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An examination of the cognitive tools that the mind uses to grapple with uncertainty in the real world. How do humans navigate uncertainty, continuously making near-effortless decisions and predictions even under conditions of imperfect knowledge, high complexity, and extreme time pressure? Taming Uncertainty argues that the human mind has developed tools to grapple with uncertainty. Unlike much previous scholarship in psychology and economics, this approach is rooted in what is known about what real minds can do. Rather than reducing the human response to uncertainty to an act of juggling probabilities, the authors propose that the human cognitive system has specific tools for dealing with ...
This book examines how people make decisions under risk and uncertainty in operational settings and opens the black box by specifying the cognitive processes that lead to human behavior. Drawing on economics, psychology and artificial intelligence, the book provides an innovative perspective on behavioral operations. It shows how to build optimization as well as heuristic models for describing human behavior and how to compare such models on various dimensions such as predictive power and transparency, as well as discussing interventions for improving human behavior. This book will be particularly valuable to academics and practitioners who seek to select a modeling approach that suits the operational decision at hand.
The first and only encyclopedia to focus on the economic and financial behaviors of consumers, investors, and organizations, including an exploration of how people make good—and bad—economic decisions. Traditional economic theories speculate how and when people should spend money. But consumers don't always behave as expected and often adopt strategies that might appear unorthodox yet are, at times, more effective than the rule prescribed by conventional wisdom. This groundbreaking text examines the ways in which people make financial decisions, whether it is because they are smart but atypical in their choices ... or just irrational decision makers. A leading authority on behavioral eco...
Psychologists, economists, historians, computer scientists, sociologists, philosophers, and legal scholars explore the conscious choice not to seek information. The history of intellectual thought abounds with claims that knowledge is valued and sought, yet individuals and groups often choose not to know. We call the conscious choice not to seek or use knowledge (or information) deliberate ignorance. When is this a virtue, when is it a vice, and what can be learned from formally modeling the underlying motives? On which normative grounds can it be judged? Which institutional interventions can promote or prevent it? In this book, psychologists, economists, historians, computer scientists, sociologists, philosophers, and legal scholars explore the scope of deliberate ignorance.
This title invites readers to discover the simple heuristics that people use to navigate the complexities and surprises of environments populated with others.
Defense of Scientific Hypothesis: From Reproducibility Crisis to Big Data argues that the scientific hypothesis is the key to understanding what science is about, and explains its importance for scientists and non-scientists alike. Most scientists, like the general public, receive only cursory formal instruction about the scientific hypothesis. Since we all constantly assess what's going on around us, we continually formulate and test hypotheses, consciously and unconsciously. The book distinguishes scientific from statistical hypotheses, analyzes the benefits of hypotheses and hypothesis testing, sorts out sciences that do not require hypotheses, discusses educational and social policies relating to the hypothesis, and offers advice on recognizing and formulating hypotheses.
This book proposes a new philosophical theory of scientific explanation by developing and defending the position of explanatory pluralism.
Hacking, espionage, war and cybercrime as you've never read about them before Fancy Bear was hungry. Looking for embarrassing information about Hillary Clinton, the elite hacking unit within Russian military intelligence broke into the Democratic National Committee network, grabbed what it could, and may have contributed to the election of Donald Trump. Robert Morris was curious. Experimenting one night, the graduate student from Cornell University released "the Great Worm" and became the first person to crash the internet. Dark Avenger was in love. To impress his crush, the Bulgarian hacker invented the first mutating computer virus-engine and nearly destroyed the anti-virus industry. Why i...
An exploration of the evolution, function, and mechanisms of search for resources in the mind and in the world. Over a century ago, William James proposed that people search through memory much as they rummage through a house looking for lost keys. We scour our environments for territory, food, mates, and information. We search for items in visual scenes, for historical facts, and for the best deals on Internet sites; we search for new friends to add to our social networks, and for solutions to novel problems. What we find is always governed by how we search and by the structure of the environment. This book explores how we search for resources in our minds and in the world. The authors exam...