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> the logical fallacy “X% of our floor workers become managers therefore if you join you have an X% chance of a promotion every year" Aside from the problem of
by samhw 4y ago
> the logical fallacy “X% of our floor workers become managers therefore if you join you have an X% chance of a promotion every year"
Aside from the problem of induction, why would this be a fallacy? (I'm assuming you meant to implicitly apply the 'each year' modifier to both or neither, because otherwise it would be such a boring and obvious fallacy that I'm pretty sure that's not what you meant.)
- boppo1 4y agoIt omits "with degrees" after "floor workers".
- btown 4y agoYep, a population statistic isn’t predictive for an individual if the population is heterogeneous. And in this case, designed to be heterogeneous.
- samhw 4y agoAh, right, thanks! That wasn't actually part of the statement they quoted (/posed within quotation marks), whence my confusion. Edit: Or is the point that 20% of floor workers in total do become managers, but that's precisely (or very strongly correlatedly) the subset containing those who have degrees? If so, that makes a lot more sense. I don't really think it's fair to describe as a fallacy, though - it's a function of the philosophy of probability, which doesn't describe the world but our knowledge of it. You could make an analogous statement about roulette wheels, with perfect knowledge of their physics.