If Mozart Had Died at Your Age: Psychologic Versus Statistical Inference

Abstract

A presidential address in the form of a short story is a novelty, but not a frivolous one. My tale, which takes place in an imaginary world in which neither World War I nor II nor the Shoah occurred because Mozart lived to the age of sixty-five, is intended to do something that a scholarly presentation could not: dramatize the tensions between what I call “psychologic” and the laws of statistical inference. The former describes the various cognitive and motivational biases that can influence information processing and so often make estimates of probability and attributions of responsibility different from what so-called rational models would expect. Biases and heuristics of all kinds can and have been described and documented by standard psychological studies and case studies of political decision making. Understanding biases intellectually and “feeling” them emotionally are not the same thing, and the latter, I contend, is necessary if we are to develop empathy for those who succumb to these biases and free ourselves from their grip.