Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Magic fallacy

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.‎

The result was delete. Stifle (talk) 10:40, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Magic fallacy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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As far as I can tell, the supposed attestation of the term in The Fatal Conceit is entirely fictitious. For a full list of quotes with the words "magic" and "fallacy" in the three Hayek books cited in the article (Conceit plus The Road to Serfdom and The Counter-Revolution of Science), please see the collapsebox in Wikipedia:WikiProject AI Cleanup/Noticeboard § A number of insertions from Follynomics, but in short, Hayek does not describe anything as a "magic fallacy" in his 2021 book because, besides not being alive in 2021 to write a book (it's published in 1988, I can't find a second edition), Hayek does not use the words "magic" or "fallacy" together anywhere on the same page, or within two pages of each other.

It's not quite blatant enough for a {{db-hoax}}, I don't think, nor an A11, but at this point I just want rid of it since I've wasted quite enough time on this nonsense, and every time I look there's more of it, even though their last edit is like a month ago. (Dunno if it counts as G15, I've never used it yet)

If someone wants to rewrite it instead, or redirect it to either Magical thinking (which has some use that's WP:PTM but maybe close enough to be useful idk) or David Westheimer (who wrote a book called The Magic Fallacy about, to quote a random PhD thesis, an adolescent's awakening to sex and coming to disaster because of the evil and neglect of the adults who make up his world. Might have enough reviews to be notable, also idk) be my guest, I don't strongly prefer a delete and redirect over a plain redirect but I do want to TNT this stuff if no reason is given to keep it because who knows what else the LLM put in there? Alpha3031 (t • c) 09:36, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Logic, Philosophy, and Economics. Alpha3031 (t • c) 09:36, 5 November 2025 (UTC)
• Delete AI slop that completely misrepresents its sources. We shouldn't waste any more time on articles like this. Bulldoze it. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 11:53, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

  Can you elucidate which sources are misrepresented and how? I believe the neuroscience papers speak for themselves, as the conclusions are directly in the abstract, and the only citations beyond mainstream economics writers is on the history of the Jews, which is clearly represented correctly as facing persecution and stigmas as being magical sorcerer's throughout the medieval ages. Follynomics (talk) 15:19, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

• Delete. No indication that this term is used in the way the article has described in Hayek's books. (I'd also be OK with a redirect to David Westheimer - an IA search finds enough reliable coverage of the book and play The Magic Fallacy to suggest that it's probably notable in its own right - but search should find that page anyway.) Adam Sampson (talk) 12:02, 5 November 2025 (UTC)
• Delete: The term exists , but it's nothing related to what's discussed here. If this was done using an LLM, that's also not helping the situation, but I can't prove it was or wasn't made with an LLM; the sourcing I do find doesn't support what's written in this version of the article. Oaktree b (talk) 14:29, 5 November 2025 (UTC)
• Delete When both Google Scholar and JSTOR find zero hits for the combination of "magic fallacy" and "hayek", that's a pretty good sign that the whole thing is slop. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 02:08, 6 November 2025 (UTC)
• Comment: The phrase “magic fallacy” does not appear verbatim in The Fatal Conceit; my earlier use was a label summarizing Hayek’s discussion of superstition toward abstraction in money (see pp. 100–105). Hayek at length criticizes what he saw as a quasi-mystical distrust of abstract institutions, describing moral prejudice against “pecuniary considerations” as a kind of superstitious misunderstanding of spontaneous order, a theme that can reasonably be translated into English as a “magic fallacy,” though he never used that exact phrase. Whether it is more beneficial to stick with his original wording which translates directly as 'a mystical conceptual error' and how that translates best in terms of meaning and ease of reading in prose, is open for discussion. The quoted material itself is genuine and verifiable, and I see no one is actually presenting any quotes or citations as incorrect besides just pontificating that it "misrepresents" something. Also, the use of em-dashes alone should hardly be sufficient to say its all ai. That the Mises institute uploaded the entire PDF in 2021, and is cited as such, should not be confused for the publication of the book itself. I support rewording or merging the page to preserve the sourced discussion rather than deletion. — Follynomics (talk) 14:14, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

  I am not sure if you are aware of this, but The Fatal Conceit is originally written in English. You can tell this by going to the page, looking at the infobox where it says "Language", and seeing how it says "English". At this point, you will shortly exhaust my willingness to assume this isn't intentional. Alpha3031 (t • c) 15:30, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

  I appreciate the note. To clarify, I read The Fatal Conceit in the German edition (Die verhängnisvolle Anmaßung, Mohr Siebeck, 1996), where Hayek’s discussion of superstition toward abstraction and money uses phrasing such as “mystischer Irrtum” and “magisches Denken” to describe this prejudice. Brian Caplan and William Bartley’s posthumous English edition employs expressions like “mythical misapprehension,” which in my understanding are not idiomatic in English, and do not sound native. “Magic fallacy” is a more natural rendering of the same conceptual idea for a contemporary English reader.

  Regardless of the exact phrasing, the theme: a mystical or superstitious misunderstanding of money and markets, is plainly present in the text and not original research or “AI-generated misrepresentation.” My intention has only been to clarify Hayek’s meaning and preserve the sourced discussion, not to debate terminology. I’m open to rewording for clarity, but the underlying material is verifiable and textually accurate. Let us not move the goalpost to score dunks. Follynomics (talk) 17:52, 10 November 2025 (UTC)

  Neither of those German terms appear in the edition of the book you claim they appear in. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 16:43, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

Delete - the term seems to be OR to describe a variety of comments that Hayek made in The Fatal Conceit. This is supported by the fact that the article author states that "magical fallacy" does not appear in English editions of the book. On the claim that the German terms mystischer Irrtum (mystical error) and magisches Denken (magical thinking) appear in the 1996 Mohr Siebeck translation of the book, neither term appears in the book. mystischer doesn't appear at all, magisches doesn't appear at all. Irrtum appears by itself or as parts of other words 17 times (pages 3, 9, 17, 18, 21, 35, 63, 78, 79, 128, 167, 172, 186) this is not surprising considering it is the word for "error". Denken then appears 41 times, again not surprising as it is the word for "thinking". But neither of these common words appear with qualifiers or in sentences that suggest magical fallacy as their meaning, nor mystischer Irrtum, nor magisches Denken.

As others have pointed to, the structure of the article reads as an LLM output, which when combined with the reference errors (see LLM hallucinations) would suggest this is an unchecked output from some such LLM. Though as the author of the article argues it is not, this does not change the issues with the references, or the later claims that actually the term comes from a German translation of the book, where the two terms suggested as being in equivalence magical fallacy do not actually appear in the book at all. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 21:41, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

• Delete. The OP has admitted not accessing the sources and doesn't know where the term "magic fallacy" comes from. Whether this is AI slop or a fever dream, it's invented. Fences&Windows 00:34, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Delete everyone above has summarized what I have to say on this. Demolish it!!! Aesurias (talk) 00:37, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.