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TheOtherDave comments on [Infographic] A reminder as to how far the rationality waterline can climb (at least, for the US). - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: Logos01 22 November 2011 12:44PM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 16 January 2012 06:37:57PM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure this quite follows, as it isn't clear that the 14% were guessing randomly... they might have been operating from some systematically wrong model. But I agree that it's likely.

To be fair, I also often wonder whether the people who take these tests are just picking random answers because they aren't at all invested in the test. Back when I was taking neuropsych evaluations after my stroke, there were a number of questions intended to detect malingering; I would like to believe that tests like those cited here have similar "checksum" questions built in and that reported results would take that into account, but in fact I don't.

Comment author: adamisom 16 January 2012 10:56:40PM 0 points [-]

Yeah - good point. I did realize that people probably do operate from a systematically wrong model---why not? But I figured that there are probably at least as many operating from a systematically wrong model that just happens to give them the right answer. I figured that if you were just guessing, with minimal information or reasoning (as opposed to none), it would more likely be biased towards the right answer.