[willie24]

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, let's take another example:

Somewhere in the world there is a person who will will hear creaks and see a shadow outside their bedroom door tonight that looks like an apparition of some sort. So they can either conlude, a). There is a ghost residing in their house, or, b). There is some other (logical) explanation.

Rest assured, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people across the world reach the wrong conclusion every day through illogical thought and deduction, when they would've done better to just flip a coin to decide whether or not their homes were being haunted by a ghost.

More logical thinking people would of course, do a little research and eventually find the source of the shadows and creaking and be much more likely to (correctly) conclude there in fact, is no ghost in the house and that these hings are being caused by something else such as lighting from a window, or are due to drowsiness from being asleep, etc. And even if they couldn't find an exact cause, they would continue searching before accepting the incorrect notion of their being a ghost.

So I submit that for all intents and purposes, many people would do better by flipping a coin to decide the correct answer to something, rather than using an illogical thought process. Again, it happens every day somewhere in the world where someone is totally and utterly convinced their houses are haunted by ghosts.


[/ QUOTE ] well, i could argue that many of the illogical thinkers in your example actually did come to the right answer.

for instance - there are no ghosts in my house because i don't believe in ghosts.

but the real problem with your example is that you are working backwards. you are starting out with a unique group of people who are likely to have the wrong answer (people who heard a strange noise at night). you are breaking the rule that we must not know anything about them, other than that they are illogical.

you actually did this- we KNOW they have the wrong answer. why do they have the wrong answer? because they are illogical. therefore: illogic usually leads to a wrong answer.

that reasoning is flawed, mathematically.

True: if they have the wrong answer, they are illogical
False: if they are illogical, they have the wrong answer