I find EY’s main points very convincing and helpful. After reading this and the follow-on thread, my only nit is that using the suspension-of-relations question as one of the examples seems pedagogically odd, because perfectly rational (OK, bounded-rational but still rational) behavior could have led to the observed results in that case.
The rational behavior that could have led to the observed results is that participants in the second group, having been reminded of the “invade Poland” scenario, naturally thought more carefully about the likelihood of suc... (read more)
I agree. This notion of question 2 providing a plausible cause that might lead to suspension v. question 1 where the test subject has to conceive of their own cause is a bias, but a different type of bias, not a conjunction fallacy. There could be (and possibly have been) ways to construct the test to control for this. For example, there are 3 test groups where 1 and 2 are the same and for the third, the two events are asked independently: What are the probabilities of each event:
A. That USSR invades Poland, or B. That US suspends relations
I find EY’s main points very convincing and helpful. After reading this and the follow-on thread, my only nit is that using the suspension-of-relations question as one of the examples seems pedagogically odd, because perfectly rational (OK, bounded-rational but still rational) behavior could have led to the observed results in that case.
The rational behavior that could have led to the observed results is that participants in the second group, having been reminded of the “invade Poland” scenario, naturally thought more carefully about the likelihood of suc... (read more)