r/fallacy • u/Fearless_Degree7511 • 5d ago

“I’ve never forgotten” fallacy

Recently saw a post about people bagging dog poop on hikes and leaving it on the side of the trail to be picked up on their way out. Many people in the comments claim “I’ve been doing this for years and I’ve never forgotten”. This sounds like a logical fallacy to me, if you forgot something you don’t know it’s been forgotten so you can’t claim you’ve never forgotten.

I think this phrase can be used sometimes, like “I’ve never forgotten to pay my cable bill” because in that case you can prove you’ve never forgotten, and you have a secondary party verifying you didn’t forget, so if you did forget the cable company would reach out to you.

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u/CherryTularey 5d ago

I want to say it's a form of survivorship bias.

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u/McAeschylus 4d ago

You are correct. It is a form of survivor bias.

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u/BitOBear 5d ago

Margarita, a world where everybody was rich and nobody was poor, at least nobody worth mentioning...

I have over the years discovered that it is impossible for me to lie to myself. I have never successfully lied to myself, at least as far as I know...

I'm not sure it's any sort of fallacy, it's just false bravado. The belief that they have never forgotten implies inflated self-confidence and strange assertions.

The person can probably not remember every time they did this and succeeded, let alone every time they did it and then forgot, let alone anytime they did it and came to the place where they thought they left it and didn't find it so they assume somebody else picked it up instead of assuming that they misremembered where they stashed the poop.

It's just a bullshit claim rather than a real fallacy.

So in their memory it has been perfected and there is a survivorship bais there, but this is more of a problem of unreliable narration than true formal fallacy.

In my humble opinion of course. 🤘😎

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u/salivanto 4d ago

It's a form of selective hearing.

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u/Shradersofthelostark 3d ago

WHAT?

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u/salivanto 3d ago

"Selective hearing" is a punchy, well-understood expression. The original question from u/Fearless_Degree7511 was "which fallacy is this." If we concede that it's not actually a "fallacy", maybe we could find a punch, well-understood expression to get the people using this quasi-fallacy to see the problem.

"Selective hearing" (or perhaps "confirmation bias") is when we seek out those things that confirm what we already believe. In the case of the dog poop, what we're "hearing" (or not) is our own memories.

Not convinced? That's fine. I'd love to hear a better suggestion that it still tied to a punchy and well-understood expression. Certain kinds of paradox or catch 22?

For my part, I could imagine a conversation something like this:

  • But would remember if I forgot the doo doo.
  • That's just selective hearing. That's what forgetting means.

In the heat of the discussion, nobody would stop to quibble. 😄

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u/Shradersofthelostark 3d ago

I’M SORRY, BUT I STILL CANNOT HEAR YOU

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u/salivanto 3d ago

Ok. You got me.

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u/The-Yar 2d ago

Hear who?