Adaptive Thinking

"Where do new ideas come from? What is social intelligence? How can innumeracy be turned into insight? Why do social scientists perform mindless statistical rituals? This new book addresses these questions as it attempts to rethink rationality as adaptive thinking: to understand how minds cope with their environments, both ecological and social. Together, these collected papers develop the idea that human thinking - from scientific creativity to simply understanding what a positive HIV test means - "happens" partly outside the mind.". "Gerd Gigerenzer proposes and illustrates a bold new research program that investigates the psychology of rationality. Gigerenzer's original concepts of ecological, bounded, and social rationality provide an alternative framework to the study of human rationality. His path-breaking collection takes research on thinking, social intelligence, creativity, and decisionmaking out of an ethereal world - where the laws of logic and probability reign - and places it into the real world of human tools, heuristics, and social motives.". "Adaptive Thinking is written for general readers with an interest in psychology, cognitive science, economics, sociology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and animal behavior. It also teaches a practical audience (such as physicians, AIDS counselors, and experts in criminal law) how to understand and communicate uncertainties and risks."--BOOK JACKET.