
Ask HN: Why are contrarian anecdotes so alluring? - DanBC
Every single time there&#x27;s a discussion on HN about how &quot;X helps to achieve Y&quot; someone will say, without fail, &quot;I tried X and nothing happened&quot;, or &quot;I tried X and all this terrible stuff happened&quot;.<p>They&#x27;ll say this in response to a weak study. They&#x27;ll say it in response to a large, well run, meta-analysis of other large well run studies.<p>I&#x27;ve probably done it.<p>Why is the contrarian anecdote so common? WHy do we feel the need to drop these into discussion?
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cimmanom
Probably because the human brain evolved long before there were any large,
well-run meta-analyses of scientific studies.

50,000 years ago, if someone made a claim, and you had experience to the
contrary, it was important to your tribe to hear the counter-evidence, lest
they start making decisions without all the currently-available information.

Our brains may rationally absorb "this effect holds true for 95% of
participants, and if it doesn't for you, that's within the range of normalcy
(the other 5%) but doesn't invalidate the findings". But our instincts aren't
as nuanced.

