[acituan]

> a cognitive bias is a way that a solution to unconstrained optimization differs from a solution to a corresponding constrained optimization problem

That is a narrow and incorrect definition IMHO. Two resource constrained solutions can also differ wildly in their rationality (or reality approximation if you will) and there is no resource unconstrained general intelligence in the universe so we wouldn’t even really know what that normativity looks like.

Biases are more of a classification of errors specific to our cognitive machinery; framing errors, recall errors, precision errors, proportionality errors, inference errors etc wrt the best we could have done with it.

[glial]

Yes it's narrow. I was trying to summarize the 'resource rationality' approach, and there are certainly other legitimate accounts of cognitive bias. My interpretation of that work is that it's a project to convert the list of cognitive biases from a classification of errors to a general generative principle.