HughRistik comments on Good Quality Heuristics - Less Wrong

13 Post author: CannibalSmith 14 July 2009 09:53AM

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Comment author: HughRistik 14 July 2009 08:01:09PM 0 points [-]

What types of problems do you expect this heuristic to be successful with? If the problem is something like improvizing jazz, it will fail miserably.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 14 July 2009 08:05:23PM 1 point [-]

If it's easy to judge that a given heuristic fails for a certain problem, then heuristic is not at fault: it can be easily seen to not apply there, and so won't introduce bias in that situation. The trouble lies where you think the heuristic applies but it doesn't.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 15 July 2009 08:20:57PM *  0 points [-]

Problems that require decisions. I doubt that any of the heuristics mentioned here would have any relevance to jazz improvisation.

More generally, I consider heuristics to be not substitutes for thought, but pointers to get thought moving in the most promising direction first.