Mind Projection Fallacy
An informal fallacy where someone thinks that the way they see the world reflects the way the world really is.
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Origin
Coined by physicist and probability theorist E. T. Jaynes in his writings on Bayesian inference during the 1980s and 1990s. Jaynes argued that much confusion in science and philosophy arises from projecting features of our models onto the world itself. His work was collected posthumously in Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (2003).
Updated February 22, 2026