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Asked and answered decades ago[0,1]. [0]: https://people.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/Ec101/JudgementUncer... [1]: http://www.math.mcgill.ca/vetta/CS764.dir/bounded.pdf
Asked and answered decades ago[0,1]. [0]: https://people.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/Ec101/JudgementUncer... [1]: http://www.math.mcgill.ca/vetta/CS764.dir/bounded.pdf
These address the question of whether we are inaccurate. The paper behind the article ( http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... ) addresses the question of why : because evolution favors under-fitting in a world with punctuated equilibria.
Well it would make sense if that were the case. You have some system that tried to balance bias, variance, and utility. Sometimes that best way to do that is to have some bias. The classic example of this is you may jump when you see something that looks like a predator, but then turns out not to be. The cost of being wrong (see nothing when predator, see predator when nothing) means it's optimal to sometimes see dan…
That's the argument for racial profiling. Not making any argument for or against, just pointing out something interesting. I didn't think about the topic in this context before, as to whether or not it's rational. It's always only been a question of ethics to me. So the natural follow-up question: are various ethics irrational? Again, only a theoretical exercise, not putting my personal views into this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the argument for racial profiling. Not making any argument for or against, just pointing out something interesting. I didn't think about the topic in this context before, as to whether or not it's rational. It's always only been a question of ethics to me. So the natural follow-up question: are various ethics irrational? Again, only a theoretical exercise, not putting my personal views into this.
Are various ethics irrational? Quite probably. Being more specific on which ethics you mean might give more to chew on. Humans are notoriously great at pattern matching, and seeing things that aren't there simply based on a prior mental model. Stereotypes of all kinds are a result of this.
Evolution tends to select for short-term survival over long-term viability. It's absolutely a mistake to believe the two are aligned.
The reality is that humans are (probably) the first Earth species to be capable of abstract non-physical modelling of the future. But we have a huge amount of behavioural baggage which guarantees that we tend to ignore long-term warning signals in pursuit of short-term gains motivated by evolutionary heuristics.
The heuristics work fine until they don't. Species discover this the hard way all the time.
It would be nice to think we're not one of those species, but the jury is still out on that.
maybe a hybrid computer / human solution will fare better This is the purpose of technology. To enhance our skills. From fire to machine learning, tools are built to make our lives easier and help us make decisions better. In the end we're better off with more empirical computing in our decision loops. Eventually hopefully we totally replace ourselves with better, more consisitently optimized decision making systems.
I do not think decision making is a good model for this concept. Culture is. In particular: Traditionalism vs. Progressiveism as cultural influences: the former acts to not overfit current conditions, while the latter tries to fit current conditions. Both influences have been critical for human survival.
their general-purpose nature means that our minds take on the additional complexity of context switching as we use our tools for multiple simultaneous tasks, and indeed this generality means that they can be quickly adapted to new contexts. contrast this to specialist tools which, once learned, provide significant increases in efficiency in the specific context to which they have been adapted (including the benefits of increased concentration owing to lack of distraction!) but cannot always be re-engineered easily to suit new contexts.
Reading this made me think of the numerous financial firms in history that become very efficient at making money in a particular type of market environment, which inevitably changes suddenly in unexpected ways, causing those financial firms to blow up and maybe even start a financial crisis:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_market_crashes_a...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banking_crises
Society might be better off with financial firms that are "dumber!"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are various ethics irrational? Quite probably. Being more specific on which ethics you mean might give more to chew on. Humans are notoriously great at pattern matching, and seeing things that aren't there simply based on a prior mental model. Stereotypes of all kinds are a result of this.
Ethics are a competing patchwork of conflicting drives. Evolution tends to select for short-term survival over long-term viability. It's absolutely a mistake to believe the two are aligned. The reality is that humans are (probably) the first Earth species to be capable of abstract non-physical modelling of the future. But we have a huge amount of behavioural baggage which guarantees that we tend to ignore long-term w…
we can see this most clearly in our politicians' insistence on their particular model of the economy as their priority, rather than the actual concerns of the citizens they are responsible to.