Map and Territory Flashcards
What is rationality?
Quality of thinking.
What are the two subcomponents of rationality?
Instrumental rationality and epistemic rationality.
The purpose of rational thinking is to maximize the ________ between _________ and _________.
Convergence, reality and belief.
The purpose of rational decision making is to act on _________ to maximize ones chances of achieving their _________.
Beliefs, goals.
What is the Base Rate Fallacy?
Base rate fallacy is when superficial factors take precedence over the Base Rate probabilities of something being true.
What is a Base Rate in Probability?
Base rates are unconditional probabilities of single events. Not taking into account any featural evidence.
What is featural evidence?
Featural evidence is when the presence of a feature changes the base rate probability of something being true.
What is the Representative Heuristic?
The Representative Heuristic is a mental shortcut that determines the probability of whether something belongs in a certain group based on whether it’s features resemble the features of others in that group.
What fallacy does the Representative Heuristic lead to?
Base Rate Neglect / Fallacy
What is a Heuristic?
A Heuristic is a mental shortcut to make quick decisions and judgements in the presence of complex information.
What is the benefit of heuristics?
The benefit is speed and consistency across a large number of cases.
What are the 3 main pitfall of Heuristics?
Heuristics can lead to large errors in judgement when misapplied. Heuristics can be easily manipulated.
Heuristics are hard to short circuit.
What Cognitive Effect do Heuristics lead to?
Cognitive Bias
What is Confirmation Bias?
Confirmation Bias is the tendency to interpret, search for and favor evidence that affirms current beliefs.
What is Extension Neglect?
Extension neglect is the tendency to ignore the size of a set, sample or population when the size is logically critical.
What Heuristic is Extension Neglect caused by?
Representative Heuristic
What is the Peak-End Rule?
We determine the pleasantness or unpleasantness based on the peak of the experience and the end rather than a weighted whole.
What is Duration Neglect?
The tendency to evaluate whether an experience was unpleasant based on the most extreme point of the experience and the end rather than a weighted average of the experience as a whole.
What is the Sunk Cost Fallacy?
Continuing the a behavior on the basis of previously invested resources.
What are the 6 characteristics of System 1 Thinking? Clue: Speed, Effort, Frequency, Emotion, Calculated, Concious.
Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious.
What are the 6 characteristics of System 1 Thinking? Clue: Speed, Effort, Frequency, Emotion, Calculated, Concious.
Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious.
What is the Anthropic Principle?
A philosophical consideration that any data that humans collect about the nature of the universe is by necessity filtered by what humans can observe.
Why is the Anthropic Principle a problem for the concept of rationality?
What is considered objective reality to the human race may only be subjective at a species level due to the limitations of our conciousness. This puts objective reality into question.
What is Baye’s Theorem?
The law of probability to incorporate to information into prior probability calculations to find an updated probability calculation.
It is the basis of consistent rational reasoning under uncertainty.
What is Decision Theory?
Decision theory is the study of the principles and algorithms that lead making decisions that will lead to better outcomes that are inline with the agent’s goals.
What is instrumental rationality?
Instrumental Rationality is concerned with achieveing goals and taking actions that steer the future toward outcomes that are ranked higher on the priorities list.
What is Epistemic Rationality concerned with?
The formation of accurate or true beliefs about the world.
What are the three critical components of Epistemic Rationality?
- Updating ones beliefs in the light of new evidence.
- Mitigating cognitive biases.
- The examination of why you believe what you believe.
What is Truth?
Truth is the correspondence between ones beliefs about reality and reality.
