There's a certain group of intellectually minded people who are
victims of an insidious fallacy. They are victims of statistics.
Let's say you are addicted to smoking or alcohol and someone tells
you that you should stop. You might take a look at the statistics
and say that it is very hard to quit. So many people fail.
Believing this you have made it even harder for yourself to quit.
Then you look at the drop-out rates of people who start diets.
Now you say it is very hard to lose weight or stay fit. You look
at divorce rates and say it doesn't actually make much sense to
even try to get a spouse.
The fallacy is that you are not a group of people. You are a
person who is capable of coming up with strategies to help
themselves achieving their goals.
The statistics are making you think you are just an average
person. They are in fact making you more average than you would
be. They are making you think that don't have your own unique
strengths. A highly developed narrow area of strength can be
used for several general purposes.
I think that a large amount of people would actually be capable
of achieving a lot more (of things they themselves consider
achievements) if they could find their strenghts. If you believe
the framing that is implicit in the worldview of statistics, you
deprive yourself of your possibilities.
