Fascinating Bryan! I do wonder about some specific differences between Kahneman & Tversky and your experiment, though...
K&T forced on the same group of people two choices which clearly prove the fallacy: since p(bank teller) = p(bank teller & feminist) + p(bank teller & non-feminist), there's no way that p(bank teller & feminist) > p(ban…
Fascinating Bryan! I do wonder about some specific differences between Kahneman & Tversky and your experiment, though...
K&T forced on the same group of people two choices which clearly prove the fallacy: since p(bank teller) = p(bank teller & feminist) + p(bank teller & non-feminist), there's no way that p(bank teller & feminist) > p(bank teller)
In your question there's the possibility that the responders are different (plus all other weird human factors such as answering before or after lunch etc), but more interesting to me is the looseness of language and associated interpretations.
Let's say that in general people don't interpret "inappropriate things" as "all and any inappropriate things, no matter which type," and/or also that "always" is not interpreted as "absolute 100% with no rounding", but instead something like "95% of the time or above"
Then if "sexual inappropriate things" is seen as a small-size sub-segment of "inappropriate things" with stricter control agreement whereas "non-sexual inappropriate things" is a much-larger sub-segment with much looser censorship support, that might provide an alternative logical explanation. (edit: by way of weighted averages)
Not that I think that's the most likely reasoning path! Probably the emotional / gut-feeling path is the winning explanation. But just something to consider.
Love reading your blog, thanks for the continuing intellectual challenges!
You make some great points. I'm reminded of a scene in the US version of The Office.
G: "What kind of music are you into?"
P: "Oh, I like all kinds."
G: "Really, all kinds? So you like songs of hate written by the white knights of the Ku Klux Klan?"
You'd have to be pretty silly to think Gabe is making a valid logical deduction from Peter's answer, rather than wilfully misrepresenting what was said.
Thirded. I can very easily imagine folks that are prudish or hyper-concerned about sex/gender or harassment being against *specific* “inappropriate things”, but possibly not being concerned about others. That isn’t probative, but it offers a way out that doesn’t point to errors in statistical thinking.
As a counter to the counter, though, why would you mentally list anything as “inappropriate” if you don’t care about it? The bigger issue is the imprecision and the variability in definitions that it allows.
Also note that the first question naturally suggests a law that would impose penalties on the inappropriate speaker. Because of sexual harassment law the second question naturally suggests laws that demand the buisness not tolerate employees being sexually inappropriate.
While I suspect Bryan sees those similarly many people see the later as substantially less coercive.
Fascinating Bryan! I do wonder about some specific differences between Kahneman & Tversky and your experiment, though...
K&T forced on the same group of people two choices which clearly prove the fallacy: since p(bank teller) = p(bank teller & feminist) + p(bank teller & non-feminist), there's no way that p(bank teller & feminist) > p(bank teller)
In your question there's the possibility that the responders are different (plus all other weird human factors such as answering before or after lunch etc), but more interesting to me is the looseness of language and associated interpretations.
Let's say that in general people don't interpret "inappropriate things" as "all and any inappropriate things, no matter which type," and/or also that "always" is not interpreted as "absolute 100% with no rounding", but instead something like "95% of the time or above"
Then if "sexual inappropriate things" is seen as a small-size sub-segment of "inappropriate things" with stricter control agreement whereas "non-sexual inappropriate things" is a much-larger sub-segment with much looser censorship support, that might provide an alternative logical explanation. (edit: by way of weighted averages)
Not that I think that's the most likely reasoning path! Probably the emotional / gut-feeling path is the winning explanation. But just something to consider.
Love reading your blog, thanks for the continuing intellectual challenges!
You make some great points. I'm reminded of a scene in the US version of The Office.
G: "What kind of music are you into?"
P: "Oh, I like all kinds."
G: "Really, all kinds? So you like songs of hate written by the white knights of the Ku Klux Klan?"
You'd have to be pretty silly to think Gabe is making a valid logical deduction from Peter's answer, rather than wilfully misrepresenting what was said.
Great points! I had the same feeling about “inappropriate things.”
Thirded. I can very easily imagine folks that are prudish or hyper-concerned about sex/gender or harassment being against *specific* “inappropriate things”, but possibly not being concerned about others. That isn’t probative, but it offers a way out that doesn’t point to errors in statistical thinking.
As a counter to the counter, though, why would you mentally list anything as “inappropriate” if you don’t care about it? The bigger issue is the imprecision and the variability in definitions that it allows.
Also note that the first question naturally suggests a law that would impose penalties on the inappropriate speaker. Because of sexual harassment law the second question naturally suggests laws that demand the buisness not tolerate employees being sexually inappropriate.
While I suspect Bryan sees those similarly many people see the later as substantially less coercive.