Ecological rationality
Subtitle: intelligence in the world
By: edited by Peter M. Todd and Gerd Gigerenzer
Series: Evolution and cognition series
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 608
ISBN-13: 9780195315448
Subjects: Heuristic; Reason; Environmental psychology
Description: "'More information is always better, and full information is best. More computation is always better, and optimization is best.' More-is-better ideals such as these have long shaped our vision of rationality. Yet humans and other animals typically rely on simple heuristics to solve adaptive problems, focusing on one or a few important cues and ignoring the rest, and shortcutting computation rather than striving for as much as possible. In this book, we argue that in an uncertain world, more information and computation are not always better, and we ask when, and why, less can be more. The answers to these questions constitute the idea of ecological rationality: how we are able to achieve intelligence in the world by using simple heuristics matched to the environments we face, exploiting the structures inherent in our physical, biological, social, and cultural surroundings."--Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.