For the unknown, the known is always less than the unknown

And we choose the option that seems more representative of the overall picture,regardless of its actual probability.This effect has been observed across multiple studies,including ones with participants who understood statistics well–from students betting on sequences of dice rolls,to foreign policy experts predicting the likelihood of a diplomatic crisis.The conjunction fallacy isn’t just a problem in hypothetical situations.Conspiracy theories and false news stories often rely on a version of the conjunction fallacy to seem credible–the more resonant details are added to an outlandish story,the more plausible it begins to seem.But ultimately, the likelihood a story is true can never be greater than the probability that its least likely component is true.