He is the author of several books, including Fields of Sense: A New Realist Ontology, Why The World Does Not Exist, and Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism, co-authored with Slavoj Žižek.”

Note: I have no affiliation with the course, its author or platform, and only display it as a free resource recommendation from the reader.