"What's the worst that could happen, if we let MBA-types take over engineering?" "Even your home's light bulbs will require an Internet-connected computer account that spies on you."
I don't recall any of this short-sighted, anti-consumer nonsense when I earned my MBA. I do remember a focus on ethics and doing right by the consumer. There was a lot of corporate social responsibility stuff that I thought was going to be a drag and then it ended up being pretty informative. I suspect MBA-types often get a bad rap because pretty much everyone has had a shitty boss before and that person may have had…
But, "If A then B" & "B" together do create a signal for A. The strength of that signal is dependent on the statistics involved.
In this context, A is a bad boss and B is getting an MBA.
Relevant statistics would be the distribution of degrees among bad bosses, the frequency of good boss vs bad boss, the proportion of degree holders that are bad bosses, etc
There is a valid signal, the question is how strong it actually is and how much it is overplayed.
This is an incredibly widespread issue when generalized beyond MBAs and bad bosses. I think people fall into roughly 4 stages with it:
1) people do not know its a logical fallacy to begin with, and treat the signal as a full on implication
2) people learn of the fallacy and think the technicality of it as a fallacy means the signal cannot exist at all
3) people acknowledge the signal exists but dont know how to influence their opinion with it
And 4) people try to understand the statistics involved in each instance to form a personal intuition on the signal strength
Imo I feel like the large majority of people are 1 (hence widespread stigmas that are overplayed) and then the large majority of anyone who isn't a 1 is a 2 and a smart-ass (meaning the 2s are not convincing the 1s to change). 3 is probably where most thinkers end up on most subjects, and 4 is very tedious to keep up with and has questionable reward value for doing so.
I've seen someone do the math on working out the probability for A|B when If A then B for some chosen example, but unfortunately I don't have the reference. Would be cool to see again.
To give a simple example though, assume A is English is the primary language someone knows and B is a preference for speaking and writing in English. If someone only knows English it follows they will speak and write in English. If someone speaks and writes in English, it does not follow that English is the only language they know.
If you see someone speaking and writing in english, there is obviously some signal there that they might only know English.
That signal changes depending on the % of English speakers who know a second language. And in fact, if 0% of English speakers spoke another language then suddenly If B then A does become a true statement.
I really wish I could instill this insight into everyone on Earth tbh. Misunderstanding that signal causes so many problems