Intelligence as Smart Heuristics

Markus RaabGerd Gigerenzer

Yi. Sangyoon

Intelligence as Smart Heuristics

• Intelligence is thought of as an assembly of “factors,” either one(g), a few, or many.– Tool-driven metaphor (factor analysis)

• Cannot describe how cognition translates into behavior.

• Cognition -----(heuristics)-----Behavior

Heuristic

• A mental device that can solve a class of problems in situations with limited knowledge and time.

• Many classes of problems Many heuristics

Human Intelligence

Cognition Behavior

adaptive toolbox

building blocks

Smart heuristics

…..

Bounded rationality

• 의사결정자는 인지적 한계 때문에 문제의 단순화된 모델을 구성할 수밖에 없다 . 그리고 이 단순화된 모델에 의거해서 의사결정자는 합리적으로 행위한다 . – Herbert Simon(1955, 1956)

• Adaptive toolbox– embodies an ecological and social view of

rational behavior. (Bounded Rationality by Herbert Simon)

In this chapter

• Examples of heuristics• Adaptive toolbox– Ecological Rationality– Building blocks– Domain-specificity of Heuristics– Social / Nonsocial Intelligence

• Program Review and Future

Examples of Heuristics

• Recognition Heuristic– If one of two objects is recognized and

the other is not, then infer that the recognized object has the higher value.

• Gaze Heuristic– Attending to one variable alone and

ignoring all causal relevant variable• Tic-for-Tat Heuristic– Imitates the partner’s behavior

Adaptive toolbox

• These heuristics illustrate some of the mental tools that underlie intelligent behavior, both social and nonsocial.

• Darwinian metaphor for intelligence– Evolution does not follow a grand plan, but

results in patchwork of solution for specific problem : domain-specific

– Heuristics are not intrinsically good or bad, rational or irrational, but only relative to an environment, just as adaptations are context-bound

Ecological Rationality

• Intelligent behavior– Bounded rationality (Herbert Simon)

– Being able to act fast and on the basis of incomplete information

(not need the fiction of a superintelligence)

cognition

environment

Building blocks

• Search rules– Search for alternatives and cues

• Stopping rules– Without explicit cost-benefit computations

• Decision rules– How a decision is made after search has

been stopped.– Ex) one-reason decision making

Domain-Specificity of Heuristics

• Domain-specificity must be discussed relative to the level of analysis

• Fast and frugal heuristics– No single statistical method– No optimal algorithm– A general inference machine is not feasible– Human intelligence has to achieve more than

correct answers to a test, as is obvious when we come to social or emotional intelligence.

Social Intelligence

• To discover and model the actual mechanisms the heuristics people use when dealing with others.

• The framework of the adaptive toolbox provides precise models and a modular perspective that has different degrees of generality

Nonsocial Intelligence

• Take The Best– Based on the first cue that favors one

option over the other and ignores all other available information

• Take The First– Limited search and quick stopping can

be beneficial

Program Review and Future

• Extended the notion of cognitive modules to lower-level system– Such as the sensory and motor domain

• Neuropsychological evidence may provide further insights about possible instantiations of proposed cognitive heuristics

Program Review and Future

• Heuristics cannot do (Shepard, 2001)– Lower cognitive processes– High-level (creative processes..)

• There is substantial evidence for a heuristic that describes the discovery of new theories in the cognitive sciences, the tools-to-theories heuristic (Gigerinzer, 2000)

• The adaptive toolbox provides a research agenda of how to study cognitive abilities in terms of smart heuristics.