That's fair. How do you explain the in-person respondents? And more than that, the people who answered incorrectly and then were willing to bet money that they were right?
> 16 of the 22 Yale undergraduates who made the common error were sufficiently confident to bet on it, preferring to receive $2 for a correct response than $1 for sure.
That's a very large proportion! People who are rushing and who know that they are rushing should take the $1. I guess you could claim that that's not a large enough monetary motivation to induce truthful reflection but.. I think that that's a big problem all by itself! People in their day-to-day jobs are almost never motivated to put extra thought into making correct decisions to hard problems like these. They're motivated to put in enough effort to make their boss happy and not get fired and then go home to their spouse and kids. Very few people enjoy these types of problems but everyone encounters them. If someone makes the common error to the bat and ball problem in their daily life, they'll Maybe lose $5. For most people, intuition is sufficient.
I don't think that your assertion that humans aren't this dumb is particularly useful here. Humans definitely do behave this dumbly in their day-to-day lives and that matters quite a lot.
'A bat and a ball cost $110 in total.
The bat costs $100 more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
The answer is $5.
Please enter the number 5 in the blank below.
$_____'
That question is from one of 59 new studies (N = 72,310) which focus primarily on the “bat and ball problem," found in The formation and revision of intuitions - ScienceDirect by Andrew Meyer and Shane Frederic.
23% of respondents failed to give the correct answer.
I don't have anything insightful to say but wanted to share because it seems worth knowing.
Additionally, I'm not exactly sure how (and how much) I should update about this.
(Edit: I initially posted the wrong question)