3 ms·
I feel like a lot of the time people's mathematically incorrect intuitions are exactly right if you were asking a slightly different question. What's abnormal i
by ajkjk 3y ago
I feel like a lot of the time people's mathematically incorrect intuitions are exactly right if you were asking a slightly different question. What's abnormal is the person who's evaluating their intuition by asking tricky questions that aren't very compatible with how human thinking works. Notably nobody would ask questions in real life the way these trick questions are asked. I like the notion that the problem is in the asker!
Like the question in the article whether a person is more likely to be a banker or (banker and feminist). Probability says the former is a mathematical uncertainty. The human intuition gets it wrong but it's solving a different question, because the category of 'banker' is a type of person than (banker and feminist). The mathematically wrong answer that intuition gives is expressing which category makes more sense for the person, and it's right about that-- it is just not an answer that should be interpreted as a probability.
The human brain doesn't work on probabilities, but it will try to answer questions of them anyway, misapplying it's otherwise effective circuitry instead.
- ajkjk 3y agoIncidentally for the bat and ball problem the way it feels to not mess it up is to install a sort of 'trap' that says 'this is a trick question, kick out to mathematical thinking instead'. Which works but it's not the same as making it intuitive.