When a decision is made prior to a disaster
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Original Question
What is this fallacy called?
A decision is made (not to get on a boat, for example), then something bad happens not related to the decision (the boat sinks), so the decision maker comes to believe his decision was prescient -- he knew ahead of time that something bad would happen
Answers
1This is an example of the confirmation bias, when we ignore the misses but remember the hits. This is primarily responsible for our feelings of prescience. Why wouldn't we feel like we can see the future when we conveniently ignore or forget all the times our predictions were wrong and only focus on the times we were right, which are often statistically probable?
Let's put this argument form:
I didn't want to get on the boat because I "knew" something bad would happen.
Something bad happened.
Therefore, I can predict the future.
Generally, this is a Non Sequitur because the conclusion does not follow. More specifically, this can fit under Jumping to Conclusions.
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