The cousin's ceiling fan

A man in Qena walks into an electrical shop to buy a ceiling fan and rejects the best-selling one before the shopkeeper has finished his sentence.

His cousin bought that make. It wobbled, then it hummed, then one evening it stopped. That is the whole case, and he states it as fact.

The shopkeeper has better information. He has sold hundreds of them and can count the returns on one hand. He could show the warranty card, the motor, the receipts. None of it will matter, and he knows it, because he has had this conversation before.

Ask the man what it would take to change his mind and the honest answer is not a figure. It is a newer story, closer to home and more vivid than the cousin's. A neighbour whose fan of the same make has turned through ten summers without a sound. A brother who fitted one last month and will not stop praising it. A story that belongs to his family and his street, told by someone he would sit down to eat with.

For almost all of human history this is how decisions were made: by the last thing that happened to someone we know. Counting carefully and comparing many cases is a young habit, and it sits on top of the old one rather than replacing it.

So we nod at the numbers and buy on the anecdote. Shoppers do it, shopkeepers do it, and so do the people who decide what the factory makes next.

One cousin's fan is not evidence. It only feels like evidence, and in the shop, the feeling usually wins.