Dojan comments on Sneaking in Connotations - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 February 2008 07:41PM

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Comment author: Dojan 06 November 2011 04:39:57AM 2 points [-]

It is very easy to forget where the actual difference is located: Imagine for example that in some group, on average, boys are 5% more interested in science, that is a fairly useless piece of information if the spread within both girls and boys is very large. I belive humans (only featherless ones though), on average, are to quick to try to derive answers from to little data: in the example above, knowing that someone is a boy or girl has no practical bearing on whether they are likely to be scientists: One should conclude "not enough data" instead. Saying to ones brain that something "has this effect but only very weakly" very often lends the effect to much weight.