Gamblers Fallacy

Name: Gamblers Fallacy or Monte Carlo Fallacy

Latin Name: Alearto Cado

Description:

This is basically the belief that when things start to go differently than what is expected then this will be eventually evened out by opposite events occurring later. It can also be said that such an event is “due” to happen.

Why Is It Fallacious:

This is fallacious because you are trying to justify a prediction on a random event based on the fact that your predicted outcome is “due”. Since this is just a belief, a person may want to use this as a way to justify thier actions.

Syllogism:

X occurs repeatedly.
Therefore the chances of Y occurring are even greater.

Examples Of My Own

Example 1: A person flips a coin and it lands on heads 10 times in a row. Since this is very unlikely the person will then think that the coin is more likely to land on tails later on.

Example 2: A person is at a casino. They notice that the last 15 times the roulette wheel was spun it landed on red. So he quickly puts his bet on black because it was due.

Media Example:

In the movie “Unbreakable” the protagonist attempts to search for a hero by creating multiple disasters until he finds a sole survivor. So he thinks by continuously doing this, his chances of him finding a hero will be greater.