Eliezer Yudkowsky

The systematic experimental study of reproducible errors of human reasoning, and what these errors reveal about underlying mental processes, is known as the heuristics and biases program in cognitive psychology. This program has made discoveries highly relevant to assessors of global catastrophic risks.

American Writer

John W. Thompson

While there have been terrific advances in the state of technology around heuristics, behavior blocking, and things like that, technology is only a part of the approach to solving the problem with the more important aspect involving putting the right process in place.

American Businessman

Daniel Kahneman

By their very nature, heuristic shortcuts will produce biases, and that is true for both humans and artificial intelligence, but the heuristics of AI are not necessarily the human ones.

Israeli Psychologist

Jaan Tallinn

Your evolutionary heuristics come back to the idea of a future roughly similar to what it is now. You give to the community as it is now, to benefit a similar community in the future.

Estonian Businessman

Heuristics offer a practical way to find fast solutions when timed perfection doesn't count.

Problem-Solving

Heuristics can lead to errors; they are quick shortcuts, not foolproof methods.

Not Always Perfect

The term 'heuristic' is not limited to experts; it's used in everyday language too.

Common Language

In tech, heuristics often relate to AI and algorithms, helping machines learn.

Tech Context

Heuristics in computer science save time, making programs faster and more efficient.

Efficient Coding

Psychological heuristics help explain how people make fast, often unconscious, decisions.

Fast Choices

Some heuristics lead to biases, where our quick decisions might not be the best.

Not Always Logical

 and it's often used in marketing and negotiations to raise the prices that people are willing to pay. So, if heuristics lead to all these wrong decisions, why do we even have them? Well, because they can be quite effective. For most of human history,

The psychology behind...

 so we revert to our own heuristics, our own biases about how many people we think own their own homes. Now the truth is, when we published this quiz, the census data that it's based on was already a few years old.