History Main / SharpshooterFallacy

->''Once again, TheGamerFromMars proves he is illuminati.''

->''TheGamerFromMARS - coincidence? I think not.''

->''TheGamerFromMars is illuminati confirmed.''

-->-- [[https://www.youtube.com/user/OcarinaSenpai ''OcarinaSenpai's'']] comment on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sefx7-xJYc8&spfreload=10 Fascinating Metroid Theories]]

* The so-called "Bible Codes" use this fallacy. Rather than saying what they expect to find in a particular book beforehand, the people who produce these simply manipulate the letters until they find something that they can use. Words count regardless of whether they run up, down, right-to-left, left-to-right, diagonally, or even have the letters adjacent at all. Examples dealing with this subject include:

** Creator/DavidLangford once mocked this in ''Magazine/ForteanTimes'' by writing a computer program that "[[http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/ft107.html could generate mystic and ancient cipher tables at the rate of several hundred per second]]".

* Displayed by recent apologists for Joseph [=McCarthy=] such as Ann Coulter, who claim that the Venona intercepts declassified in 1995 show that [=McCarthy=] was quite right. In fact, the Venona intercepts only mention a single one of [=McCarthy=]'s accusees, Mary Jane Keeney[[note]]The rest of the intercepts concern the atomic spies (Julius and Ethel Roseberg) and Alger Hiss. Neither case involved "Tailgunner Joe".[[/note]], and ''not'' for what [=McCarthy=] accused her of. [=McCarthy=] said she was a communist party member...which distracted from the fact that she was ''an actual GRU spy''. This is somewhat akin to the fallacy in the sense that his supporters claim that the fact Keeney was accused by [=McCarthy=] and was guilty of spying (the only individual called before [=McCarthy=] who was) shows he was right; in fact, it shows he had no idea what he was doing and stumbled over Keeney by dumb luck...and even then he didn't catch her and quite possibly derailed real inquiries into her. Nice job, "Tailgunner"...

Karl Popper summed up this fallacy as applied to science with "A theory that explains everything, explains nothing". Basically, if any possible outcome could be interpreted as supporting the theory then it is useless. Which is the pretty much the same thing as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifability the concept of falsifiability]].

->''Once again, TheGamerFromMars proves he is illuminati.

The first three words he says in this video are 'Outside of Mario'

'Outside of Mario' has three O's

A polo mint only has one O

A polo mint has no physical centre of mass.

Midnight Mass is the mass held on Midnight at Christmas Eve.

And what day is it today? That's right - Christmas Eve.

But there's more, EVE and Adam were the supposed first humans on the Earth.

Earth is planet. It is also the THIRD planet in our solar system, note there are three points in the

illuminati Triangle.

'Illuminati Triangle' has four I's.

The fourth planet in our solar system is Mars.

TheGamerFromMARS - coincidence? I think not.

TheGamerFromMars is illuminati confirmed.''

Earth is planet. It is also the THIRD planet in our solar system, note there are three points in the illuminati Triangle.

* Similarly, interpretations of the metaphorical elements of Nostradamus' prophecies may be seen as examples of this fallacy. There have been documentary programs on Nostradamus' prophecies where the proponents of Nostradamus' prescience do things like add and subtract numbers or alter letters in order to interpret things he wrote as referencing WWII. People have also pointed out that it's strange how Nostradamus' prophecies only seem to be understood to apply to something after the event has happened, which is also indicative of how this trope ties into ConfirmationBias. Nostradamus was a genius who was able to predict the future, yet no one predicted WWII from his writings. After WWII, people went back over his works and went to great lengths to prove to themselves that Nostradamus had predicted it. In reality, the passages could be interpreted or twisted to be applicable to anything one desired.

* The so-called "Bible Codes" use this fallacy. Rather than saying what they expect to find in a particular book beforehand, the people who produce these simply manipulate the letters until they find something that they can use. Words count regardless of whether they run up, down, right-to-left, left-to-right, diagonally, or even have the letters adjacent at all.
** This particular case was specifically shot down by a skeptic in a History Channel documentary about such Bible Codes. To prove that such a "spectacularly rare occurrence" actually was more likely than people were willing to admit, he applied the principles for finding codes to ''Literature/MobyDick'', looking for "predictions" of the assassination of JFK. He found quite a few. As with the metaphor of MonkeysOnATypewriter, any sufficiently long stream of data, if looked over using enough different formulae, will produce words or phrases that correlate to some kind of event that occurred after that book was written.
** ''John Safran vs God'' put this exact argument against the Bible Code to the test by feeding the entirety of Music/VanillaIce's back catalogue (song lyrics and liner notes) into the decoder; even "Ice Ice Baby" is able to turn up 9/11 "predictions." Then they took the 9/11 Comission's report and used the code to find references to the fall of Vanilla Ice's career.

