Index > Course > 2021-04-29: Representative Thinking
Administrative Stuff:
“Characteristics access schemas, which access other characteristics”
When the textbook was written, Marijuana was illegal.
A large number of hard drug users started with marijuana. This sounds like an argument against marijuana. But, the question we should be asking is how many marijuana users go on to hard drugs. This percentage is very low, since the population sizes are so vastly different.
Many CEOs had pets as children. But how many children with pets go on to be CEOs? This is not a good predictor. CEOs likely come from upper-middle class families, which are inherently more likely to have pets, and also probably better predicts CEO likelyhood. You could easily write an article on how toothbrushing or new bicycles makes people CEOs.
Any process that is particularly random will tend to produce results that are closer to the average.
A basketball player that does exceedingly well in one game, is likely to see a performance decrease in their next game (relative to the first).
Exceedingly tall parents will likely have children that are shorter than they are (even if the children are still taller than average).
Estimation is based on experience and memory, but these are not always good representations of fact.
What percentage of homeless people have mental issues? While this number is “large”, it is much smaller than most think, as mentally ill homeless people are easier to remember - they stand out more in your mind.
What are Americans like? Loud, rude, and opinionated. This isn’t quite right - Americans that are easy to remember are loud, rude, and opinionated. Most Americans are pretty chill.
What percentage of member states of the united nations come from the continent of Africa?
In the room where this was asked, a wheel with numbers from zero to 100 was spun. It was completely irrelevant to the question, and its outcome was completely random.
Participants answered the question with a guess up to 25% higher when the number on the wheel was high.
We’ve learned some powerful tools.
These tools have limits.
In the real world, people will mis-use and mis-communicate these tools (Sometimes intentionally).