The Monty Hall Problem

Yes, this problem illustrates why I sometimes get so enraged with people who seem to be worse at logics. According to Wikipedia, even a lot of academics, including Ph.D.s in mathematics, doubted Marilyn vos Savant's correct solution to this problem and accused her of "innumeracy". Of course Marilyn was right. But it's difficult to convince somebody of one's rightness if this person is worse at logics because this person will have a hard time understanding the argumentation.

That's why there are mathematicians after all. But, as I said, in this case even a lot of Ph.D.s in mathematics were initially unable to follow Marilyn, and only after several more explanations they finally had to admit that she was right and they had been wrong.

A similar problem occurs on discussing about subjects that require a relatively high level of education, while there are many popular misconceptions. Politics is a good example, for there are many common misconceptions about terms such as left-wing, right-wing, fascism, freedom, democracy, liberalism etc. For example, a lot of young people call themselves "left-wing" in order to defend themselves against accusitions of being "right-wing", but have no clue about the various possible meanings of these terms. That's also the reason why I wrote and published my personal definitions of various terms some weeks ago.

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