Structural Delusion
Many research documents make it clear that there is evidence of tendencies to misperceive random data and see patterns where there are none. The misinterpretation of incomplete or unrepresentative data often leads to extra attention for confirmatory data while drawing conclusions without attending to or seeking out conflicting data. Biased evaluations of ambiguous or inconsistent data tend to be uncritical of supportive data and very critical of contrary data.
There is a conflict between what is true and what is valid, if the basis is false and the conclusion is therefore false the argument is still valid. In order to tell whether an argument is valid, there is no need to know whether the statement and conclusion are true and it is not even required that they are true. Validity is dependent on what is possibly the case, rather than what is actually the case. Equivocal negations are examples of valid arguments that present a possible event, although not the actual event, and in this sense they are logical. Consequently they are also examples of rational communication because they follow the constraints of valid logical arguments. Illusory communication can be said to be rational insofar as effective deceptive communication works like an effective valid logical argument. Self-deception may not always be a flaw and may even be desired at times. Becoming too brutally honest and objective about abilities and about life situations in general might debilitate by depression. A self-serving bias has been demonstrated countless times, a majority believes that they are smarter and better looking than average; most drivers believe themselves more skilled than the average driver; most college students believe they will outlive their predicted age by 10 years, and so on. Cognitive illusions are not so much about what one doesn?t know but what one believes to know which is not so. Many types and variations of such structural mistakes of judgment have been analyzed, showing a rich spectrum of apparently irresistible tendencies for errors of reason. Cognitive illusions come in many flavors and beyond the self-serving and overconfidence bias there is a diversity of effects like anchoring, probability blindness or conjunctive and disjunctive fallacies. Other delusions are based on ease of representation, availability and so-called magical thinking, where even when one knows something is not true, still believes that it is.