Most examples of collider bias struck me as unintuitive, and it seems very unlikely that I’m worse than average at causal reasoning.
Is that because they are intrinsically unintuitive, or because they are expressed in an unfamiliar way? I would guess that if one starts by explaining the mono case, then points out how it is analogous to the formal structure (the way Zack did and your quoted Wikipedia example did), then it would be relatively easily for people to get. Whereas if there’s an explanation that e.g. starts off from a very mathematical and formal presentation, then it’s harder to connect with what you already know intuitively.
then why haven’t I ever heard someone answer the complaints of “women like bad boys” by (informally) explaining collider bias?
Is that an example of collider bias? If it were, then one would expect to also hear similar complaints about women’s (or for that matter men’s) preference for many other traits that are perceived negatively, e.g. “women like guys without money” or “men like unattractive women”. The fact that it’s “bad boys” that gets singled out in particular suggests that there is actually something special about that trait, and the standard explanations (e.g. that confidence is attractive and that badness correlates with confidence) seem reasonable to me.
Is that because they are intrinsically unintuitive, or because they are expressed in an unfamiliar way? I would guess that if one starts by explaining the mono case, then points out how it is analogous to the formal structure (the way Zack did and your quoted Wikipedia example did), then it would be relatively easily for people to get. Whereas if there’s an explanation that e.g. starts off from a very mathematical and formal presentation, then it’s harder to connect with what you already know intuitively.
Is that an example of collider bias? If it were, then one would expect to also hear similar complaints about women’s (or for that matter men’s) preference for many other traits that are perceived negatively, e.g. “women like guys without money” or “men like unattractive women”. The fact that it’s “bad boys” that gets singled out in particular suggests that there is actually something special about that trait, and the standard explanations (e.g. that confidence is attractive and that badness correlates with confidence) seem reasonable to me.