VAuroch comments on Rationalists Are Less Credulous But Better At Taking Ideas Seriously - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Yvain 21 January 2014 02:18AM

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Comment author: VAuroch 21 January 2014 11:19:07PM -1 points [-]

Their reaction was universally "this is embarrassing, I should've taken that more seriously", not "I didn't know a thing like this could happen/that I could have done something simple to prevent it".

Classic hindsight bias. If you went to a representative sample of similar people who had not recently suffered a backup-requiring event, they would probably think the second version, not the first.

Comment author: Wes_W 22 January 2014 04:12:18AM 1 point [-]

Hindsight bias is almost certainly a component. Plus, I was a friendly member of their in-group, providing free assistance with a major problem, so they had two strong reasons to be extra-agreeable.

Even so, in my experience, your second sentence does not match reality. As in, doing exactly that does not in fact yield responses skewing toward the second option, even among the very non-tech-savvy. Many of them don't know exactly how to set such a thing up (but know they could give a teenager $20 to do it for them, which falls under "trivial inconveniences"), but the idea is not new info to them.

My sample size here is small and demographically/geographically limited, so add as many grains of salt as you see fit.