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.

Pro-paid content ! You must have a membership to view this page. To buy a pro membership, follow this link.

Subscriptions are only $8.95 a month (full access to archives included) or $1.99 per article. To show your support subscribe.

I’ll answer that reader. Motivation is NOT for the weak. Motivation is for the strong. Motivation is what you get when your life partner cheers you up when you come home tired and spent from work. Motivation is what you get from your kid- assuming you have one- when you wake up in the morning and need to get ready to take on the world. The world is not your friend, and you need motivation and inspiration constantly. Key word, constantly. Motivation does wear off,  and it needs constant replenishment. If you have an hour and 45 mins, watch Robbins’s performance at Dreamforce last October. Props to Benioff for bringing him in.

If I had the money, I’d hire Tony Robbins today to be my life coach . I don’t have that kind of money, but somebody else does and pays it: Ray Dalio and Marc Benioff . If the video of Robbins is free and it moves you, then by all means watch it and watch again. I believe you need a life coach just as much as you need a trainer. You do a better workout supervised, don’t you ?

So motivation is not for the weak. The markings of the weak are: complaining, blaming, looking for something good into the dumpster called politics, seeking a magic cure for one’s ailments.

If you’re like me you need a detox and decontamination from all the assholes in your life. Even if I stayed in the shower for two hours straight after work I still have the stench of my boss on me.

The Wall Street Journal (Vanessa Furhmans, “Some Toxic Bosses Manage to Hang On”, March 31, 2017):

“Many people have found themselves working for a nightmare boss at some point, according to a 2015 Gallup study…The Life Meets Work survey suggests working for an abusive or dysfunctional supervisor is even more commonplace: Among those polled, 56% described their current manager as toxic.”

If you are living a toxic nightmare, you might as well smell the benzene, arsenic and formaldehyde acids, the stale stench of decay lingering at work. It smells worse than a clogged public toilet in a bus station where 42 people a hour have urinated on top of unwashed feces.

Do you have what it takes to do that ? Do you even know what that entails ? Taking down an abusive boss is essentially beating a more powerful person, who, by virtue of authority and social status is above your rank !

I have developed a way to do just that.

Kenny Rogers said:

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run…

Agree or disagree: A very important lesson about speculative hands at poker is to fold if someone else shows much greater strength, or if the hands’ potential is not realized. If you disagreed with this, I’ll be happy to play you.