{"id":608,"date":"2009-11-08T05:26:21","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T05:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/?p=608"},"modified":"2009-11-08T05:26:21","modified_gmt":"2009-11-08T05:26:21","slug":"are-you-a-cognitive-miser-cosmic-variance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/are-you-a-cognitive-miser-cosmic-variance.php","title":{"rendered":"Are You a Cognitive Miser? | Cosmic Variance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?<\/p><blockquote><p>A) Yes.<\/p><p>B) No.<\/p><p>C) Cannot be determined.<\/p><\/blockquote><p><span><\/span>This is from this month&rsquo;s <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/sciammind\/?contents=2009-11\"><em>Scientific American<\/em><\/a> &mdash; article unfortunately <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=rational-and-irrational-thought\">costs money<\/a>. It&rsquo;s about &ldquo;dysrationalia,&rdquo; which is what happens when people with nominally high IQ&rsquo;s end up thinking irrationally. A phenomenon I&rsquo;m sure we&rsquo;ve all encountered, especially in certain corners of the blogosphere.<\/p><p>And the answer is the first option. But over 80 percent of people choose the third option. Here&rsquo;s the solution: the puzzle doesn&rsquo;t say whether Anne is married or not, but she either is or she isn&rsquo;t. If Anne is married, she&rsquo;s looking at George, so the answer is &ldquo;yes&rdquo;; if she&rsquo;s unmarried, Jack is looking at her, so the answer is still &ldquo;yes.&rdquo; The underlying reason why smart people get the wrong answer is (according to the article) that they simply don&rsquo;t take the time to go carefully through all of the possibilities, instead taking the easiest inference. The patience required to go through all the possibilities doesn&rsquo;t correlate very well with intelligence.<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/wI70xfs7gwHHjj4Kk2ywcMXp8Qo\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/9d750_di\" border=\"0\" ismap style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/wI70xfs7gwHHjj4Kk2ywcMXp8Qo\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/9d750_di\" border=\"0\" ismap style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/9d750_rIcd2L7aDpY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p><p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/A1FguWT9SXO2LEkhbSDeFCnULqY\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/9d750_di\" border=\"0\" ismap style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/A1FguWT9SXO2LEkhbSDeFCnULqY\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/9d750_di\" border=\"0\" ismap style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/9d750_VtujsrN8DoA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?A) Yes.B) No.C) Cannot be determined.This is from this month&rsquo;s Scientific American &mdash; article &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/are-you-a-cognitive-miser-cosmic-variance.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}