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Shows that the Princeton professors ain’t worth the money they get, if all they spend their time on is nonsense riddle questions that have no relevance to actual life. How about finding a way to teach physical chemistry so that everyone can understand it or something?

Did you answer that the ball was 10¢ or did you correctly calculate that the answer that the ball cost only 5¢? If the first, then this research has "actual life" relevance for you, personall!y

If you are in business, it means the majority of your "smart" employees would get the answer to a simple arithmetic problem WRONG! That's "relevance to real life!"

It's why the electorate of California continue to re-elect the same Democrats that have put them into this mess, election after election, hoping for a better result! That's relevance.

In business, you do not encounter such inane questions. Not even accountants and actuaries do; certainly shipping clerks do not. If you’re going to say that this is relevant to real life, please demonstrate how instead of being rhetorical.

I got every single one of the silly example questions correct, nearly instantaneously. And without any iota of a tendency to the erroneous thinking patterns described.

It's not just a question of IQ (three standard deviations above the mean in my case); or trained thinking - rationality has been more or less "instinctive" for me since early childhood.

I think the point is most folks, smart or not, are intellectually lazy and dishonest. If you are looking for short-cuts in thinking and not too scrupulous about what is actually the truth of the matter, sure you're going to make mistakes in your thinking.