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by Traster 1772 days ago
I think the most obvious answer to this is that understanding the world perfectly is impossible (for an individiual human in a finite lifespan), and so in reality we use a whole slew of hacks and simplifications. Things fall to the ground at about 9.8m/s. Is that true? No. Is it helpful to assume it's true, sure. And so it's extra-ordinarily easy to therefore find conditions where these simplifications don't hold. We optimize for survival and reproduction. Anchoring[1] is a great example - as long as no one knows about anchoring, anchoring is a great technique for negotiation, in fact there are studies that show some form of anchoring is optimal. It's far more optimal to use these cognitive biases than to invent new algorithms for life- because most of these are incredibly difficult problems- what is maybe more surprising is how effective our cognitive biases are and how they've propogated, isn't it more crazy that we're all fairly good at applying these intuitive rules of thumb?

[1]: Setting an initial price in order to later favourably negotiate a price.