army1987 comments on On manipulating others - Less Wrong

-4 Post author: Jonii 16 June 2013 05:44PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 22 June 2013 06:29:23PM *  -1 points [-]

If "ey needs to figure out how to be friends with her" AND "there is evidently a significant level of impotent sexual interest involved that is already creating relationship drama" AND "she is an accountant" THEN odds are there are other people who would make better friends than her.

Huh? The conjunction fallacy doesn't apply to the right of the pipe -- whereas P(AB|C) cannot possibly be greater than P(A|C), P(C|DE) can be less than, equal to, or greater than P(C|D). Am I missing something?

(In this particular example, I'd guess (with low confidence) that for A=“there are other people who would make better friends than her”, B=“ey needs to figure out how to be friends with her”, C=“there is evidently a significant level of impotent sexual interest involved that is already creating relationship drama”, and D=“she is an accountant”, P(A|BCD) is slightly but not terribly lower than P(A|BC), by a reasoning that would be politically incorrect to fully explain but involves, among other things, looking at where “Accounting occs” are on this chart and wild-ass extrapolation from my personal experiences. :-))

Comment author: wedrifid 22 June 2013 06:42:23PM 1 point [-]

The conjunction fallacy doesn't apply to the right of the pipe

The intended meaning of the link was "generalised lesson of reasoning with conjunctions". Since it is indeed possible to reformulate the message from the "IF THEN" format to probability assignments I can see how this could be misleading.

(I removed the link and now endorse the unadorned text.)