they got the answer, but didn’t feel like “oh, I had a bias,” they just felt like it was a trick question.
I haven’t tried the triplet game on anyone yet, but this is the reaction I generally get in response to similar problems. In my (entirely anecdotal) experience, people are unable or unwilling to view rationality as a generally applicable principle. Instead, they treat it as a one-off tool that was designed to apply to a narrow set of specific problems.
“For example”—people would say—“you could use rationality to get a better price on your mortgage, or to demonstrate that Wiccans can’t really affect reality through spells. But you couldn’t use it to determine whether your homeopathic remedy really works, or whether your aunt Helga really does have prophetic dreams, or whether Christians can affect reality through prayer. These questions are altogether different from mortgage/Wicca/whatever questions, as everyone knows”.
I don’t think this kind of cognitive bias can be defeated by a 30-second pitch. In fact, I doubt it can be defeated at all.
I haven’t tried the triplet game on anyone yet, but this is the reaction I generally get in response to similar problems. In my (entirely anecdotal) experience, people are unable or unwilling to view rationality as a generally applicable principle. Instead, they treat it as a one-off tool that was designed to apply to a narrow set of specific problems.
“For example”—people would say—“you could use rationality to get a better price on your mortgage, or to demonstrate that Wiccans can’t really affect reality through spells. But you couldn’t use it to determine whether your homeopathic remedy really works, or whether your aunt Helga really does have prophetic dreams, or whether Christians can affect reality through prayer. These questions are altogether different from mortgage/Wicca/whatever questions, as everyone knows”.
I don’t think this kind of cognitive bias can be defeated by a 30-second pitch. In fact, I doubt it can be defeated at all.