• Vespair@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    Why are we starting this scenario with the arbitrary restriction of 3? Yes, if you give people any number of items and tell them there is a finite number of categories, they were will find a way to divide those items into three. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t come up with a more compelling argument for their choices when told to divide into 4 groups.

    At no point have our options ever only been “fruit or vegetable,” but yeah I guess if you tell people those are their only choices of course they’ll adhere. But like… I’ve never known anyone who though those were the only choices?

    • BussyCat@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      The point is that may people will instinctually call mushrooms a vegetable

      If we take that same example and add 4 categories and then add milk as another item I am still willing to bet the average person will put mushrooms as a vegetable and make the categories fruit vegetable dairy meat even though vegetables aren’t real and you could have a category of animal products.

      Now if you only quiz the biology majors you might get a different result but in the U.S. only 38% of people are college educated and the most common major is business