When reading a textbook or technical work, I frequently use marginalia to comment on the work. I find it a useful tool to increase reading comprehension, force me to organize my thoughts, and allow me to return to that part of the book years later to use it as a reference. I’m reading through The Sequences, but since it is in digital form I am unable to make use of my usual practice. Instead, I intend to leave several comments such as this in the appropriate discussion threads. I initially was using a word document, but have found it tedious to constantly transfer between computers and devices. If these comments and notifications are objectionable to anyone, I’ll switch back. The FAQ says that it is worthwhile to comment on ancient posts and long-dead threads, so I took that as encouragement. I only have a couple tangential comments on this particular piece, but I expect most future marginalia to generally be much more extensive.
It’s worrying that people will falsely guess P(“Bill plays jazz”) < P(“Bill plays jazz” & “Bill is accountant”). If these were the profiles for two murder suspects, the jury could easily make a very bad judgment call. However, we are evolutionarily wired to be good at social profiling. I suspect that the error here is that people are reading this problem as if it was the type that we are good at. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For example, they might read the problem to mean P(A) < P(A + B), where + indicates “and/or” (logical disjunction). This would also explain why people tend to believe “if A implies B, than B implies A” (that correlation implies causation).
When reading a textbook or technical work, I frequently use marginalia to comment on the work. I find it a useful tool to increase reading comprehension, force me to organize my thoughts, and allow me to return to that part of the book years later to use it as a reference. I’m reading through The Sequences, but since it is in digital form I am unable to make use of my usual practice. Instead, I intend to leave several comments such as this in the appropriate discussion threads. I initially was using a word document, but have found it tedious to constantly transfer between computers and devices. If these comments and notifications are objectionable to anyone, I’ll switch back. The FAQ says that it is worthwhile to comment on ancient posts and long-dead threads, so I took that as encouragement. I only have a couple tangential comments on this particular piece, but I expect most future marginalia to generally be much more extensive.
It’s worrying that people will falsely guess P(“Bill plays jazz”) < P(“Bill plays jazz” & “Bill is accountant”). If these were the profiles for two murder suspects, the jury could easily make a very bad judgment call. However, we are evolutionarily wired to be good at social profiling. I suspect that the error here is that people are reading this problem as if it was the type that we are good at. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For example, they might read the problem to mean P(A) < P(A + B), where + indicates “and/or” (logical disjunction). This would also explain why people tend to believe “if A implies B, than B implies A” (that correlation implies causation).