Rationality, logic, and fast and frugal heuristics

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 744-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Bermúdez
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Fast And Frugal Heuristics ◽  
Take The Best ◽  
Decision Performance ◽  
Deductive Logic ◽  
Traditional Norms

Gigerenzer and his co-workers make some bold and striking claims about the relation between the fast and frugal heuristics discussed in their book and the traditional norms of rationality provided by deductive logic and probability theory. We are told, for example, that fast and frugal heuristics such as “Take the Best” replace “the multiple coherence criteria stemming from the laws of logic and probability with multiple correspondence criteria relating to real-world decision performance.” This commentary explores just how we should interpret this proposed replacement of logic and probability theory by fast and frugal heuristics.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Arunabh Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Real World ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Statistical System ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The World ◽  
Century Science ◽  
Statistical Work

This introductory chapter introduces a “crisis of counting” during the early years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In its simplest form, the crisis in the PRC was understood as a problem of building a centralized statistical system. At the heart of the varied solutions attempted by Chinese statisticians was a contentious debate about the very nature of social reality and the place and efficacy of mathematical statistics—in particular, probability theory—in ascertaining that reality. This debate played out against a backdrop populated by three divergent methodological approaches to statistics and statistical work. After all, abstract ideas about the nature of the world, whether defined by chance or certainty, have real world consequences. Chinese deliberations over such questions and their engagement with the Ethnographic, Exhaustive, and Stochastic approaches during the 1950s exemplify some of those consequences. The chapter unpacks these choices and traces how statistics in its various forms—as a (social) science, as a profession, and as an activity—came to be formulated and practiced, shedding light on fundamental questions germane to the histories of the People's Republic, statistics and data, and mid-century science.

Fuzzy and Probabilistic Object-Oriented Databases

2011 ◽  
pp. 1606-1611
Author(s):  
Tru H. Cao
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Fuzzy Logic ◽  
Hybrid System ◽  
Real World ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Intelligent Systems ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Object Oriented Databases ◽  
Real World Problems

For modeling real-world problems and constructing intelligent systems, integration of different methodologies and techniques has been the quest and focus of significant interdisciplinary research effort. The advantages of such a hybrid system are that the strengths of its partners are combined and complementary to each other’s weakness. In particular, object orientation provides a hierarchical data abstraction scheme and a mechanism for information hiding and inheritance. However, the classical object-oriented data model cannot deal with uncertainty and imprecision pervasive in real world problems. Meanwhile, probability theory and fuzzy logic provide measures and rules for representing and reasoning with uncertainty and imprecision. That has led to intensive research and development of fuzzy and probabilistic object-oriented databases, as collectively reported in De Caluwe (1997), Ma (2005), and Marín & Vila (2007).

Theory of Economic Interdependence and War

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale C. Copeland
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Economic Interdependence ◽  
The Real ◽  
Current State ◽  
Deductive Logic ◽  
The World ◽  
Causal Theories ◽  
State Of The Field

This chapter constitutes a more in-depth look at both the existing literature on interdependence and war and the theory of trade expectations itself. After briefly reviewing the current state of the field on the link between economic interdependence and war, the bulk of this chapter is spent elucidating the deductive logic of the trade expectations approach. It attempts to show the advantages of viewing the world through the lens of the trade expectations logic in order to demonstrate that it clears up most of the logical problems that have bedeviled current scholarship. The chapter argues that it is only by capturing how leaders really think—something that necessarily involves estimates and assessments of future possibilities and probabilities—that we can build causal theories that actually work in the real world.

Kolmogorov on the role of randomness in probability theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER P. PORTER
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Real ◽  
Von Mises

In this paper, I discuss the extent to which Kolmogorov drew upon von Mises' work in addressing the problem of why probability is applicable to events in the real world, which I refer to as the problem of the applicability of probability, or the applicability problem for short. In particular, I highlight the role of randomness in Kolmogorov's account, and I argue that this role differs significantly from the role that randomness plays in von Mises' account.

