The Random Man Fallacy

Synopsis

"The Random Man Fallacy is the mistaken assumption that the demographics in any given domain ought to mirror their proportions in the general population. This fallacy stems from the erroneous application of random distribution models to man's lives, expecting them to follow Gaussian distributions. Those who commit this fallacy wrongly interpret deviations from demographic parity as evidence that something has interfered with an expected outcome. This is a fundamental mathematical error; like any other non-random phenomena, events involving humans, shaped by innumerable and often immeasurable interacting variables, cannot be expected to follow normal distributions. Demographic proportionality should only be expected when measuring truly random events, not in complex systems where non-random factors predominate.

Normal distribution of human outcomes is seldom a natural stochastic occurrence and therefore has no mathematical or logical basis for being expected naturally or treated as a normative benchmark.

One commits the Random Man Fallacy when illogically applying statistical expectations of randomness to non-random human decisions and outcomes, a proposition as invalid as any other logical fallacy."

— Paddy Welsh

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