SOCIOL 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Steven Pinker, Visual Perception, Inattentional Blindness
Document Summary
Pinker - linda bank teller / feminist bank teller example. Fallacy of probability, there is no way mathematically that she is more probable to be a feminist bank teller than a bank teller. Gambler"s fallacy - this isn"t truly such a fallacy. In the natural world, we should commit this fallacy as events in real life are rarely independent of one another. But in a casino, there are devices designed to deliver events independently of their history (346), which is what causes our logic to fail us, because we have little experience with such events in the real world. We can understand why people are built this why and think the way that we do, and he even argues that we should be arguing this way. Pinker extends the argument that we should be happy with just explanations for what we believe rather than justifications.
