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Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition)
 
 
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Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "I wrote "From Tools to Theories" in one of the cabinlike offices at the Center for Advanced Study in Palo Alto in 1990..." (more)
Key Phrases: weighted tallying, negative cue values, disconfirming reason, Property Alpha, United States, Take The Last (more...)
3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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  Kindle Edition, November 9, 2000 $26.97 -- --
  Hardcover, November 8, 2000 -- $59.93 $18.46
  Paperback, March 6, 2002 $33.71 $30.86 $27.77

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Editorial Reviews

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"The entire book skillfully conveys a number of messages at different levels. It would be impossible to identify one message that takes precedence over the others, although part V of the book clearly stands in its own right. Gigerenzer draws together the different programmes of work and successfully achieves his objective of presenting a different story about reasoning, a story that is stimulating and inspiring."--Applied Cognitive Psychology


Product Description

Where do new ideas come from? What is social intelligence? Why do social scientists perform mindless statistical rituals? This vital book is about rethinking rationality as adaptive thinking: to understand how minds cope with their environments, both ecological and social.

Gerd Gigerenzer proposes and illustrates a bold new research program that investigates the psychology of rationality, introducing the concepts of ecological, bounded, and social rationality. His path-breaking collection takes research on thinking, social intelligence, creativity, and decision-making out of an ethereal world where the laws of logic and probability reign, and places it into our real world of human behavior and interaction. Adaptive Thinking is accessibly written for general readers with an interest in psychology, cognitive science, economics, sociology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and animal behavior. It also teaches a practical audience, such as physicians, AIDS counselors, and experts in criminal law, how to understand and communicate uncertainties and risks.
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 360 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; illustrated edition edition (November 9, 2000)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0195136225
  • ISBN-13: 978-0195136227
  • Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,177,205 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Gerd Gigerenzer
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
I wrote "From Tools to Theories" in one of the cabinlike offices at the Center for Advanced Study in Palo Alto in 1990. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
weighted tallying, negative cue values, disconfirming reason, many correct inferences, relative frequency format, mammography problem, shortcut corresponds, probability format, good probabilistic reasoning, positive cue values, probability cues, measles problem, estimated percentage correct, comparison shortcut, recognition heuristic, hybrid menu, hybrid logic, weighted linear models, cheating detection, probabilistic mental models, frequency judgments, triggering algorithm, confidence category, positive mammogram, cab problem
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Property Alpha, United States, Take The Last, Vienna Circle, Psychological Review, Herbert Simon, Egon Brunswik, French Revolution, Karl Pearson, Ken Hammond, West Germany, World War, Columbia Bible, Harold Kelley, Deutscher Bundestag, Enquete Committee of the German Bundestag, Francis Galton, George Boole, George Miller, Jean Piaget, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Principia Mathematica, Roger Shepard, Swiss Alpine Club, Thomas Bayes
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition)
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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and up to date account for cognitive science, January 7, 2003
By James Daniels (Columbus, OH) - See all my reviews
In Adaptive Thinking, Gerd Gigerenzer follows up on his earlier book, The Empire of Chance. Part of his new book, Adaptive Thinking, is a continuation of his earlier discussion. Gigerenzer reacts against the dominance of significance testing, and looks closely at how it has shaped psychological theories. In particular, Gigerenzer places the "cognitive illusions" of Tversky, Khanneman, and many other behavioral scientists under very close scrutiny.

Gigerenzer's main thrust is that humans did not evolve in the psychology laboratory, with good command of probability theory to help them work on word problems. Instead, he argues, humans evolved in environments with lots of noise, and had to use regular features of the world to develop simple and effective rules of action. In this, he echoes and extends the work by economist Herbert Simon in the 1950s.

Take one of his examples: You live in Detroit. 1 in 100 new cars of brand X break down. 10 in 100 cars of brand Y break down. Your friend has car X, and it just broke down yesterday. Which should you buy? Well, clearly if you're "rational" you buy brand X. But consider:

You live in a jungle. 1 in 100 children is eaten by a crocodile while swimming in the river. 10 in 100 falls to their death while playing in the tree. Just yesterday, little Bobby was swimming and got eaten by a crocodile. Where should you let your kid play?

According to Tversky, Khanneman, and other modern cognitive scientists, you would be "irrational" to fear the river, since the long term probability of dying there is still only 2 out of 100.

If we evolved in the jungle situation, is it any wonder that most people rely on the advice of their friend in the car situation? Does this make them "irrational?"

Gigerenzer looks at the history of decision research, and offers a concrete and predictive program for the study of human rationality. The book is fairly short, very interesting, and casts serious doubt on many aspects of contemporary cognitive research. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in psychology or decision making, even non professionals.

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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Good collection of older essays, April 30, 2004
By baylor (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
  
This review is from: Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition Series) (Paperback)
Dr Gigerenzer is one of my very favorite people in this field (um, whatever that is). i absolutely adore the book Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart. That book was a collection of chapters by various authors from his ABC group that put together all the research their group had done into a cohesive whole. This book is a collection of older essays written by Gerd himself, some of them about the same topics covered in Simple Heuristics only in fewer pages and thus in much less detail. Note that all of these essays (i think) have been published before. They're here because you probably don't own all the academic journals these articles came from.

There are other essays too. Several are about how psychologists (not average people) misunderstand statistics, especially probabilities and Bayes. Gerd has always seemed pro-human and here he once again writes about how work by Tversky, Kahneman and others claiming humans are lousy at statistics (and thus decision making) is flawed. In a nutshell, humans are good at making decisions but Tversky and friends (like most psychologists, including me) are poor at designing psychology experiments.

Another article is about a friend and mentor who did good work but didn't get as much respect as he deserved.

So the book is about a lot of things. As before, Gerd is a good writer and can be understood by most people, and he avoids lots of pseudo-math and field-specific jargon, but the book is still fairly dry and isn't super exciting. i don't know if people not in the field would really want to read this. And since this is a collection of unrelated essays, it's probably not a good first introduction to Dr Gigerenzer. But if, like me, you enjoy collecting all of his stuff, this is a good book to have

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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful research, May 25, 2004
This review is from: Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition Series) (Paperback)
The approach of Dr. Gerd is very convincing. As an earlier reviewer mentioned, it is "pro-human" and treats people as intelligent decision makers. Gerd clearly shows how Kahneman and Tversky's experiments were flawed. In one interesting chapter, almost all of these experiments were repeated but with appropriate settings. The results were the opposite of those of Kahneman and Tversky: People are smart! I congratulate Dr. Gerd for this achievement, but prefer that he writes a book from the beginning, instead of collecting his earlier papers.
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