One problem I have with Gigerenzer is that he often seems to be deliberately obtuse by taking philosophical positions that don’t allow for the occurance of errors.
For instance, time and time again he states that, because one-time events don’t have probabilities (in a frequentist interpretation), it’s incoherent to say someone’s confidence judgment is “wrong”. As Kahneman points out, this violates common sense—surely we should consider someone wrong if they say they are 99.99% confident that tomorrow the sun will turn into a chocolate cake.
In another example, Kahneman stresses the importance of doing between-subject experiments in addition to in-subject experiments, since on in-subject experiments subjects are given additional information (the difference between subsequent problems) that could affect the experiment. So, for instance, the Linda problem would be performed between-subject by having one random group assess the probability (or frequency) that Linda is a bank teller, and another random group that she is a bank teller and a feminist, and then comparing the two average probabilities. Gigerenzer’s claim, is that because, in these situations, no INDIVIDUAL subject displays internal inconsistency, this can’t be seen as a bias.
I’m generally a big Gigerenzer fan, but this seems wrongheaded to me.
I’ll go one further. Someone who frequently makes statements like these typically isn’t reasoning at all, but simply rationalizing to justify some belief they have an emotional attachment to. I’d have to take anything else he says with a big grain of salt, because if he’s capable of torturing logic this much on the obvious cases the ones that aren’t obvious are probably even worse.
One problem I have with Gigerenzer is that he often seems to be deliberately obtuse by taking philosophical positions that don’t allow for the occurance of errors.
For instance, time and time again he states that, because one-time events don’t have probabilities (in a frequentist interpretation), it’s incoherent to say someone’s confidence judgment is “wrong”. As Kahneman points out, this violates common sense—surely we should consider someone wrong if they say they are 99.99% confident that tomorrow the sun will turn into a chocolate cake.
In another example, Kahneman stresses the importance of doing between-subject experiments in addition to in-subject experiments, since on in-subject experiments subjects are given additional information (the difference between subsequent problems) that could affect the experiment. So, for instance, the Linda problem would be performed between-subject by having one random group assess the probability (or frequency) that Linda is a bank teller, and another random group that she is a bank teller and a feminist, and then comparing the two average probabilities. Gigerenzer’s claim, is that because, in these situations, no INDIVIDUAL subject displays internal inconsistency, this can’t be seen as a bias.
I’m generally a big Gigerenzer fan, but this seems wrongheaded to me.
I’ll go one further. Someone who frequently makes statements like these typically isn’t reasoning at all, but simply rationalizing to justify some belief they have an emotional attachment to. I’d have to take anything else he says with a big grain of salt, because if he’s capable of torturing logic this much on the obvious cases the ones that aren’t obvious are probably even worse.