In Pursuit of the Fallacy: Resurrecting the Penalty

Abstract

As some of you know, I have been exploring the elicitation of probabilities off and on for almost 30 years. While there are many interesting and practical aspects of this application of the mathematics of probability, the one alluded to in these quotations escaped me for many years. I now understand, as does Prof. Darwin P. Hunt, that conventional methods of testing and training fail to detect the existence of a fallacy. To establish a fallacy one must assert something to be true that is in fact false. Objective testing does not involve such an assertion. In eliciting probabilities the resulting probability distribution immediately reveals whether the person considers an untruth to be true.

The most useful piece of learning for the uses life is to unleara what is untrue.

Antisthenes (445-365 B.C.)

It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you think is so that isn’t.

Mark Twain

Beware of false knoweldge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.

George Bernard Shaw