Well maybe this is just
hindsight bias speaking, but it seems to me like a foregone conclusion in today's society that busy people usually won't stop to smell the roses, so to speak.
In my opinion, the initial premise wasn't that interesting to begin with because the result could easily be predicted. It would be like asking "What would happen if, hypothetically speaking, we put an iPad under water." The result is predictable. But then again, Leonard Slatkin didn't predict what the actual result was. In hindsight it is easy for me to think things like "Well he's the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, so of course he'd overestimate the importance of music and the effect it would have in every day people." But as I said from the beginning that may just be hindsight bias working its magic.
Though to be honest, I think the writer of the article knew the result wasn't very surprising and thus not very interesting to begin with so he used Leonard Slatkin's prediction to
anchor our expectations so that we were surprised by the result in the end. You can see him set it up right here:
So, what do you think happened?
HANG ON, WE'LL GET YOU SOME EXPERT HELP.
Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, was asked the same question. What did he think would occur, hypothetically, if one of the world's great violinists had performed incognito before a traveling rush-hour audience of 1,000-odd people?
Before you're given a chance to reflect and honestly predict what happened, you are interrupted and given someone else's prediction, which subconsciously anchors your expectations, causing you to be unable to make an unbiased prediction.