Rationality

Paper Summary:

This paper examines two of the systematic mistakes that humans tend to make when they make decisions that they are likely to consider to be rational. These include mistakes or inclinations toward both pessimistic and optimistic biases.

From the Paper:

"Except, of course, that we're not. But it is true that humans are relatively bad at purely rational thinking. This should not perhaps be surprising to us: We are not, after all, computers, which are far better than are humans at making rational decisions and providing rational calculations about situations. This is not entirely a bad thing: Humans have apparently (though the process of evolution) sacrificed the ability to make perfectly rational calculations for the ability to excel at what those who are trying to teach computers to think like humans call fuzzy thinking. We are good, for example, at being able to read another person's internal emotional state by the tilt of their eyebrows but we are relatively bad at calculating the odds of whether to take another card in blackjack to the unending enrichment of the Las Vegas casinos."

More papers on Rationality:

• Comparison Essay # 9426 : "Rationality"
• Essay # 64596 : "Individual Rationality, Government and Morality"
• Analytical Essay # 145863 : "Rationality in Hawthorne's "The Birthmark"
• Analytical Essay # 135916 : "The Prisoner's Dilemma and the Limits of Rationality"

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