** The same is said about the Bible, claiming examples prove that Shakespeare wrote the Bible.
* Similarly, interpretations of the metaphorical elements of Nostradamus' prophecies may be seen as examples of this fallacy.
** There have been documentary programs on Nostradamus' prophecies where the proponents of Nostradamus' prescience do things like add and subtract numbers or alter letters in order to interpret things he wrote as referencing WWII. People have also pointed out that it's strange how Nostradamus' prophecies only seem to be understood to apply to something after the event has happened, which is also indicative of how this trope ties into ConfirmationBias. Nostradamus was a genius who was able to predict the future, yet no one predicted WWII from his writings. After WWII, people went back over his works and went to great lengths to prove to themselves that Nostradamus had predicted it. In reality, the passages could be interpreted or twisted to be applicable to anything one desired.
* Likewise, all claims of various people's names being secret encodings of the {{Number of the Beast}}, 666. There are a lot of ways you can assign numbers to letters or words -- try enough of them, and you will find one that adds up to "666".
** This one is actually referenced in ''WarAndPeace'', where Pierre plays around with Napoleon's name and titles to make it all add up to the Number of the Beast, then does the same thing to his own name to "prove" that he's destined to assassinate the man.
** This concept is parodied in [[http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/16502-end-of-days the Nostalgia Critic's review]] of End of Days.

** This is spoofed by [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR1_epbmI2g The Number 24]].
** Also spoofed on one episode of ''AquaTeenHungerForce'' in which Frylock becomes obsessed with the number 100. His explanations quickly devolve into combining completely arbitrary numbers with no rhyme or reason until he eventually just adds exactly what he needs to get to 100 without explaining why. Even ''[[TooDumbToLive Master Shake]]'' realizes that he's just [[AssPull pulling things out of his ass.]]
* Beautifully illustrated in the ''Literature/PrincipiaDiscordia'' with the UsefulNotes/{{Discordian|ism}} Law of Fives: "All things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to five."
** {{Lampshaded}} in the same section.
---> "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look."
** Even more blatantly: ''Everything in the universe relates to the number 5, one way or another, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter.''

** JumpingTheShark and GrowingTheBeard are examples in ThisVeryWiki.

** This particular case was specifically shot down by a skeptic in a History Channel documentary about such Bible Codes. To prove that such a "spectacularly rare occurrence" actually was more likely than people were willing to admit, he applied the principles for finding codes to ''Literature/MobyDick'', looking for "predictions" of the assassination of JFK. He found quite a few. As with the metaphor of monkeys with typewriters, any sufficiently long stream of data, if looked over using enough different formulae, will produce words or phrases that correlate to some kind of event that occurred after that book was written.

** JumpingTheShark and GrowingTheBeard are examples in this very wiki.

* The existence of "cancer clusters" is an example. People notice that there are a lot of cancer cases in an area, and immediately assume that there's a causal link, such as electromagnetic radiation, without looking for other possible factors.

** Creator/DavidLangford once mocked this by writing a computer program that "[[www.ansible.co.uk/writing/ft107.html could generate mystic and ancient cipher tables at the rate of several hundred per second]]".

* Displayed by recent apologists for Joseph [=McCarthy=] such as Ann Coulter, who claim that the Venona intercepts declassified in 1995 show that [=McCarthy=] was quite right. In fact, the Venona intercepts only mention a single one of [=McCarthy=]'s accusees, Mary Jane Keeney[[note]]The rest of the intercepts concern the atomic spies (Julius and Ethel Roseberg) and Alger Hiss, neither case involved "Tailgunner Joe"[[/note]], and ''not'' for what [=McCarthy=] accused her of. [=McCarthy=] said she was a communist party member...which distracted from the fact that she was ''an actual GRU spy''. This is somewhat akin to the fallacy in the sense that his supporters claim that the fact Keeney was accused by [=McCarthy=] and was guilty of spying (the only individual called before [=McCarthy=] who was) shows he was right; in fact, it shows he had no idea what he was doing and stumbled over Keeney by dumb luck...and even then he didn't catch her and quite possibly derailed real inquiries into her. Nice job, "Tailgunner"...

** This particular case was specifically shot down by a skeptic in a History Channel documentary about such Bible Codes. To prove that such a "spectacularly rare occurrence" actually was more likely than people were willing to admit, he applied the principles for finding codes to ''MobyDick'', looking for "predictions" of the assassination of JFK. He found quite a few. As with the metaphor of monkeys with typewriters, any sufficiently long stream of data, if looked over using enough different formulae, will produce words or phrases that correlate to some kind of event that occurred after that book was written.

Used in a Red Bull commercial where [[WilliamTelling William Tell]] has a shaky hand so his son give him Red Bull to sharpen the mind and the body. Tell then realizes he should shoot the apple, ''then'' put it on his son's head.

** There have been documentary programs on Nostradamus' prophecies where the proponents of Nostradamus' prescience do things like add and subtract numbers or alter letters in order to interpret things he wrote as referencing WWII. People have also pointed out that it's strange how Nostradamus' prophecies only seem to be understood to apply to something after the event has happened, which is also indicative of how this trope ties into ConfirmationBias. Nostradamus was a genius who was able to predict the future. No one found predictions to WWII. After WWII, people went to great lengths to prove to themselves that Nostradamus had predicted it.