I think this might possibly be explained if they looked at it in reverse. Not "how likely is it that somebody with this description would be A-F", but "how likely is it that somebody who's A-F would fit this description".
When I answered it I started out by guessing how many doctors there were relative to accountants -- I thought fewer -- and how many architects there were relative to doctors -- much fewer. If there just aren't many architects out there than it would take a whole lot of selection for somebody to be more likely to be one.
But if you look at it the other way around then the number of architects is irrelevant. If you ask how likely is it an architect would fit that description, you don't care how many architects there are.
So it might seem unlikely that a jazz hobbyist would be unimaginative and lifeless. But more likely if he's also an accountant.
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
When they taught me about the scientific method in high school, the last step was "go back to the beginning and repeat." There was also a lot about theories replacing other theories and then being replaced later, new technologies leading to new measurements, and new ideas leading to big debates.
I don't remember if they explicitly said, "You can do science right and still get the wrong answer," but it was very strongly (and logically) implied.
I don't know what you were taught, but I expect it was something similar.
All this "emotional understanding" stuff sounds like your personal problem. I don't mean that it isn't important or that I don't have sympathy for any pain you suffered. I just think it's an emotion issue, not a science issue.
I understand the point you're raising, because it caught me for a while, but I think I also see the remaining downfall of science. Its not that science leads you to the wrong thing, but that it cannot lead you to the right one. You never know if your experiments actually brought you to the right conclusion - it is entirely possible to be utterly wrong, and complete scientific, for generations and centuries.
Not only this, but you can be obviously wrong. We look at people trusting in spontaneous generation, or a spirit theory of disease, and mock them - rightfully. They took "reasonable" explanations of ideas, tested them as best they could, and ended up with unreasonable confidence in utterly illogical ideas. Science has no step in which you say "and is this idea logically reasonable", and that step is unattainable even if you add it. Science offers two things - gradual improvement, and safety from being wrong with certainty. The first is a weak reward - there is no schedule to science, and by practicing it there's a reasonable chance that you'll go your entire life with major problems with your worldview. The second is hollow - you are defended from taking a wrong idea and saying "this is true" only inasmuch as science deprives you of any certainty. You are offered a qualifier to say, not a change in your ideas.