The conjunction fallacy

Rob Brooks asks you to take a pop quiz:

When Jack was young, he began inflicting harm on animals. It started with just pulling the wings off flies, but eventually progressed to torturing squirrels and stray cats in his neighbourhood.

As an adult, Jack found that he did not get much thrill from harming animals, so he began hurting people instead. He has killed 5 homeless people that he abducted from poor neighbourhoods in his home city. Their dismembered bodies are currently buried in his basement.

Now, knowing what I have just told you about Jack, is it more probable that Jack is: A) A teacher. Or B) A teacher who does not believe in God?

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How Edgar Wright does visual comedy

This blog has been talking a lot recently about Simon Pegg-Nick Frost films. Reader kyoseki sent me a link to this clip to the skills of Edgar Wright, the director of many of the performances of the duo.. The person who put this clip together says that Wright is a master of using visual effects for comedic purposes and not depending simply on verbal gags, and shows how he does it.
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Former Bush official accuses Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld of war crimes

Richard Clarke is a Washington insider. He was national coordinator for security and counterterrorism and thus chief counter-terrorism officer in the White House when George W. Bush was president. He was also selected by president Obama as part of the team to review the workings of the NSA in light of Snowden’s revelations. He now tells Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that he thinks that some of the things that Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld did in office were war crimes.
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Now that’s a real debate!

The Idaho Republican primary may turn out to be the most notable one of this season, not because of its politics but because of the debate between its four candidates running for governor, two of whom were definitely not your usual boring old run-of-the-mill right wing politicians.

Stephen Colbert brings us some of the highlights of that debate and says that the choice is now clear as to who should be Idaho’s next governor.
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