Confusing Selection With Results

The Swimmer's Body Illusion

  A common delusion that critical thinkers must be aware of involves mistaking fate, natural gifts, and logical selection with actual tested results.

 Known by many as the "Swimmer's body illusion", which refers to the popular task of choosing a target body profile as your weight loss goal.

 Long and lean, professional swimmers possess the most coveted body style according to poll data. The problem that eventually unfolds is that swimmers don't look like that because they swim; Swimmers swim because they look like that.

 They didn't so much choose the sport as the sport chose them. They had the aerodynamic profile that made becoming a professional swimmer likely, and the balance between proper training, natural talent, and nature made it happen.

These facts escape the average person looking to improve their profile however, and every year gym and YMCA memberships explode with folks seeking the impossible goal of a swimmer's body.

 A similar example is the beauty magazine model.

  She doesn't have perfect almond eyes and high cheekbones because she uses the makeup in the ad, but instead she is in the makeup ad because she possesses these features.

 She was selected to become the face of that makeup company based on her natural talents, and the mildly deceptive ads simply allow fragile young women to assume that the makeup alone is the model's only secret.

 Once you accustom yourself to deciphering selection and choice from results of actual testing and experimentation, your critical mind will begin rooting out lots more examples as your natural cynicism creates a new category under the fraud heading.

JB PopRox Stran