Why do we discuss typical mind fallacy more than the atypical mind fallacy (the later is not even an accepted term, I came up with it) ?
I am far more likely to assume that “I am so special snowflake” than to assume everybody is like me. Basically this is what the ego, the pride, the vanity in me wants to do.
Best guess, it’s simply because Typical Mind is overwhelmingly more common (though this could be an example of TMF at work right here!). Humans are social animals, who value the agreement of others with their own views. It’s easy and comfortable to assume that other people will think similarly to you. There’s an even deeper level than that, though: you are the only person whose mind you are truly familiar with, and so there’s a huge availability bias in favor of your own thought processes on any subject. It requires more thought to consider what other people—either in particular, or generally—would think of a situation than it does to form your own thoughts; you do the latter automatically just be considering the situation at all. Many people will never put forth the extra effort without being prodded to do so.
Even those who claim to be their own special snowflake actually commonly do value commonality with other people. Hipsters (not saying you are one, it’s just a convenient category of identifiable people who, ironically, share a useful set of criteria) may proudly claim to think differently from the rest of society, but even then they are agreeing with each other about what to think differently about, and are frequently thinking different in the same way. If you drink PBR but claim to do so “ironically”, you’re a hipster; you belong to a society that may have some differences from the dominant one, but is internally relatively consistent. If you only drink micro-brewed craft beers of at least 7% ABV and made with organically-grown hops then you’re a couple different kinds of beer snob, but in a way that people can relate to; maybe they also prefer stronger beers, or stick to organic produce, or whatever, and they know other people who have those other preferences too so they can visualize you as the intersection of those groups, and you can be a member (a “special” member, but one nonetheless) of groups such as “craft beer snobs”. If you drink Bud Light and Coors Light but only when mixed with pear juice and Tabasco sauce, you’re actually a special snowflake… otherwise known as being just weird. People won’t really be able to relate to your tastes, and (except when trying to signal your different-ness) you probably won’t talk about your atypical taste when you’re at a bar and somebody strikes up a conversation.
I’ll admit I’ve had AMF moments myself, though. Topics I avoid talking about because I don’t expect anybody else to be interested, or situations where I think literally everybody must think some way except me because I don’t see any other counterexamples. It’s rare, though; at 28 I probably experience as much TMF in a week as I can recall AMF experiences in my life.
Typical mind fallacy is “that person behaved that way for the same reasons I would behave that way, and they would like what I would like, and dislike what I dislike”.
Even if you think you are special and different, you might still implicitly assume that everyone knows that crinkling that noisy bag of chips is annoying simply because it’s annoying to you and therefore flare up in irritation at the one guy in the library doing so. You say “how inconsiderate”, but they don’t even notice when other people crinkle chips, so they think you just appeared out of nowhere and started being unreasonable and mean on purpose.
“Special snowflake” attitudes don’t run counter this, it’s an entirely separate thing, operating on a “higher” level. Your ego might think you’re a special snowflake, but your id doesn’t take that into account when you instantly react.
I would say that it has to do with the consequences of each mistake. When you subconsciously assume that others think the way you do, you might see someone’s action and immediately assume they have done it for the reason you would have done it (or, if you can’t conceive of a reason you would do it, you might assume they are stupid or insane).
On the other hand, assuming people’s minds differ from you may not lead to particular assumptions in the same way. When you see someone do something, it doesn’t push you into thinking that there’s no way the person did that for any reason you would do it. I don’t think it will have that same kind of effect on your subconscious assumptions. I might be missing something, though. How do you see the atypical mind fallacy affecting your behaviour/thoughts in general?
For example, I often think I am unusually cowardly or clumsy. Then I am totally surprised when I find after like 3 months of martial arts practice I am already better on both accounts than like 20-30% of the new starters, I was sure I will never ever get better at it, which roughly predicts average ability—but then why does it feel so unusually low?
I tend to think others are far more social than me. Then I start wondering, the fact that we are living in the same flat for 3 years now and never had a chat with a neighbor cannot be 100% my fault, it is 50% mine for not initiating such a conversation, but also 50% theirs as they too didn’t. So it may actually be they are not that much more social than me.
That one is fundamental attribution error, I think. The real reason you didn’t chat with neighbors is because you do not repeatedly bump into your neighbor in spontaneous circumstances on a regular basis—even very social people often don’t chat with neighbors. It’s more about circumstance than personality.
From these examples, I might guess that these mistakes fall into a variety of already existing categories, unlike something like the typical mind fallacy which tends to come down to just forgetting that other people may have different information, aims and thought patterns.
Assuming you’re different from others, and making systematic mistakes caused by this misconception, could be attributed to anything from low-self esteem (which is more to do with judgments of one’s own mind, not necessarily a difference between one’s mind and other people’s), to the Fundamental Attribution Error (which could lead you to think people are different from you by failing to realise that you might have the same behaviour if you were in the same situation as they are, due to your current ignorance of what that situation is). Also, I don’t know if there is a fallacy name for this, but regarding your second example, it sounds like the kind of mistake one makes when one forgets that other people are agents too. When all you can observe is your own mind, and the internal causes from your side which contribute to something in the outside world, it can be easy to forget to consider the other brains contributing to it. So, again, I’m not sure I would really put it down to something as precise as ‘assuming one’s mind is different from that of other people’.
(Edit: The top comment in this post by Yvain seems to expand a little on what you’re talking about.)
