ScottL comments on An overview of the mental model theory - Less Wrong

11 Post author: ScottL 17 August 2015 01:18PM

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Comment author: alicey 17 August 2015 03:39:16PM *  4 points [-]

Reading this was a bit annoying:

Only one statement about a hand of cards is true:

  • There is a King or Ace or both.

  • There is a Queen or Ace or both.

Which is more likely, King or Ace?

... The majority of people respond that the Ace is more likely to occur, but this is logically incorrect.

It is just communicating badly https://xkcd.com/169/ . In a common parse, Ace is more likely to occur. It would be more likely to be parsed as you intended if you had said

Only one of the following premises is true about a particular hand of cards:

(like you did on the next question!)

Comment author: ScottL 18 August 2015 01:53:20AM *  0 points [-]

Thanks for the advice. It was a mistake. I have updated it to: "Only one of the following premises is true about a particular hand of cards".

Comment author: selylindi 01 September 2015 07:28:44PM *  0 points [-]

FWIW, I still got the question wrong with the new wording because I interpreted it as "One ... is true [and the other is unknown]" whereas the intended interpretation was "One ... is true [and the other is false]".

In one sense this is a communication failure, because people normally mean the first and not the second. On the other hand, the fact that people normally mean the first proves the point - we usually prefer not to reason based on false statements.

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