bigjeff5 comments on Conjunction Controversy (Or, How They Nail It Down) - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 September 2007 02:41AM

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Comment author: bigjeff5 04 February 2011 06:47:41PM 1 point [-]

The key mistake was not the probability numbers (though that certainly could be a mistake in real life), it was ranking bank-teller/feminist higher than bank-teller.

I think the point to bear in mind on this is that any time you add two criteria together the probabilities plummet.

When you did it yourself, you should have evaluated the bank teller and feminist part of the BT/F question separately (however you chose to evaluate it), and then examined the likelihood that both would be true. That way you should clearly see that the combination could not possibly have higher probabilities than either individual criteria.

It's certainly a hard thing to do, I'm going to have to look out for this one because I'd wager I do it a ton.