The 3D Chess Fallacy
Arising from a desire to see genius where there is none
Washington DC 14 April 2025
The "3D Chess Fallacy" is a cognitive phenomenon wherein people, faced with seemingly irrational or nonsensical situations or ideas, mistakenly ascribe hidden brilliance, strategic depth, and multidimensional thinking to them. This illusion, which defies Occam's Razor—the principle that the simplest explanation is often the most likely one—arises from a complex interplay of cognitive biases, confirmation bias, and the belief that something cannot be as straightforwardly stupid as it appears. Individuals caught in this web of perception may find themselves attributing grand strategies and masterful moves to a series of blunders and miscalculations. The 3D Chess Mirage serves as a cautionary reminder that, in many cases, a spade is just a spade, and the supposed three-dimensional chess game may be nothing more than an elaborate figment of the imagination, arising from a desire to see genius where there is none.
I created this with the assistance of my AI. We workshopped the concept until we got it just right.
The 3-D Chess analogy has an additional layer of humor in this case. How many of us actually believe Trump even knows how to set up a chess board?
I think we're more along the lines of Hanlon's razor. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"