Volume 6 · The Unfinished Syllabus · Essay 158

McNamara Fallacy

Bad reasoning rarely announces itself. McNamara Fallacy walks in dressed as good sense and leaves with your wallet.

The error is seductive because it imitates a virtue. It sounds like loyalty, or confidence, or common sense. But follow it home and you find it lives in a house with no foundation.

The old NCERT textbook, boring cover and all, has outlived a hundred motivational posters. Clarity is the only pedagogy that never goes out of fashion.

Learning is the one wealth that survives every partition of fortune. Do not memorise it. Notice it. Noticing is the senior discipline.