Why do we discuss typical mind fallacy more than the atypical mind fallacy (the later is not even an accepted term, I came up with it) ?
I am far more likely to assume that “I am so special snowflake” than to assume everybody is like me. Basically this is what the ego, the pride, the vanity in me wants to do.
Best guess, it’s simply because Typical Mind is overwhelmingly more common (though this could be an example of TMF at work right here!). Humans are social animals, who value the agreement of others with their own views. It’s easy and comfortable to assume that other people will think similarly to you. There’s an even deeper level than that, though: you are the only person whose mind you are truly familiar with, and so there’s a huge availability bias in favor of your own thought processes on any subject. It requires more thought to consider what other people—either in particular, or generally—would think of a situation than it does to form your own thoughts; you do the latter automatically just be considering the situation at all. Many people will never put forth the extra effort without being prodded to do so.
Even those who claim to be their own special snowflake actually commonly do value commonality with other people. Hipsters (not saying you are one, it’s just a convenient category of identifiable people who, ironically, share a useful set of criteria) may proudly claim to think differently from the rest of society, but even then they are agreeing with each other about what to think differently about, and are frequently thinking different in the same way. If you drink PBR but claim to do so “ironically”, you’re a hipster; you belong to a society that may have some differences from the dominant one, but is internally relatively consistent. If you only drink micro-brewed craft beers of at least 7% ABV and made with organically-grown hops then you’re a couple different kinds of beer snob, but in a way that people can relate to; maybe they also prefer stronger beers, or stick to organic produce, or whatever, and they know other people who have those other preferences too so they can visualize you as the intersection of those groups, and you can be a member (a “special” member, but one nonetheless) of groups such as “craft beer snobs”. If you drink Bud Light and Coors Light but only when mixed with pear juice and Tabasco sauce, you’re actually a special snowflake… otherwise known as being just weird. People won’t really be able to relate to your tastes, and (except when trying to signal your different-ness) you probably won’t talk about your atypical taste when you’re at a bar and somebody strikes up a conversation.
I’ll admit I’ve had AMF moments myself, though. Topics I avoid talking about because I don’t expect anybody else to be interested, or situations where I think literally everybody must think some way except me because I don’t see any other counterexamples. It’s rare, though; at 28 I probably experience as much TMF in a week as I can recall AMF experiences in my life.
Typical mind fallacy is “that person behaved that way for the same reasons I would behave that way, and they would like what I would like, and dislike what I dislike”.
Even if you think you are special and different, you might still implicitly assume that everyone knows that crinkling that noisy bag of chips is annoying simply because it’s annoying to you and therefore flare up in irritation at the one guy in the library doing so. You say “how inconsiderate”, but they don’t even notice when other people crinkle chips, so they think you just appeared out of nowhere and started being unreasonable and mean on purpose.
“Special snowflake” attitudes don’t run counter this, it’s an entirely separate thing, operating on a “higher” level. Your ego might think you’re a special snowflake, but your id doesn’t take that into account when you instantly react.
I would say that it has to do with the consequences of each mistake. When you subconsciously assume that others think the way you do, you might see someone’s action and immediately assume they have done it for the reason you would have done it (or, if you can’t conceive of a reason you would do it, you might assume they are stupid or insane).
On the other hand, assuming people’s minds differ from you may not lead to particular assumptions in the same way. When you see someone do something, it doesn’t push you into thinking that there’s no way the person did that for any reason you would do it. I don’t think it will have that same kind of effect on your subconscious assumptions. I might be missing something, though. How do you see the atypical mind fallacy affecting your behaviour/thoughts in general?
For example, I often think I am unusually cowardly or clumsy. Then I am totally surprised when I find after like 3 months of martial arts practice I am already better on both accounts than like 20-30% of the new starters, I was sure I will never ever get better at it, which roughly predicts average ability—but then why does it feel so unusually low?
I tend to think others are far more social than me. Then I start wondering, the fact that we are living in the same flat for 3 years now and never had a chat with a neighbor cannot be 100% my fault, it is 50% mine for not initiating such a conversation, but also 50% theirs as they too didn’t. So it may actually be they are not that much more social than me.
That one is fundamental attribution error, I think. The real reason you didn’t chat with neighbors is because you do not repeatedly bump into your neighbor in spontaneous circumstances on a regular basis—even very social people often don’t chat with neighbors. It’s more about circumstance than personality.
From these examples, I might guess that these mistakes fall into a variety of already existing categories, unlike something like the typical mind fallacy which tends to come down to just forgetting that other people may have different information, aims and thought patterns.
Assuming you’re different from others, and making systematic mistakes caused by this misconception, could be attributed to anything from low-self esteem (which is more to do with judgments of one’s own mind, not necessarily a difference between one’s mind and other people’s), to the Fundamental Attribution Error (which could lead you to think people are different from you by failing to realise that you might have the same behaviour if you were in the same situation as they are, due to your current ignorance of what that situation is). Also, I don’t know if there is a fallacy name for this, but regarding your second example, it sounds like the kind of mistake one makes when one forgets that other people are agents too. When all you can observe is your own mind, and the internal causes from your side which contribute to something in the outside world, it can be easy to forget to consider the other brains contributing to it. So, again, I’m not sure I would really put it down to something as precise as ‘assuming one’s mind is different from that of other people’.
(Edit: The top comment in this post by Yvain seems to expand a little on what you’re talking about.)