The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable · chapter 3 · id the-black-swan-c3-04-the-narrative-fallacy-is-the-h
“The narrative fallacy is the human tendency to construct post-hoc causal stories from sequences of facts, making random or unpredictable events seem inevitable in retrospect. This connects to Kahneman's System 1 (fast, narrative-driven) vs System 2 (slow, analytical) thinking.”
holdsconfidence: high⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending
Receipts
Fischhoff (1975), 'Hindsight is Not Equal to Foresight'source alive
People consistently overestimate the probability they would have assigned to an event before it occurred. This 'I-knew-it-all-along' effect has been replicated across 122 studies in a meta-analysis.
Medium: The Narrative Fallacysource alive
The narrative fallacy refers to the human tendency to create a story or explanation for any event, even when the story has no basis in fact. It encompasses post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning, confirmation bias, and the availability heuristic.
Roese & Vohs (2012), 'Hindsight Bias', Perspectives on Psychological ScienceDOI registry: valid
Meta-analysis of 122 studies confirms hindsight bias is a robust phenomenon across cultures, age groups, and domains.
This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us — corrections are loud here.