physics and psycholgy
HUFFMANS@MSUVX1.MEMPHIS.EDU
Tue, 07 Nov 1995 12:17:09 -0600 (CST)
>From: UMEM::HUFFMANS 6-NOV-1995 16:42:35.86
>Subj: toast
>
>Dear Jack:
>
>Thanks for your reply and the refs -- I'm agraid I didn't make my point well
>and was imprecise about the golden section proportions (with which I've been
>familiar since my art student days 25 years ago.) The point with the buttered
>toast problem was _not_ predicting the "behavior" of the toast, which i
>presume, ceteris paribus, will fall buttered side up close to 1/2 of the time.
>The point was how we construe events which are subject to physical laws instead
>of how we seem to anticipate events qua other construing persons. When I wrote
>2/3, I was trying to put thngs in simple fractions to note a discrepancy. We
>say that toast "always" falls butter side down when clearly it doesn't; this
>sort of phenomenon just seems to disconfirm how most of us anticipate. All I
>was trying to say is that if we expect positive or confirming outcomes 61.7% of
>the time, we may make more than we ought to of events which don't conform to
>these expectations. Thanks again for your comments -- Suzanne Huffman
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