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I don't eat breakfast, and I often am not hungry by lunchtime. So "you will be hungry at Y o'clock if you don't eat breakfast at X o'clock" isn't always true. What you are trying to say is that there are some people who don't know how to play the game of answering problems like that, that the 'right' answer is 'supposed' to be "if I didn't eat breakfast, I would be hungry now" even if you are one of those people who skip breakfast and don't get hungry until later than you are 'supposed' to get hungry.
He's referring to a psychological experiment on inmates which showed prisoners with IQ's below 90 can't understand hypotheticals no matter how dumbed down eg "how would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast". I suspect that prisoners were either systematically less cooperative than average(likely) or their IQ tests were graded on a curve(also not implausible).
I don’t actually know, but that’s the context.
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Yeah, I think it's likely both that (1) some prisoners were too dumb and (2) some prisoners were messing with the interviewers. Besides, I don't think that question is such a great test: it's just testing "do you know how to guess the teacher's password?"
Yeah, I might be hungry if I didn't eat breakfast. Or I might not. Or the question might make no sense because I always make sure to eat breakfast, so why are you asking me if I don't? Or I might be someone who always skips breakfast, so replying "I feel fine" is the true answer. The only 'correct' answer for the test-takers is "I would feel hungry" but that's not 'considering a hypothetical', that's 'can you guess what answer you are supposed to give?'.
I agree that if you're smart enough to be able to guess the 'correct' answers then you're not likely to be in prison, but then again you don't need to be too smart to figure out "what does this guy want me to say?", either.
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As an experienced pedatn, I enjoyed the fact that the line morphed from the grammatically correct "How would you feel now if you hadn't eaten breakfast?" to the strictly incorrect "How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast?"
Obviously look it's variation in dialect, blah blah prescriptivism, but I still found it funny
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No. I was just speaking in shorthand. You don't have to say you would be hungry. "I probably still wouldn't be hungry even if i skipped breakfast because i often don't eat breakfast" is a perfectly fine answer as well. "Bad" answers are those that reveal that the person is incapable of embracing hypotheticals. Ie people who say things like "what are you talking about, i did eat breakfast"
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