Wishful thinking takes many forms.
Wishful thinking is so dangerous because it feels true. One can be convinced and believe it. More perilously still, one can convince others that it is the case.
A somewhat common form of wishful thinking takes the form of an unverifiable claim:
- “If such and such person were alive, they would do X.”
- “If such and such thing were the case, some bad thing wouldn't have happened.”
- “If everybody would just...”
All of those claims take an “if” predicate that is known to be false, then follow through to a claimed conclusion.
Well, how could these assertions be proven or disproven?
By the very nature of the “if” precondition being false, anything that follows it is a fantasy.
It's free and easy to make unverifiable claims. It never costs the person who makes them; after all, they can never be proven wrong.
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Hi, I'm Victor -- a Brazilian computer engineer at Microsoft with 7+ years of industry experience architecting and building highly polished software. I enjoy deep technical dives, hard problems, and working across all layers of the stack. My work centers on robust, cloud-based, distributed systems and web-based applications that serve millions of users.
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