556 Human Factors of a Global Society
cognitive situations such as scientic research or medical statistical diagnoses. Good decision mak-
ing or problem solving requires ignoring part of the available information and performing less
complex estimations. Human beings have evolved, Gigerenzer (2008) admits, as “natural statisti-
cians” who are rather good at simple, noncomplex tasks. Violations of logical rules are not cognitive
illusions, but they are a manifestation of practical, bounded rationality.
“The adaptive toolbox contains the building blocks for fast and frugal heuristics. A heuristic is fast
if it can solve a problem in little time and frugal if it can solve it with little information. Unlike as-if
optimization models, heuristics ca ...