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Test your druginfested brain HERE

aunty establishment said:
Honestly, this puzzle is so stupid - it's like a poorly written Edward De Bono puzzle...
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Why is it so stupid? Because it's too easy? Let's hear your solutions then.

I have seen one VERY GOOD explanation, and some that are so-so.

"If you smoke you will shorten your life with 17 years". People who laugh at this totally idiotic "statistic lie"will probably have a good chance to solve this riddle.
 
Two possible answers relate to something called mechanism attention. We filter out information such as sights, sounds and smells so as not to be overwhelmed.

My first possible answer is that the more people available to view a given 'scene', the greater the chance of different filters and thus a greater 'field of view'. It is possible that the more people that are on a train, the greater the chance of pointing out that something is wrong and therefore a greater chance of avoiding the accident.

The second possible answer is that with less people on the train, there is a greater chance that the staff on the train are in a lower state of arousal and therefore less alert.
 
^^^^
There is a great article about 'mechanism attention' here: http://www.camc.ca/index.php?sv=&ca...t Resources~SMS News Articles&title=Article 3

One quote that stands out (not really related to this thread, but interesting none the less):

"Perhaps the best advice on this subject comes from the Swedish-Canadian arctic explorer, Vilhjalmur Steffanson. He noted that there are two kinds of hazards, real and mental. The real hazards arise from physical circumstances while the mental ones from our perception, expectation and beliefs about hazards. Steffanson said that we would be more successful in changing the real hazards, because man has always found it easier to change the world than to change himself."
 
Papaver, what's your brilliant solution? or are you just waiting for someone to come up with one that sounds intelligent enough for you so that you can claim that was your answer all along?
 
^^ Thats what I think...hence the reason why he doesnt say his "at least 6 different reasons to why the difference was perfectly natural"

Very poor.
 
i think the whole point of this thread is just to feed papaver's ego. clearly he's SO much more intelligent than anyone he knows, his philosophy professor, and all of us because he's got some secret answers to his own "mental puzzle" that none of us can guess, mostly because the question is phrased so vaguely and without the actual statistics in question or other details that can affect the problem.

here's a tip papaver, your solutions have no validity unless they can stand up to the scrutiny of others and can be coroborated based on logic other than your own. otherwise, you might as well join the RAND corporation. atleast there unverified research kept from the scrutiny of outside researchers and the rest of the world is still considered reliable information.
 
At first I was dissapointed. I have been led to believe that most threads have some type of logical conclusion, but when I look back at what Papaver was trying to do, it makes sense, he was just trying to get us to think.

Why am I still dissapointed in this thread then? Maybe it would have been better as a one-post locked thread. Grrrr. ;)
 
Add some scientists to your survey, we will tear this kind of thing apart regardless of whether we use drugs or not. It's the kind of thinking we're trained to do.

It's probably one of these...
- Trains could crash more, carry less passengers at night/day
- Trains could crash more, carry less passengers in different seasons, either due to weather or light conditions
- " over long and/or dangerous routes
- " during non-rush, as the driver is nearer the end of his shift and less attentive
- Lower passenger trains are likely to be older and shittier and therefore more likely to crash
- Less populated trains get more rookie or elderly conductors
- Shorter trains have less passengers and crash more because they are lighter, harder to drive, older, etc.
- Less populated trains may have left off schedule, making a crash more likely
- Less passengers in overnight trains, which increases driver fatigue

Probably not one of these...
- Weight differences could make the train go faster and crash more easily, or make the driver adjust more poorly
- Trains with less passengers have more dangerous freight that increases the odds of a crash

Getting more silly...
- The driver could see less people getting on and freak out since like most people he apparently believes in clairvoyance... this makes him drive worse and crash
- Enough bodies could be destroyed per crash to make up the difference

ok, enough.
 
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lol molyb, some of those are great.

I agree with DocHolliday. Maybe there *is* no answer. Maybe the problem was made-up to get people thinking.

