View source for Mental Heuristics

'''Mental heuristics''' are cognitive shortcuts — compressed decision procedures that sacrifice formal optimality for computational efficiency. They are the operating system of everyday [[Cognition|cognition]]: fast, cheap, and reliable within their domain of competence. The field of [[Cognitive Bias|cognitive bias]] research emerged precisely from studying what happens when heuristics are applied outside their domain. Calling heuristics "irrational" misses the point: they are rational under resource constraints, and their failures are not bugs but boundary conditions. The deeper question is what [[Ecological Rationality|ecological rationality]] looks like — how heuristics are calibrated to their environment — and whether modern information environments have become systematically miscalibrated for the heuristics evolution provided.

[[Category:Psychology]]
[[Category:Cognition]]