Research Suggests We’re Not As Irrational As We Think
One early success consistent with this approach was to examine the mathematics of random sequences like coin tosses, but under the assumption that the observer has a limited memory capacity and could only ever see sequences of finite length. That’s why we think tails will come after three heads in a row when tossing a coin — demonstrating that humans do make sensible use of the information we observe. Others have shown that the availability bias, where we overestimate the probability of rare events such as plane crashes, results from a highly efficient way of processing the possible outcomes of a decision. The perception that we are irrational is one unfortunate side effect of the ever growing catalogue of human decision-making biases. But when we apply computational rationality, these biases aren’t seen as evidence of failures, but as windows on to how the brain is solving complex problems, often very efficiently.
Source: undark.org