Heuristics are rules of thumb that you apply to decisions. They are usually held implicitly rather than in a fully explicit form. They make statements about what properties of decisions are good, without trying to provide a full causal model for why that type of decision is good.
I think we usually need to have a good understanding of why a certain heuristic is good and what are the implications of following it (maybe you agree with this; it wasn’t clear to me from the post). The world is messy and complex. We don’t get to see the counterfactual world where we didn’t follow the heuristic at a particular time, and the impact of following the heuristic may be dominated by flow-through effects.
Thanks. I think this is kind of nuanced, but here are some statements in the vicinity I agree with:
Heuristics and understanding of the world are not separate magisteria, and can inform each other
Understanding can tell us the implications of following different heuristics and let us choose
Noticing that a heuristic seems to work well can lead us to question what about the world makes it work well (or just provide evidence for worlds where that heuristic would work well over ones where it wouldn’t)
In general time spent thinking and exploring the interplay between these often seems valuable to me
Having a good understanding of why a heuristic is good can increase our trust in that heuristic
Lack of understanding of why a heuristic is good, when we’ve spent time looking for such understanding, is evidence against the heuristic
Particularly if we can’t even see a plausible mechanism it can be significant evidence
On the other hand I think I disagree with your statement taken literally:
I think usually heuristics are employed at a micro-scale, they’re implicit, and there are a lot of them: we simply don’t get to have good understanding of most
Even for heuristics that are explicit and have been promoted to our conscious attention, we sometimes justifiably have more trust in the heuristic than in our understanding of the underlying mechanisms
e.g. I do think “avoid doing sketchy things” is often a useful heuristic; my evidence base for this includes a bunch of direct and reported observations, as well as social proof of others’ views. I’m sure I don’t fully understand the boundaries of how to apply it (even the specification of “sketchy” is done implicitly). I’ve thought about why it seems good to avoid sketchy things, and have a partial understanding of mechanisms, but I’m sure there’s a lot of detail I don’t understand there. But I don’t think that I need to fully understand those details to get value out of the heuristic. I also would prefer that my past self put some weight on this heuristic, even before I’d tried to think through the mechanisms (although I’m glad I’ve done that thinking).
As an aside, when I wrote “we usually need to have a good understanding …” I was thinking about explicit heuristics. Trying to understand the implications of our implicit heuristics (which may be hard to influence) seems somewhat less promising. Some of our implicit heuristics may be evolved mechanisms (including game-theoretical mechanisms) that are very useful for us today, even if we don’t have the capacity to understand why.
I don’t think there’s always a clear line between implicit and explicit heuristics, e.g. often I think they might start out as implicit and then be made (partially) explicit in the process of reflecting on them.
If you’re going to import an explicit heuristic I think that it’s usually a good idea to have a good understanding of its mechanism. But you might forgo this requirement if you have enough trust in its provenance. Also moderately often I think hearing an explicit heuristic from someone else gives you a hypothesis that you can now pay some attention to and see how it performs in different contexts and then work out whether you want to give it any weight in your decision-making. (I think a lot of distilled advice has something of this nature.)
Thanks for writing this!
I think we usually need to have a good understanding of why a certain heuristic is good and what are the implications of following it (maybe you agree with this; it wasn’t clear to me from the post). The world is messy and complex. We don’t get to see the counterfactual world where we didn’t follow the heuristic at a particular time, and the impact of following the heuristic may be dominated by flow-through effects.
Thanks. I think this is kind of nuanced, but here are some statements in the vicinity I agree with:
Heuristics and understanding of the world are not separate magisteria, and can inform each other
Understanding can tell us the implications of following different heuristics and let us choose
Noticing that a heuristic seems to work well can lead us to question what about the world makes it work well (or just provide evidence for worlds where that heuristic would work well over ones where it wouldn’t)
In general time spent thinking and exploring the interplay between these often seems valuable to me
Having a good understanding of why a heuristic is good can increase our trust in that heuristic
Lack of understanding of why a heuristic is good, when we’ve spent time looking for such understanding, is evidence against the heuristic
Particularly if we can’t even see a plausible mechanism it can be significant evidence
On the other hand I think I disagree with your statement taken literally:
I think usually heuristics are employed at a micro-scale, they’re implicit, and there are a lot of them: we simply don’t get to have good understanding of most
Even for heuristics that are explicit and have been promoted to our conscious attention, we sometimes justifiably have more trust in the heuristic than in our understanding of the underlying mechanisms
e.g. I do think “avoid doing sketchy things” is often a useful heuristic; my evidence base for this includes a bunch of direct and reported observations, as well as social proof of others’ views. I’m sure I don’t fully understand the boundaries of how to apply it (even the specification of “sketchy” is done implicitly). I’ve thought about why it seems good to avoid sketchy things, and have a partial understanding of mechanisms, but I’m sure there’s a lot of detail I don’t understand there. But I don’t think that I need to fully understand those details to get value out of the heuristic. I also would prefer that my past self put some weight on this heuristic, even before I’d tried to think through the mechanisms (although I’m glad I’ve done that thinking).
Thank you for the thoughtful comment!
As an aside, when I wrote “we usually need to have a good understanding …” I was thinking about explicit heuristics. Trying to understand the implications of our implicit heuristics (which may be hard to influence) seems somewhat less promising. Some of our implicit heuristics may be evolved mechanisms (including game-theoretical mechanisms) that are very useful for us today, even if we don’t have the capacity to understand why.
I don’t think there’s always a clear line between implicit and explicit heuristics, e.g. often I think they might start out as implicit and then be made (partially) explicit in the process of reflecting on them.
If you’re going to import an explicit heuristic I think that it’s usually a good idea to have a good understanding of its mechanism. But you might forgo this requirement if you have enough trust in its provenance. Also moderately often I think hearing an explicit heuristic from someone else gives you a hypothesis that you can now pay some attention to and see how it performs in different contexts and then work out whether you want to give it any weight in your decision-making. (I think a lot of distilled advice has something of this nature.)