The evolution of rational demons

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 742-742 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Allen
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Fast And Frugal Heuristics ◽  
Direct Competition ◽  
Individual Choices ◽  
The Ideal

If fast and frugal heuristics are as good as they seem to be, who needs logic and probability theory? Fast and frugal heuristics depend for their success on reliable structure in the environment. In passive environments, there is relatively little change in structure as a consequence of individual choices. But in social interactions with competing agents, the environment may be structured by agents capable of exploiting logical and probabilistic weaknesses in competitors' heuristics. Aspirations toward the ideal of a demon reasoner may consequently be adaptive for direct competition with such agents.

On is an ought: Levels of analysis and the descriptive versus normative analysis of human reasoning

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Schroyens
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Bayesian Probability ◽  
Human Reasoning ◽  
Rational Analysis ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
Deductive Logic ◽  
Adaptive Rationality ◽  
Normative Status ◽  
Computational Level

AbstractAlgorithmic-level specifications carry part of the explanatory burden in most psychological theories. It is, thus, inappropriate to limit a comparison and evaluation of theories to the computational level. A rational analysis considers people's goal-directed and environmentally adaptive rationality; it is not normative. Adaptive rationality is by definition non-absolute; hence, neither deductive logic nor Bayesian probability theory has absolute normative status.

On the simplicity of simple heuristics

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 261-271
Author(s):  
Gašper Štukelj
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Heuristic Model ◽  
Decision Strategy ◽  
Fast And Frugal Heuristics ◽  
Neural Noise ◽  
Take The Best ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Simple Heuristics

Recent evidence suggests that the take-the-best heuristic—flagship of “fast and frugal heuristics” research program—might in fact not be as frugal as tallying, which is considered to be a more complex strategy. Characterizing a simple decision strategy has always seemed straightforward, and the debate around the simplicity of the take-the-best heuristic is mostly concerned with a proper specification of the heuristic. I argue that the predominate conceptions of “simplicity” and “frugality” need to be revised. To this end, a number of recent behavioral and neuroscientific results are discussed. The example of take-the-best heuristic serves as an entry point to a foundational debate on bounded agency. I argue that the fast and frugal heuristics needs to question some of its legacy from the classical AI research. For example, the assumption that the bottleneck of decision-making process is information processing due to its serial nature. These commitments are hard to reconcile with the modern neuroscientific view of a human decision-maker. In addition, I discuss an overlooked source of uncertainty, namely neural noise, and compare a generic heuristic model to a similar neural algorithm.

scholarly journals Probabilistic DL Reasoning with Pinpointing Formulas: A Prolog-based Approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-476
Author(s):  
RICCARDO ZESE ◽  
GIUSEPPE COTA ◽  
EVELINA LAMMA ◽  
ELENA BELLODI ◽  
FABRIZIO RIGUZZI
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Web Application ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Description Logics ◽  
Experimental Comparison ◽  
Inference Process ◽  
Binary Decision ◽  
Tableau Algorithm ◽  
Probabilistic Semantics

AbstractWhen modeling real-world domains, we have to deal with information that is incomplete or that comes from sources with different trust levels. This motivates the need for managing uncertainty in the Semantic Web. To this purpose, we introduced a probabilistic semantics, named DISPONTE, in order to combine description logics (DLs) with probability theory. The probability of a query can be then computed from the set of its explanations by building a Binary Decision Diagram (BDD). The set of explanations can be found using thetableau algorithm, which has to handle non-determinism. Prolog, with its efficient handling of non-determinism, is suitable for implementing the tableau algorithm. TRILL and TRILLPare systems offering a Prolog implementation of the tableau algorithm. TRILLPbuilds apinpointing formulathat compactly represents the set of explanations and can be directly translated into a BDD. Both reasoners were shown to outperform state-of-the-art DL reasoners. In this paper, we present an improvement of TRILLP, named TORNADO, in which the BDD is directly built during the construction of the tableau, further speeding up the overall inference process. An experimental comparison shows the effectiveness of TORNADO. All systems can be tried online in the TRILL on SWISH web application athttp://trill.ml.unife.it/.

Replications can cause distorted belief in scientific progress

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Białek
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychological Science

AbstractIf we want psychological science to have a meaningful real-world impact, it has to be trusted by the public. Scientific progress is noisy; accordingly, replications sometimes fail even for true findings. We need to communicate the acceptability of uncertainty to the public and our peers, to prevent psychology from being perceived as having nothing to say about reality.

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