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Every detail that you add to a story will always make the whole story less probable, even if it makes the story sound more plausible.

For example:

The statement "Bill is an accountant who plays jazz for a hobby." is less probable than the statement "Bill plays jazz for a hobby."

Intuitively, you might expect that Bill is more likely to be an account who plays jazz, than he is to play jazz.

This intuition is wrong, because the conjunction rule of probability theory states that, for all X and Y, P(X&Y) <= P(Y).

See also

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