In this episode, Branden Fitelson, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, joins us to discuss reasoning fallacies. Click here to listen to our conversation with him.
Imagine that you are worried that you have a rare disease for which there is a reliable test. If you take this test and it returns a positive result, how certain should you be that you have the disease?
Or consider the following: Linda was a philosophy student at Berkeley in the 1960’s who fought for social justice and nuclear disarmament. Is it more likely that she is currently a bank teller or a feminist bank teller?
Professor Fitelson provides the answers to these questions, observes the surprising fact that a supermajority of us consistently answer these sorts of questions incorrectly, and offers an illuminating account of why this might be.
Jaime Edwards