Heuristics

Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts — rules of thumb that allow the mind to make fast, good-enough judgements without exhaustive analysis. They are the operating procedures of System 1: efficient, automatic, and mostly adaptive.

Primary source: kahneman-2011-thinking-fast-and-slow

The word comes from the Greek heuriskein (to discover). The key insight from daniel-kahneman and amos-tversky’s research programme: heuristics are not errors — they are adaptive shortcuts that work well on average, but produce cognitive-biases (systematic errors) when applied outside the conditions they evolved for.

Three Classic Heuristics

• Representativeness — judge probability by resemblance to a prototype; causes base-rate neglect and conjunction fallacy
• availability-heuristic — estimate frequency by ease of recall; causes over-estimation of vivid, recent events
• Anchoring-and-adjustment — start from an initial number and adjust; adjustment is always insufficient (see anchoring-bias)

Affect Heuristic

Emotional responses (like/dislike, fear/comfort) substitute for deliberate probability assessment. If I like a technology, I underestimate its risks and overestimate its benefits — a single emotional evaluation drives both judgements.

Related Concepts

• cognitive-biases — the systematic errors that heuristics generate
• system-1-system-2 — the cognitive architecture that runs on heuristics
• availability-heuristic — the frequency-by-recall shortcut
• anchoring-bias — the insufficient adjustment from initial values