If that is the case, my guess is the idea of the "6 answers" was to bring your attention to the fact that "hey, there's heaps of possible solutions to this! Try to think of as many as you can!"
 
or, maybe he was just trying to show off like everyone else suspects him of doing and now he realizes his answers aren't that brilliant and his self-serving post isn't unfurling as planned.
 
I am not sure that Doc's first explanation holds - who knows if the amount of passengers rather add to confusion and more difficulties to see things properly etc. Anyway it's a sort of explanation that is REASONABLE and not silly. The other one is GOOD - contrary to popular belief peoples senses will sharpen when they are stressed, and when they have a lot of time on tyheir hands they will not be thorough but rateher the opposite.

I don't need to give yu the solutions - they will come one after another, although I haven't seen but one of the best ones.

Molybdenums explanations aren't really wrong i think - but is it so sure that shorter trains are more likely to crash? And overnight trains are compared to other overnight trains.

Btw why is it totally idiotic to claim that if you start smoking it will shorten your life with 17 years, even if smokers HAVE in average 17 years shorter life? That one is easy.
 
PapaverPrisoner said:
I am not sure that Doc's first explanation holds - who knows if the amount of passengers rather add to confusion and more difficulties to see things properly etc.
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PapaverPrisoner: You are right. Who knows? With the absence of any additional data, it is a valid theory. (as this thread is trying to prove... we shouldn't come to any premature conclusions).

Speaking of this thread. Let me know if I'm wrong, but I see your suggestion to perform this exercise as an attempt to get people to analyze a situation (in this case, a bad conclusion based on statistics) with a certain type of logic.

You use the smoking example to help get us on the right track... but I'm still not seeing it. Is it possible to list some other examples, or give us a logic flow without giving away this particular problem?

I enjoy a good problem, but my time and attention is limited. I don't think I could keep up with this post if it were to last 2 more weeks. However, I would be dissapointed not to learn something from it.
 
PapaverPrisoner said:
Btw why is it totally idiotic to claim that if you start smoking it will shorten your life with 17 years, even if smokers HAVE in average 17 years shorter life? That one is easy.
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Well, if you don't start smoking till the year before you die, that kinda screws with that statistic.

Speaking of which....

It's possible that trains crashed more in the past when there were fewer overall passengers.
 
Molybdenums explanations aren't really wrong i think - but is it so sure that shorter trains are more likely to crash? And overnight trains are compared to other overnight trains.
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Can you link to the paper? That would clarify a lot of things.
I admit that most of the potential problems I listed aren't incredibly ingenious, but that's usually the way it is with these kinds of errors.
 
That many medical specialists are idiotic enough to claim that the "Alzheimer explosion" is happening because "more people are getting older"is another tragedy. Not to mention that they have the nerve to say that the malign melanoma (skin cancer) explosion is due to the fact that people are staying in the sun more, and not anything to do with the ozone layer.

Yet they have the figures but cannot draw any conclusions from it. In 1980 5% of the 80-year olds had dementia due to Alzheimers and today it's 20-25%.

And although skin cancer has gone up very much in all categories of people, the australian beach guards or bath guards or whatever you call'em, have the most terrifying figures. An increase of 469% since 1960.

Smoking certainly isn't healthy. If smokers generally live 17 years shorter than non-smokers, one can probably guess that the smoking habit IN ITSELF is responsible for 4-5 years shorter life.

No i cannot link to a paper as I read this in a book. But you do not NEED more facts than I have given you. As I recall it thousands of trains on many different lines during many years were checked and compared to trains on the same lines. The had access to the timetables and the number of passengers on board the trains. And they found out that the trains that met with accidents actually had fewer passengers on them than you would have expected.

The number of deaths were immaterial - it weren't always any. But since the trains that met with accidents had fewer passengers than COMPARABLE TRAINS ON THE SAME LINES the authors took that as prof for clairvoyance = that the passengers had a feeling that the train would meet with an accident. I took it for granted that if there had been something to get out of the timetables they would have spotted it. So it can not be a question of "friday trains" or "trains on old lines" etc. They were of course compared with other friday trains and other trains on the same old lines...
 
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