Today, agriculture remains the most distorted sector of the world economy. Therefore, agricultural liberalization in the Doha negotiations is rightly the top priority. But the public-policy discourse on the subject remains fogged by a number of fallacies. These fallacies probably originated with the leadership of the World Bank but have now been embraced by the IMF, OECD, Oxfam and the leading ...

In this paper we look at the well known phenomenon of conjunction fallacies (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983) from a linguistic perspective. We are particularly interested in understanding the impact of this phenomenon on our understanding of compositionality, a core assumption of contemporary linguistic theories about language meaning. We will argue that contra Hertwig, Benz, and Krauss (2008), conju...

Standard logic and probability theory are both beset with fundamental problems if used as adequacy criteria for relating logical propositions to learning data. We discuss the problems of exception, of sample size, and of inclusion. Bayesian pattern logic (‘Bayesian logic’ or BL for short) has been proposed as a possible rational resolution of these problems. BL can also be taken as psychologica...

Formal logic and probability theory are often considered the most fundamental norms of rational thought, but their application to psychological tasks has raised serious doubts about human rationality. A central finding is that people sometimes judge the probability of a conjunction to be higher than that of its conjuncts (conjunction fallacies, CFs). Bayesian logic (BL, von Sydow, 2011) formali...

Three experiments show that understanding of biases in probability judgment can be improved by extending the application of the associative-learning framework. In Experiment 1, the authors used M. A. Gluck and G. H. Bower's (1988a) diagnostic-learning task to replicate apparent base-rate neglect and to induce the conjunction fallacy in a later judgment phase as a by-product of the conversion bi...

In the present article we introduce a quantum mechanism which is able to describe the creation of correlations in the evaluation of random independent events: such correlations, known as positive and negative recency, correspond respectively to the hot hand’s and to the gambler’s fallacies. Thus we propose a description of these effects in terms of qubits, which may become entangled, forming a ...

This paper discusses the ecological case for epistemic innocence: does biased cognition have evolutionary benefits, and if so, does that exculpate human reasoners from irrationality? Proponents of 'ecological rationality' have challenged the bleak view of human reasoning emerging from research on biases and fallacies. If we approach the human mind as an adaptive toolbox, tailored to the structu...

This paper analyzes probability judgments about properties that can take multiple values (i.e., monadic polytomous events). It extends previous work on pattern-based deviations from standard (extensional) probabilities. Pattern-probabilities are formalized in Bayesian Logic (BL) and should be applicable when testing the overall adequacy of alternative logical hypotheses while allowing for excep...

As modern society becomes more and more dependent on computers and computer networks, vulnerability and downtime of these systems will significantly impact daily life from both social and economic point of view. Words like reliability and downtime are frequently heard on radio and television and read in newspapers and magazines. Thus reliability and availability have become popular terms. Howev...