A thought pattern that has haunted me for a while now is a tendency to unconsciously anthropomorphize phenomena. The pervasiveness of this category of false premises came to my attention as I tried to understand the politics of the Great War in Europe. It is a tendency that has increasingly come to bother me, both when trying to think for myself, and when I speak with and listen to others. It is strange that such a poor way to analyze the behavior of complex systems, including but not exclusively the decision making processes of groups of people, can appear so convenient and satisfying.