The social dynamics that you point to in your John-Linda anecdote seem to depend on the fact that John knows what happened with Linda. This suggests that these social dynamics would not apply to questions about the future, where the question was coming from someone who couldn’t know what was going to happen.
Some studies have looked for the conjunction fallacy in predictions about the future, and they’ve found it there too. One example which was mentioned in the post that you linked is the forecast about a breakdown of US-Soviet relations. Here’s a more detailed description of the study from a an earlier post in that sequence:
Another experiment from Tversky and Kahneman (1983) was conducted at the Second International Congress on Forecasting in July of 1982. The experimental subjects were 115 professional analysts, employed by industry, universities, or research institutes. Two different experimental groups were respectively asked to rate the probability of two different statements, each group seeing only one statement:
1. “A complete suspension of diplomatic relations between the USA and the Soviet Union, sometime in 1983.”
2. “A Russian invasion of Poland, and a complete suspension of diplomatic relations between the USA and the Soviet Union, sometime in 1983.”
Estimates of probability were low for both statements, but significantly lower for the first group than the second (p < .01 by Mann-Whitney). Since each experimental group only saw one statement, there is no possibility that the first group interpreted (1) to mean “suspension but no invasion”.
The social dynamics that you point to in your John-Linda anecdote seem to depend on the fact that John knows what happened with Linda. This suggests that these social dynamics would not apply to questions about the future, where the question was coming from someone who couldn’t know what was going to happen.
Some studies have looked for the conjunction fallacy in predictions about the future, and they’ve found it there too. One example which was mentioned in the post that you linked is the forecast about a breakdown of US-Soviet relations. Here’s a more detailed description of the study from a an earlier post in that sequence: