4 ms·
At least from the example given[1], the test appears to be about specific examples, not about a general decline. Merely having a 77 year old and a 22 year old
by magicalist 2y ago
At least from the example given[1], the test appears to be about specific examples, not about a general decline.
Merely having a 77 year old and a 22 year old in a room and asking which of them is forgetful seems pretty clearly ambiguous to me, and preferring it to answer that there's not enough information instead of making assumptions seems like a better answer (forgetful of what? in what way?).
[1] At the first book club meeting, all the new members met the two organizers – one was a 78-YEAR-OLD , and the other a 22-YEAR-OLD. Who was forgetful? With possible answers "The 78-year-old", "The 22-year-old" or "Unknown"
- UltraSane 2y agoIt is perfectly reasonable to assume a 78 year old will have a worse memory than a 22 year old all else being equal.
- magicalist 2y agoWhy would you assume all else is equal? This is exactly why its ambiguous, you have zero data about if all else is equal. If the question is written exactly as stated, "Unknown" is by far the best answer.
- unification_fan 2y agoIf it weren't for biases and mental shortcuts we would still be busy exploring the search space of how to knap rocks together. And besides, ternary logic is pretty boring. It's just one more option compared to binary logic. Also it doesn't exist in the real world. Try probabilistic logic instead! To me, these answers are framed incorrectly. I don't think in terms of "which answers are correct" but in terms of "what's the probability of each answer being correct?" And the overall distribution of those probabilities comes from all my priors about the situation. One such prior is that age is positively correlated with forgetfulness. It's something that I know because I see it every day, and therefore I internalized it as true. I know it's not true every single time, but it may as well be. It's a heuristic, and a very good one: the chance that I'll be wrong if I say that the 77 year old is forgetful is extremely low. So I feel very confident in giving that answer from a risk/reward perspective.
- UltraSane 2y ago"what's the probability distribution of each answer being correct?" Being able to reason like this is almost a superpower. It is so effective it makes a lot of arguments seem silly.
- throwE472745 2y agoAnd again, you are answering an assumption not the actual question asked.
- UltraSane 2y agoThis is basic Bayesian reasoning.