Van Gogh fallacy

A suspect form of argument of the type:

Van Gogh was poor and misunderstood in his lifetime, yet is now recognized as a great artist – I am poor and misunderstood, so I will also eventually be recognized as a great artist.

Another example of this sort of wishful thinking is: “The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and I went to the same primary school – Mick Jagger has since had great success, so I will too.” (see: post hoc ergo propter hoc).

The class of poor, misunderstood, unrecognized people is much, much larger than that of great artists or rock music stars. Sharing some relatively common attribute with, say, a celebrity such as a famous and highly-sought-after, highly-paid film actor has little relation to one’s own greatness or personal success, except in so far as one can derive some degree of personal inspiration from the ‘star’, but in no way guarantees one's own greatness or success.

A variant is used by enterprising folk to sell their self-help ‘road-to-success’ books and materials, in which they say they’ve risen from a poor, crime and drug-ridden neighbourhood to become a multi-millionaire entrepreneur, and that because they have been able to achieve their success using what they say is their very own ‘signature’ philosophy that if one buys their products infused with this philosophy and then strives to live by the instructions in their books, etc., that we too can have such success. Against a background that only a very small proportion of slum-dwellers has the entrepreneur’s life story (anecdotal evidence, base rate) they usually offer little or more likely no credible evidence which demonstrates that the specific methods and ideas contained in their books were the central, critical reason for the ‘self-help guru’s’ success, and if well-applied by purchasers will lead to the attainment of the same level of success.

Consider the parody: “Beethoven had a hangnail and was a great composer, I have a hangnail – so I’ll probably be a great composer.”

Just because one resembles a great or successful person in some unimportant or incidental respect, it does not follow that one resembles them in other, significant respects.

(see also: Fallacy)