2. Overgeneralization. When I was eleven years old, I bought a deck of trick cards at the Arizona State Fair called the Svengali Deck. You may have seen this simple but impressive illusion yourself: I show the deck to you—every card is different. You choose a card at random. Let’s assume you pick the Jack of Spades. Without telling me what card it is, you replace it in the deck. Now I exclaim, “Svengali!” As I turn the deck over, every card has turned into the Jack of Spades. When you overgeneralize, this is performing the mental equivalent of Svengali. You arbitrarily conclude that one thing
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