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Conjunction Fallacy

Edited by Vladimir_Nesov, PeerInfinity, et al. last updated 17th Nov 2009
You are viewing revision 1.9.0, last edited by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg)

The conjunction fallacy consists in assuming that specific conditions are more probable than more general ones.

For the reasons related to representativeness heuristic, a fleshed-out story that contains typical amount of detail sounds more plausible than a stripped-down description of a situation that only states a few facts. There is a tendency for people to take that plausibility at face value, and assign probability accordingly. This intuition is wrong, because the conjunction rule of probability theory states that, for any event X, its conjunction with additional details Y will be less probable.

The conjunction fallacy suggests that one should be very careful in adding details to any claim, as even though each such detail may make the claim so much more convincing, it also inevitably subtracts from its validity.

Blog posts

  • Conjunction Fallacy
  • Conjunction Controversy (Or, How They Nail It Down)

See also

  • Representativeness heuristic
  • Burdensome details
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Discussion0
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Posts tagged Conjunction Fallacy
267Burdensome Details
Eliezer Yudkowsky
18y
48
62Conjunction Controversy (Or, How They Nail It Down)
Eliezer Yudkowsky
18y
25
57About Less Wrong
Eliezer Yudkowsky
17y
3
56Conjunction Fallacy
Eliezer Yudkowsky
18y
46
29Which cognitive biases should we trust in?
Andy_McKenzie
13y
42
28Disjunctions, Antipredictions, Etc.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
17y
26
26Conjunction fallacy and probabilistic risk assessment.
Dmytry
14y
10
11[SEQ RERUN] Conjunction Fallacy
MinibearRex
14y
0
8Can Social Dynamics Explain Conjunction Fallacy Experimental Results?
Q
curi
5y
Q
8
7[Link] Using the conjunction fallacy to reveal implicit associations
HonoreDB
14y
5
7The Law of Least Effort Contributes to the Conjunction Fallacy
curi
5y
53
7Asch Conformity Could Explain the Conjunction Fallacy
curi
5y
1
3ChatGPT challenges the case for human irrationality
Kevin Dorst
2y
10
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