Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In a major theoretical paper, Gigerenzer and Goldstein (1996a) argue that classical rationality should be rejected as a norm of good reasoning, and that this thesis undermines both rational models of human thought and the alternative heuristics-and-biases program. They illustrate their argument by proposing that a specific cognitive estimation problem may be carried out by the "Take the Best" algorithm, which is "fast and frugal," but not rational. We argue: (1) that "fast and frugal" cognitive algorithms may approximate rational norms, and only in this way can their success be explained; and (2) that new computer simulations, and considerations of speed and generality, suggest that other algorithms are at least as psychologically plausible as Take the Best.