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An interesting thing about the Wason selection task is that people do a lot better when given a task that requires the exact same reasoning but involves social

by tzs 2y ago

An interesting thing about the Wason selection task is that people do a lot better when given a task that requires the exact same reasoning but involves social situations. For example if the cards have on one side either a picture of a mug of beer or a picture of a can of soda, and the other side have a number representing the age of a person drinking that drink, and the rule they are supposed to be checking is that if someone is drinking beer they have to be at least 21 then 75% of people correctly figure out that they need to check the other side of the cards showing beer and the cards showing an age under 21. Here's Wikipedia's article on the Wason selection task [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task

penteract 2y ago
I'm not sure it's true to say that that task requires the exact same reasoning - There are various logically equivalent ways of phrasing the rule such as "No card has a D on one side and a number other than 3 on the other" which make the problem easier. Since the rule "you can't drink alcohol if you're underage" is one people are familiar with, they aren't being asked to make the same logical deduction they do in the letters and numbers question. I'd go further and speculate that they aren't all reading the question carefully - if you replaced the rule by "if someone is over 21 they are drinking beer", how many people would get it wrong?
etangent 2y ago
It seems to me that the selection task is tricky because it concerns interpretation of language. "Every card that has a D on one side has a 3 on the other" makes a claim: that there is a directional dependency "D => 3" but it makes no claim that "3 => D". However the absence of the latter claim is not stated explicitly, it is supposed to be inferred from the original statement. The English language seems to lack a way to encode unambiguously the "A => B" relationship. So it should not be surprising that students used to looking out for language pitfalls when checking proofs also happen to be the students who do better on this task.
- two_handfuls 2y ago
  > The English language seems to lack a way to encode unambiguously the "A => B" It doesn’t: “If A then B” encodes it unambiguously. It’s just that as you said, many people don’t think hard about the difference between this and similar-but-different concepts like “B only if A”. It’s not the language itself, it’s the way people use the language and think about what it says (or in this case, don’t).
  - BoiledCabbage 2y ago
    > It doesn’t: “If A then B” encodes it unambiguously. No, actually it doesn't > Some authors have argued that participants do not read "if... then..." as the material conditional, since the natural language conditional is not the material conditional. > It’s just that as you said, many people don’t think hard about the difference between this and similar-but-different concepts like “B only if A”. While a nice simplistic answer it's likely not what's going on here. There is more here than "People just aren't good at thinking". If your statement were true, then you'd be forced to say that the following statement is also obviously true: "If the Nazis won World War II, then everybody would be happy" The fact that you can rightfully say that sentence is false, means that your comment above about implication and "if" statements is wrong.[1] Language is more complex then you're giving it credit. [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxes_of_material_implication https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxes_of_material_implic...
    - hardlianotion 2y ago
      For what it's worth, I think that the problem lies in the solution feeling "obvious" and people being a little lazy - I don't think the problem lies with inability. I also think that if A then B is unambiguous, the counter that languages are different doesn't really fit with what I think I observe in the wild. For the full house, I also fail to see how that means I must accept that your example statement is obviously true.
DeathArrow 2y ago
I just failed the test. :) The only thing that this teaches me is to pay more attention before attempting to solve a problem.

by tzs 2y ago

penteract 2y ago

I'm not sure it's true to say that that task requires the exact same reasoning - There are various logically equivalent ways of phrasing the rule such as "No card has a D on one side and a number other than 3 on the other" which make the problem easier. Since the rule "you can't drink alcohol if you're underage" is one people are familiar with, they aren't being asked to make the same logical deduction they do in the letters and numbers question. I'd go further and speculate that they aren't all reading the question carefully - if you replaced the rule by "if someone is over 21 they are drinking beer", how many people would get it wrong?

etangent 2y ago

It seems to me that the selection task is tricky because it concerns interpretation of language. "Every card that has a D on one side has a 3 on the other" makes a claim: that there is a directional dependency "D => 3" but it makes no claim that "3 => D". However the absence of the latter claim is not stated explicitly, it is supposed to be inferred from the original statement. The English language seems to lack a way to encode unambiguously the "A => B" relationship. So it should not be surprising that students used to looking out for language pitfalls when checking proofs also happen to be the students who do better on this task.

two_handfuls 2y ago
> The English language seems to lack a way to encode unambiguously the "A => B" It doesn’t: “If A then B” encodes it unambiguously. It’s just that as you said, many people don’t think hard about the difference between this and similar-but-different concepts like “B only if A”. It’s not the language itself, it’s the way people use the language and think about what it says (or in this case, don’t).
- BoiledCabbage 2y ago
  > It doesn’t: “If A then B” encodes it unambiguously. No, actually it doesn't > Some authors have argued that participants do not read "if... then..." as the material conditional, since the natural language conditional is not the material conditional. > It’s just that as you said, many people don’t think hard about the difference between this and similar-but-different concepts like “B only if A”. While a nice simplistic answer it's likely not what's going on here. There is more here than "People just aren't good at thinking". If your statement were true, then you'd be forced to say that the following statement is also obviously true: "If the Nazis won World War II, then everybody would be happy" The fact that you can rightfully say that sentence is false, means that your comment above about implication and "if" statements is wrong.[1] Language is more complex then you're giving it credit. [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxes_of_material_implication https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxes_of_material_implic...
  - hardlianotion 2y ago
    For what it's worth, I think that the problem lies in the solution feeling "obvious" and people being a little lazy - I don't think the problem lies with inability. I also think that if A then B is unambiguous, the counter that languages are different doesn't really fit with what I think I observe in the wild. For the full house, I also fail to see how that means I must accept that your example statement is obviously true.

DeathArrow 2y ago

I just failed the test. :) The only thing that this teaches me is to pay more attention before attempting to solve a problem.