Tom_Myers

I guess we're not disagreeing about much, at this point, though I think that you're basically more optimistic than I, and this might cause us to form different conceptions of the "overcoming bias" enterprise. I agree that we're not Eurisko (and suddenly I'm remembering Lenat's talk at IJCAI-77, explaining AM's fixed-heuristics problem that then led him to Eurisko...I was a graduate student) but my feeling is that we don't in general even have the choice of using a given heuristic less: we don't in general have the choice of becoming a less initially biased person. Sometimes we do, and it's worth a try, I'll admit that. In general, however, I don't think... (read more)

Douglas Knight: for me, thinking of "bias" (as used on this blog) as a result of heuristic processing is moderately useful 'cos (a) mainly, it just gives a general framework, a set of very concrete metaphors and therefore heuristics (and therefore biases) that I've worked with over the years; (b) it suggests that the problem of bias can be ameliorated but not solved, because you'll never get perfect heuristics and you'll never be able to do all the computing that's required to do without heuristics; (c) ah, well, I forget what (c) was gonna be. But it's useful for me, and I wanted to know if anybody here would point to a... (read 489 more words →)

Douglas, with regard to systematic but unexplained errors, would you agree that we can (usually) describe these as due to unidentified heuristics? I'm feeling very unsure about that, but I would like to have some fairly concrete way of thinking about this blog's subject matter, and at least this way it's something I've taught. :-) I'm not about to insist that all thought can be modeled with symbol-processing. It may even be that the most fundamental errors are those that arise without any symbol-processing -- I've just been reading a dog-trainer's book which emphasizes the errors we make in dealing with our dogs, simply because we automatically do what other primates do... (read 617 more words →)

I'm puzzled, as usual, but perhaps more so: this post has helped clarify the lack of clarity in my understanding of "bias" as the word is used here. You see, I don't in general see an a priori distinction between "bias" and other kinds of heuristics; we are talking about computational shortcuts, ways to save on reasoning, and all of them go wrong sometimes. I'm glad to have scope insensitivity pointed out to me, and having seen the discussion on this blog may even keep me from some error at some time, but my reasoning will always be incomplete, my models will always fall short of being "isomorphic with reality." (A modeler's... (read more)