Some expansion of point 4 If biases are so harmful, why don’t they get selected out?
“During the last 25 years, researchers studying human reasoning and judgment in what has become known as the “heuristics and biases” tradition have produced an impressive body of experimental work which many have seen as having “bleak implications” for the rationality of ordinary people (Nisbett and Borgida 1975). According to one proponent of this view, when we reason about probability we fall victim to “inevitable illusions” (Piattelli-Palmarini 1994). Other proponents maintain that the human mind is prone to “systematic deviations from rationality” (Bazerman & Neale 1986) and is “not built to work by the rules of probability” (Gould 1992). It has even been suggested that human beings are “a species that is uniformly probability-blind” (Piattelli-Palmarini 1994). This provocative and pessimistic interpretation of the experimental findings has been challenged from many different directions over the years. One of the most recent and energetic of these challenges has come from the newly emerging field of evolutionary psychology, where it has been argued that it’s singularly implausible to claim that our species would have evolved with no “instinct for probability” and, hence, be “blind to chance” (Pinker 1997, 351). Though evolutionary psychologists concede that it is possible to design experiments that “trick our probability calculators,” they go on to claim that “when people are given information in a format that meshes with the way they naturally think about probability,”(Pinker 1997, 347, 351) the inevitable illusions turn out to be, to use Gerd Gigerenzer memorable term, “evitable” (Gigerenzer 1998). Indeed in many cases, evolutionary psychologists claim that the illusions simply “disappear” (Gigerenzer 1991).” http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ArchiveFolder/Research%20Group/Publications/Wars/wars.html
Some expansion of point 4 If biases are so harmful, why don’t they get selected out?
“During the last 25 years, researchers studying human reasoning and judgment in what has become known as the “heuristics and biases” tradition have produced an impressive body of experimental work which many have seen as having “bleak implications” for the rationality of ordinary people (Nisbett and Borgida 1975). According to one proponent of this view, when we reason about probability we fall victim to “inevitable illusions” (Piattelli-Palmarini 1994). Other proponents maintain that the human mind is prone to “systematic deviations from rationality” (Bazerman & Neale 1986) and is “not built to work by the rules of probability” (Gould 1992). It has even been suggested that human beings are “a species that is uniformly probability-blind” (Piattelli-Palmarini 1994). This provocative and pessimistic interpretation of the experimental findings has been challenged from many different directions over the years. One of the most recent and energetic of these challenges has come from the newly emerging field of evolutionary psychology, where it has been argued that it’s singularly implausible to claim that our species would have evolved with no “instinct for probability” and, hence, be “blind to chance” (Pinker 1997, 351). Though evolutionary psychologists concede that it is possible to design experiments that “trick our probability calculators,” they go on to claim that “when people are given information in a format that meshes with the way they naturally think about probability,”(Pinker 1997, 347, 351) the inevitable illusions turn out to be, to use Gerd Gigerenzer memorable term, “evitable” (Gigerenzer 1998). Indeed in many cases, evolutionary psychologists claim that the illusions simply “disappear” (Gigerenzer 1991).” http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ArchiveFolder/Research%20Group/Publications/Wars/wars.html