Danger of heuristics in decision making

Posted by Slytherin 9 years, 7 months ago to Education
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These little mental shortcuts scare me. You don't always realize you are using it and they seem wired in from somewhere. Combine that with vast social media and mind control may already be in use...

The weapons of choice against it are obvious. The question becomes where do these heuristics come from and how do you convince others that the harder way is the much safer road?

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  • Posted by not-you 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Your comments and questions intrigued me because so many people (even brilliant & educated ones) don't practice meta-cognition. Rather than sit here to write and edit for at least an hour,[Psychology was one of my careers.] I looked around and found something that you may want to look at. http://friedom.com/?p=402
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  • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Sometimes you don't know the math. Chess can sometimes be evaluated to a deterministic conclusion, but in general the number of options make calculations impractical. Heuristics allow the selection of moves in the face of uncertainty.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 7 months ago
    I thought of the perfect example for when the approach is not such a good idea. When you are in the military and the Commander-In-Chief is using the technique to learn the job. The dictionary described it as a trial and error method. Ouch! A valid score using that example is 18:1 the numbers represent US Service Personnel killed. The second number was wars started by non-Democrats. 1949 Greece to present day.' Slytherin ahead by a wide error less margin Most any Time Almanac will give you the figures. Or just ask a grunt.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 7 months ago
    I agree completely. Heuristics allow us to make quick decisions but certainly lead us astray. They don't always give us the right answer that we would get by actually doing the math.
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  • Posted by not-you 9 years, 7 months ago
    Denise, I'm going to go out onto an heuristically supported limb and ask you a question. :-) Are you studying Ed. Psyc?
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