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Wason Card revisited

bignickel

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bignickel
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http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=479

OK. I just read the Wason Card problem in Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea". (I had to leave early from TAM, so I missed Jeff Corey's talk)

And, of course, got it wrong. I even assumed that Dennett's editor/publisher made a typo when I read the answer; even after he presented the Bar boucer version of it! (where, of course, I got the right answer)

So then: I would like to posit, then when reading 'abstract' problems, we never know HOW much to trust the questioner in his attempt to the communicate the problem to us, and we make quick assumptions about the problem based on that.

Which is why I suggest I, and a few others, got the question wrong. I suggest: that if I have 100% faith in the wording of the question (say, if a computer gave it to me), then my brain would have turned into a simple "If/then" statement. And gotten it right. Or so I think; only way to know is to discover a parallel Earth, and give bignickel2 a computer produced question, I suppose.

What are other people's thoughts on this? Could a distrust of the questioner's ability to explain abstract questions exactly interfere with the whole procedure, because our minds try to 'fill in the blanks' on areas we think the questioner 'missed'?

(Anyone who wants me to give them the Wason Card problem, let me know. I'll see if I can work out the new forum 'Spoiler' function.)
 
I wish it were that simple. So far, the strongest effect is that if the question involves a regulation or law, more people solve the problem correctly.
 
The Wason Card Problem

You have 4 cards in front of you: D, F, 3, 7

I have put, on each card, a letter on one side, and a number on the other.

Pick the cards that will show, if you flip them over, that the following statement is false (pick only the minimum number of cards necessary):

"Every card with a D on one side, has a 3 on the other."


You must turn over the D card, and the 7 card. No others are necessary to turn over.
 
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Actually, the original problem was to test the statement, "All cards with a vowel on one side have an even number on the other."
Wason's original problem had the four cards showing a vowel, a consonant, an even number and an odd number. At TAM1, the "reduced array" version was shown, with the cards "1" and "2" being the choices.
 
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I did my crappy master's thesis on the Wason. If you make the content more meaningful (if a person is drinking alcohol, then he is 21 years old) people do lots better.

I think the confirmation bias of human decision making makes most people overlook modus tollens while selecting the card corresponding to the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

JC had a thread on this awhile back which had some interesting info in it. I wonder if the thread still exists?
 
Another strategy that might work is to point out that the contrapositive of a statement is false if the statement is false.
One way to do this is to add , "Look here! If the damn card with a vowel has to have an even number on the other side, it can't have an odd number! So that means a card with an odd number can't have a vowel on the other, or else the statement is wrong. Get it?
It's like 'All crows are black.' This means that anything that's not black is not a damn crow."
 
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