The Rationality Debate

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The axiomatic view, as I understand it, basically says that there are certain things that should be true about the way they make decisions. And then we want to measure human rationality against this sort of axiomatic system. So what you described is the axiom of transitivity. We cannot really ever say whether an organism or agent maximizes utility because you would have to know so much about the goals and constraints.

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What is the Great Rationality Debate? What are axiomatic rationality and ecological rationality? How irrational are people anyway? What's the connection between rationality and wisdom? What are some of the paradigms in cognitive science? Why do visual representations of information often communicate their meaning much more effectively than other kinds of representations?

Anna Riedl is a cognitive scientist with a primary research interest in judgement and decision-making under unmeasurable uncertainty, a field in the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. She loves the scientific method so much that she regularly spreads her joy about it in various formats of science communication. In the end, she cares about ideas being applied in the real world, solving problems, and benefitting humanity. This means she often plays the role of being an interface between the two worlds of ideas and their application by humans. Over the last years, she has founded and lead different organizations in the DACH region that work on improving the world. You can find more about her at riedlanna.com, follow her on Twitter at @annaleptikon, or email her at annariedl.office@gmail.com.

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