From: Kaj Sotala (xuenay@sci.fi)
Date: Thu May 04 2006 - 11:10:48 MDT
Martin Striz wrote:
> > Would quite likely be interpreted as
> >
> > Which of the following is more probable:
> > 1) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
> > 2) Linda is a bank teller and NOT active in the feminist movement.
> Except that, even if you interpret 2) to mean "Linda is a bank teller
> and NOT active in the feminist movement," it is still more likely than
> 1), since far more people are not involved in the feminist movement
> than those who are, and people know that.
If you look at everyone, then most aren't involved in the feminist
movement, no. But we're not considering the probability of a random
person being active in the feminist movement, we're considering the
probability of a philosophy major who was deeply concerned with issues
of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in
anti-nuclear demonstrations, being active in the feminist movement. It's
not really all *that* far-fetched to assume that those things correlate
enough with feminist activity to make it more likely that she's active
in the movement than not - and that's what intuition would suggest, too.
While I'm sure there is more research to conclusively show that people
do suffer from a fallacy of this sort, this particular example seems
rather poorly chosen.
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