International Law

Smart Heuristics

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Good interview on some sophisticated thinking about risk, uncertainty and decision making.

"Isn't more information always better?" asks Gerd Gigerenzer.

"Why else would bestsellers on how to make good decisions tell us to consider all pieces of information, weigh them carefully, and compute the optimal choice, preferably with the aid of a fancy statistical software package?

In economics, Nobel prizes are regularly awarded for work that assumes that people make decisions as if they had perfect information and could compute the optimal solution for the problem at hand.

But how do real people make good decisions under the usual conditions of little time and scarce information?

Consider how players catch a ball--in baseball, cricket, or soccer. It may seem that they would have to solve complex differential equations in their heads to predict the trajectory of the ball.

In fact, players use a simple heuristic. When a ball comes in high, the player fixates the ball and starts running. The heuristic is to adjust the running speed so that the angle of gaze remains constant --that is, the angle between the eye and the ball. The player can ignore all the information necessary to compute the trajectory, such as the ball's initial velocity, distance, and angle, and just focus on one piece of information, the angle of gaze."

Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on November 17, 2008 (boomark / email).