28.6: Chapter Exercises

Chapter Exercises

1. Unfortunately, it will often be easier to apply lessons about obstacles to critical thinking that exploit human fallibility, rather than to reduce it. For example, when policymaking is poll driven, shifting the views of two or three percent of the electorate may determine what law gets enacted, or who gets elected. A 30 second TV spot warning people about regression effects is unlikely to have much impact on this, but an attack ad that frames an issue in a frightening way very well may (of course this gives us more reason to learn to think well—as self-protection). Give an actual example (from your own life, TV, some other course) where someone has done this. Explain the situation in detail, then analyze the tendencies to faulty reasoning that it exploits.
2. Earlier in this chapter we listed three examples (Enron, the Bay of Pigs, Covid-19) where bad reasoning and bad decision-making led to serious troubles. List another example, either from the news or from history. Explain the ways that some of the pitfalls we have studied may have been involved in the case you describe.
3. Earlier in this chapter we noted three pitfalls in reasoning that can make it difficult to get accurate feedback about the accuracy of our reasoning: hindsight bias, confirmation bias, and wanting to avoid unpleasant feedback. Give another way one of the biases or fallacies we studied could make it difficult for us to get accurate feedback, and explain why.
4. You are a teacher, and one of the topics you must cover is critical reasoning. What would you do to combat the problem of inert knowledge? Pick (and identify in your answer) the level of the class (e.g., sixth grade, junior in high school, college freshman).
   1. Give a specific, detailed (200 word) example of an assignment on the concept of illusory correlation that is designed to give your students a working (rather than merely inert) grasp of the concept. Don’t just say that you would ask students to give real life examples. Give one or two examples of the sort of that they might encounter and find interesting, then say what additional directions you would give.
   2. Give a specific, detailed (200 words) example of an assignment on the fundamental attribution error that is designed to give your students a working (rather than merely inert) grasp of the concept. Don’t just say that you would ask students to give real-life examples. Give one or two examples of the sort of that they might encounter and find interesting, then say what additional directions you would give.
5. One of the problems we encountered in earlier chapters is the card selection problem. Wilbur has a pack of cards, each of which has a letter [either a consonant or a vowel] on one side and a number [either even or odd] on the other. Some of the cards are lying flat on a table (Figure 27.3). Which cards should you turn over to help test the hypothesis:

Hypothesis: If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an odd number on the other. As we saw, the answer is that only two sorts of cards are relevant: vowels (most people get this right) and even numbers (many people get this wrong). This is a problem involving the basic features of conditionals, but even after studying them many people find the problem difficult. Why do you think this is so? What could you do (over and above those mentioned in class) to help someone see the correct answer?

6. Good performances are likely to be followed by less outstanding performances simply because of regression, and unusually bad performances by better ones. Discuss the ways in which this could lead us to make flawed predictions and to give faulty explanations.
7. Recall this exercise from an earlier chapter: Suppose that you are a good chess player and that Wilbur is good, but not as good as you. Would you be more likely to beat him in a best of three series or in a best of seven series (or would the number of games make any difference)? Like the hospital problem above, this is a problem about sample size, but many of us fail to realize this when we first encounter the problem. First, explain what the correct answer is and say why it is correct. Then, discuss reasons why it might be difficult to identify this problem as one that involves sampling.

Answer to Selected Exercises

1. Hint: if we neglect the possibility of regression effects, this may lead us to suppose that criticizing someone for a bad performance is a more effective way to getting them to do well, rather than praising them for a good performance. How could this encourage us to make flawed predictions and to give faulty explanations.