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Everything You Believe Is Wrong Paperback – December 1, 2021
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If you are an Expert, professional, bureaucrat, teacher, professor, Democrat or Republican, liberal, progressive or conservative, consider yourself in any way in the educated classes, the odds are high that everything you believe is wrong.
Not everything. Not simple things. Only the most important things. If you are in the majority, then a great deal of what you hold true about the world and of life is false.
Here is a small sample of things that majority of educated believe are false, but which are instead true: Science cannot answer every question put to it; It is not always right to correct a wrong; There is no wisdom in crowds; A consensus among elite academics does not prove the belief of the elite academics is true; That you are offended is irrelevant to whether a proposition is true or false; Defining yourself as your sexual desire is nonsensical; Voting does not make the majority position right and the minority position wrong; Voting is a leading cause of discord; Democracy is rarely to be desired; You cannot choose to believe you do not have free will; God exists.
These are only some of the ideas and arguments explored in this book. The majority, and that means likely you, are wrong about all of them. This is no idle claim. It will be proved chapter by chapter.
Every bad or invalid or unsound argument contains a fallacy or mistake in thinking. Nobody knows the complete list of ways thought can go wrong, and it has even been surmised such a list is endless. History supports this contention. There is ample reason to believe the human race is congenitally insane.
Some mistakes are more common than others. Every age has its own favorite forays into fiction, driven by fashion, fad, and fantasy, all of which are enforced by the culture's self-appointed Watchers. The balance of truth versus error shifts in time, yet the current age is more eager than average to ferret away any shiny object it finds and call it precious.
Fallacies therefore have tremendous inertia. Some mental misconstructions are permanent fixtures. I have evocative and memorable nicknames, at least for speakers of English, of the most popular and important fallacies of our day. We step through each, showing how it is false.
Here are just a few of our age's favorite fallacies: Controversial Fallacy, Non-Fallacy Fallacy, Appeal to Non-Authority, So Yer's Old Man, Bluff & Bluster Fallacy, You Bigot Fallacy, Hate Speech Fallacy, Bureaucrat Fallacy, One True Spartacus Fallacy, Wisdom of Crowds Fallacy, I Can't See Another
Way Fallacy; many, many others, including the ever-popular Meta Fallacy. This is a fallacy that says a thing is true because it is a fallacy. Strange as it seems, it is most convincing.
More at https: //wmbriggs.com
- Print length458 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWilliam M Briggs
- Publication dateDecember 1, 2021
- Dimensions5.25 x 1.02 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101087987156
- ISBN-13978-1087987156
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Product details
- Publisher : William M Briggs (December 1, 2021)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 458 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1087987156
- ISBN-13 : 978-1087987156
- Item Weight : 1.14 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.25 x 1.02 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #519,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #204 in Philosophy of Good & Evil
- #1,178 in Political Commentary & Opinion
- #1,668 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

William M. Briggs. the Statistician to the Stars!, is a writer, philosopher and itinerant scientist, who lives far from Experts. He earned his PhD from Cornell University (before it became fully woke) in statistics. He studies the philosophy of science, the use and misuses of uncertainty, the corruption of science, and the uselessness of most predictions. He began life as a cryptologist for the Air Force, slipped into weather and climate forecasting, and matured into an epistemologist. He maintains an active and lively blog at wmbriggs.com.
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Customers find the writing style witty and sharp, with a skeptical outlook. They also describe the story as engaging and thought-provoking. However, some customers report embarrassingly terrible grammar and typos.
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Customers find the story engaging and thought-provoking, with powerful information. They also say the author has interesting views, and the book is one to savor.
"Dr. Briggs' book is one to savor. I didn't rush it, and in fact I yellow highlighted key thoughts and pithy expressions, adding notes in the margins...." Read more
"...The themes of the book are presented in an interesting, if sometimes convoluted way. But my gosh...was there no proofreader on this project?..." Read more
"Right away it opens your eyes toward many fallacies that happen both accidentally and on purpose by propagandist...." Read more
"The material covered in this book was very engaging and thought provoking. I was confused frequently but always entertained...." Read more
Customers find the writing style witty and sharp. They also appreciate the skeptical outlook.
"...Briggs organized the book into bite sized subsections with telling, often witty, subtitles that encourage going forward...." Read more
"...He combines a sharp mind with a skeptical outlook which really appeals to those who are tired of establishment thinking...." Read more
"...I love the author's humor and sharp wit...." Read more
Customers find the grammar embarrassingly terrible, with no apparent proofreading. They also mention that the kindle edition makes it nearly impossible to comprehend, with typos, missing words, and non-sentences.
"...It is seriously in need of a good editor: many typos,missing words,or autocorrect errors." Read more
"...Sometimes the concepts are a hard slog to comprehend but well worth the effort." Read more
"...in a high school English class in the 50s simply for the abundance of grammatical errors - and that would have been generous...." Read more
"...I would have given a five rating, but there are a fair number of annoying typos in it." Read more
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The book is marketed as a collection of "fallacies," rather like other critical thinking books, and I like those kinds of books. But this book does not methodically and perhaps dryly plod through informal logic errors; it engages the subjects with feisty energy that leaves a lasting impression, and many times makes you laugh.
Some of the fallacies I knew already, and the book broadened my education on these. Others I had not considered before. Dr. Briggs has coined new names for styles and examples of fallacies, which are just plain fun.
Because I long worked in litigation to challenge bureaucratic decisions in the federal government, one of the book's subsections (p. 48) grabbed me with an astonishing clarity, so I'm quoting it:
The Bureaucrat Fallacy is deadly. It is a species of the I Must Be Right fallacy in which an expert believes he is right because he cannot think of an alternate explanation. The bureaucrat is an expert, or rather he is credentialed and given a position of what is supposed to be an expert, and so comes to think himself an expert despite any possible intellectual failings.
The Bureaucrat Fallacy is more of a corporate than an individual fallacy. The bureaucrat not only thinks he must be right because he is the man in authority, but he thinks the process itself into which he is embedded must be right because it is the process. That process came from "on high" and assumes the status of holy writ. To the bureaucrat the process is the answer to every question.
(end quote)
My professional experience teaches this is true -- bureaucrats become experts at process and don't care much about truth, so long as the bureaucrat and the organization can always claim "the process was followed" and then never admit they made a mistake.
I relished this book and recommend it to anyone who likes a thoughtful tour de force. If you enjoyed Darell Huff's book, How to Lie with Statistics, you'll enjoy this book as much or more. Yes, there are some typos, but they didn't bother me much -- the content is rich, diverse, and stimulating. A great individual read but also for book clubs!
It is not about what you believe. It's about why it is that what you believe is wrong.
Take the authors advice and start with the appendix (read it twice!)
It is seriously in need of a good editor: many typos,missing words,or autocorrect errors.
I would have given a five rating, but there are a fair number of annoying typos in it.
Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2022
I would have given a five rating, but there are a fair number of annoying typos in it.




