Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
B followed A, therefore A caused B.
"We launched the campaign and revenue went up. Must have been us."
What is Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc? B followed A, therefore A caused B. Attribution theater that distorts the next year's investments.
Crediting a turnaround to the new strategy when the market simply recovered.
Attribution theater that distorts the next year's investments.
Sales jumped the week after marketing launched a campaign. The campaign lead says 'it worked.' Honestly:
Pick a reaction to Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
One tap. We'll point you at the most useful next surface based on how this hits.
The full taxonomy entry
Every concept in the Atlas uses the same structure — so Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc can be compared, recombined, and cited like an element on a periodic table.
- Business
- Leadership
- Government
- Healthcare
- Education
- Sales
- Marketing
- AI
- Negotiation
- Media
- Public Policy
- Relationships
- Where in our org would Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc most often show up unnoticed?
- Which metric, ritual, or contract clause quietly rewards Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc?
- If we removed every payoff for Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, what behavior would replace it?
- Who benefits when Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc persists — and who pays the cost?
- People defend the status quo using the language of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
- Decisions cluster around the easiest narrative rather than the strongest evidence.
- New data changes the slide deck but not the decision.
- Anyone naming the pattern is treated as the problem.
Every Atlas entry is a node in a knowledge graph. See the related rail below to follow the connections.
See Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc through 2 lenses
Each layer of the Incentives OS reframes this concept with its own thinkers, vocabulary, and diagnostic question.
Do you actually know Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc?
Three quick questions. Result is saved into your review streak — come back when the term is due to lock it in.
Which best describes Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc?
Worked example, counter-example & concept map
On-demand AI analysis grounded in the Lab's research. Cached on your device after first run.
When you encounter Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, your prefrontal cortex has to do extra work to override the automatic response — and that override budget is finite.
Executive control, planning, impulse override, working memory, System 2. First thing to go offline under stress, fatigue, or low blood sugar. Why your 4pm decisions are worse than your 9am ones.
See Prefrontal in the Brain Atlas →Picked for you, from the Atlas
Ranked by shared learning paths, overlapping chips, and what you've saved.
If A then B; B happened; therefore A.
Reasoning backward from outcomes to motives.
Treating two things that move together as one causing the other.
With this, therefore because of this.
If A then B; not A; therefore not B.
Stacking so many tenuous links that the conclusion sounds clever.
Send the card, not just the link
A pre-rendered social card with the title, eyebrow, and URL. Copy the link, post it anywhere, or download the SVG for slides.
More definitions to follow
Every term in the Atlas connects to a dozen others. Pick any of these and see where it takes you.
We overweight tiny probabilities of large gains or losses.
We remember the past as better than it was.
Looking where the light is, not where the keys are.
Concentrated benefits + diffused costs = the few win against the many.
Brain region tracking conflict, error, and effort.
A system's throughput is constrained by its single slowest step.
Small advantages, applied consistently, become uncatchable.
Glucose, omega-3s, sleep, and hydration each influence decision quality.
Designing organizations to ride doubling curves — AI, data, compute, biotech — rather than linear improvement.
Optimizing a proxy of the goal degrades the actual goal.
Different agents pursue the same subgoals regardless of their ultimate goals.
Neurons that fire both when acting and when observing the action.