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username2 comments on Open Thread March 21 - March 27, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Gunnar_Zarncke 20 March 2016 07:54PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 23 March 2016 03:43:43PM *  5 points [-]

Andrew Gelman mentioned "the Kahneman-Gigerenzer catfight, or more generally the endless debate between those who emphasize irrationality in human decision making and those who emphasize the adaptive and functional qualities of our shortcuts." This looked worth checking, so I followed the link to the following statement by Gigerenzer:

The “half-empty” versus “half-full” explanation of the differences between Kahneman and us misses the essential point: the difference is about the nature of the glass of rationality, not the level of the water. For Kahneman, rationality is logical rationality, defined as some content-free law of logic or probability; for us, it is ecological rationality, loosely speaking, the match between a heuristic and its environment. For ecological rationality, taking into account contextual cues (the environment) is the very essence of rationality, for Kahneman it is a deviation from a logical norm and thus, a deviation from rationality. In Kahneman’s philosophy, simple heuristics could never predict better than rational models; in our research we have shown systematic less-is-more effects.

LW's dog in this catfight is probably on the Kahneman's side, but the debate is interesting.

Comment author: username2 23 March 2016 05:47:16PM 0 points [-]

I admit that I don't get the explanation. Wouldn't both approaches lead to the same thing?

Comment author: Lumifer 23 March 2016 07:01:39PM 0 points [-]

The two approaches might but not necessarily will lead you to the same thing. I suspect that part of the tension is between "theoretically correct" and "works better in practice" which in theory should match but in practice do not often enough.

Here is what looks to be the major Gigerenzer paper.