Models and Heuristics

Pedro Domingos @pmddomingos "It's easy to forget that every cognitive bias is the flip side of a heuristic that works." 6:00 PM · Feb 21, 2021

We need to remember that a heuristic isn't that different from a model. Both of them are highly useful but must be used with care, especially when the regime has just changed.

That's where academics have their advantage--just after regime change. We generally have worse heuristics-- too cumbersome-- but we are better at making new ones, and we actually understand the models. In fact, non-scholars use models at their peril.

Nonscholars use fancy models at their peril--- if you don't understand what you're doing, a simple heuristic is better, as more robust. "The Formula That Killed Wall Street" in WIRED.

Jānis Pipars @k_zars

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And hard to recognize that it works the same way with AI, when there is a shift in environment. Deep learning results in de facto heuristic, and neural network has de facto cognitive bias due to same reasons humans do."

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