William Dickens wrote:
> Of course! That was the point of the theory all along. It would be useless for
>people to develop decision heuristics that weren't useful in most situations.
That's a sensible perspective, but I'm not sure that most people working
in this area share it.
It seems to me that they get pretty defensive when anyone suggests that
their findings have limited practical importance. The most extreme
example is probably Piatelli-Palmarini's *Inevitable Illusions*, which
gets almost hysterical over the deficiencies of the human intellect.
But I think you can see the same defensiveness in Nisbett and Ross,
Rabin's JEL piece (the conclusion especially), Thaler, and many more.
>What I would take exception to is your characterization of the experimental
>situations as "unrealistic." "Uncommon" might be a better description. But, no
>matter how uncommon the situations might be that doesn't mean that there aren't
>important real world situations where decision anomalies bias judgement in ways that
>can be anticipated. --
Sure, some important real world applications exist. But why is that
interesting? I would think that the interesting question is: what's the
*expected value* of the loss, averaging over situations of all
importance levels?
--
Prof. Bryan Caplan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan
"We may be dissatisfied with television for two quite different
reasons: because our set does not work, or because we dislike
the program we are receiving. Similarly, we may be dissatisfied
with ourselves for two quite different reasons: because our body
does not work (bodily illness), or because we dislike our
conduct (mental illness)."
--Thomas Szasz, *The Untamed Tongue*
