Bounded rationality, biases and superstitions

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Bounded rationality, biases and superstitions

• Konrad Talmont-Kaminski
• KLI UMCS

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Sugar and cyanide
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Aims

• To show the relevance of work on superstitions as
  a natural cognitive phenomenon to conceptions of
  human reasoning abilities
• and vice versa

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Outline

• Contagion heuristic
• Superstitions as result of bias
• Dual process vs. bounded rationality
• Humean habits heuristics
• Implications

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Sympathetic magic

• Frazer Golden Bough 1890
• Law of similarity (homeopathy)
• Like produces like
• Drink blood of an ox to be strong
• Law of Contagion
• Once in contact, always in contact
• Burn nail clippings to hurt their owner
• Incomplete characterisation
• Black cats, broken mirrors, etc.
• Connections
• Homeopathic medicine
• Germ theory of disease

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Contagion as heuristic

• Heuristic
• A (domain-specific) rule of thumb
• Makes sense of the world
• Promotes adaptive behaviour
• 2 differences from classic heuristics
• Substantive affective component
• People usually aware of irrationality

Paul Rozin Carol Nemeroff Sympathetic magical
thinking in Gilovich, Griffin, Kahneman eds.
Heuristics Biases 2002
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Heuristics biases

• Classic heuristics
• Representativeness
• Availability
• Anchoring
• Applying to superstition?
• Explaining in terms of bias
• Limited possibilities

Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman Judgement under
uncertainty heuristics and biases in Science
185 1974
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Re-engineering Superstition

• Broader view of heuristics needed
• A philosophical account
• Emotions as cognitive heuristics
• Conflict between innate learned heuristics
• Contagion clearly fits in
• Systematic bias as footprint
• Empirical research project

Bill Wimsatt, Re-engineering Philosophy for
Limited Beings 2007
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Systematic bias

• Are all bias-caused errors superstitions?
• No
• Whats the difference?
• Are all superstitions bias-caused errors?
• Probably, category very broad
• Can understand existing work in this theoretical
  context

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Bias superstition

• When is bias not superstition?
• Is a superempirical explanation required?
• Is it provided?
• Not very deep difference between superstition and
  other results of bias
• Correlations suggest this
• But superstition harder to get rid of

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A choice of theories

• Placing heuristics
• Dual process theories
• Bounded rationality
• Different evaluation
• Can not identify superstition with a mode of
  reasoning

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Dual process

• System 1 vs. System 2
• Intuitive vs. analytical
• Heuristics vs. classical rationality
• Assumes independence of systems
• Problems
• Superstition is ubiquitous and persistent
• People do not seem to swap into system 2

J. Evans, Dual processing accounts of reasoning,
judgement, and social cognition Annual Review of
Psychology 2008
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Bounded rationality

• Heuristics only
• But variety of very different heuristics
• Heuristics build on each other
• Heuristics sometimes replace other heuristics
• Scientific methods are heuristics
• Problem
• How to account for logical ability
• G. Harman Change in View 1986
• But the same problem for dual process

H. Simon Models of Bounded Rationality
1982/1997 G. Gigerenzer I think, therefore I
err Social Research 2005
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Hume, habits and heuristics

• David Hume
• Habits vs. Reason
• The original dual process theory?
• But problem of induction
• Only habits
• Naturalist vs. sceptical reading
• Heuristics as habits

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Implications

• 3 somewhat hypothetical implications
• Problem of induction entails we use heuristics
• The ubiquity of superstition is evidence for this
• Problem of induction does not entail
  superstitions but can be seen as the ultimate
  explanation

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Thank you

• konrad_at_talmont.comhttp//deisidaimon.wordpress.co
  m