5 Logical Fallacies That Make You Wrong More Than You Think →
In this experiment involving electrocuting subjects (presumably conducted by Dr. Peter Venkman) scientists found people were willing to pay up to 20 dollars to avoid a 99 percent chance of a painful electric shock. Seems reasonable enough. But the same subjects would also be willing to pay up to seven dollars to avoid a tiny 1 percent chance of the same shock. It turned out that the subjects had only the vaguest concept of what 99 percent or 1 percent even means. All they could think about was the shock.
