Questions without manipulation
Duschvorhang Sun, 07/15/2012 - 5:15pm
I suggest asking people questions that are really open in their outcome. This has two big advantages:
- People have to start to think themselves.
- They don't feel manipulated
Example question: "If a highrise burns similar to WTC 7, how likely is a collapse?"
Answer 1: "It is rather likely."
Problems:
- Since there have been over 100 such fires, it is very likely that such a collapse would have been among them.
- Why wasn't there an explanation of the WTC 7 collapse for many years, if it was very likely? This sounds like a hypothesis without proof.
- We live in great danger, because fires happen more often than terror attacks.
- Fire insurances would climb, building codes would have to be drastically changed.
Answer 2: "It was rather unlikely. A coincidence."
Problem: How was it possible to predict the WTC 7 collapse, if it was unlikely? (And why didn't this clever engineer help NIST in explaining the collapse?)
Variation of the question: "Is the collapse probability closer to 10% or closer to 0.1% ?"
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