Education as Over-Reach, the Fallacy of Accuracy

by Antonio Dias

One of the persistent fallacies that seem to affect people across the board, including those trained as scientists – at least when looking beyond their specialty – is the Fallacy of Accuracy. We are wowed by decimal places. This stretches from simple situations when knowing the difference between half and a third would suffice and we focus in on obtaining a measure that’s down to the third decimal place; on to the Panopticon Mentality of the security apparatus that converts limitless budgets into an infinity of data points. There is a conflation of security with specificity of “knowledge” that takes us into the spiral death-traps of over-reach.

This is a subset of the Will-to-Control. Once we’ve bought into that fallacy, then we’re primed for this one. Will-to-Control posits that we can affect the world in predictable ways to maximize advantage. When this fails, as it must, we look to find ways to “optimize.” One of the first is to “know more.” When that fails, we up the ante and double-down. Now we’re in too deep, and can’t give up! Classic over-reach dynamics.

How does this affect education? It ripples throughout the entire project. The bottom-line is that we run away from analysis based on sound judgement and prudent wariness and towards amassing ever more elaborate constructs – not so as to be able to make a better decision, but in the wish that doing so will find us a way to game reality and “Get What We Want.”