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A Simple Heuristic Successfully Used by Humans, Animals, and Machines: The Story of the RAF and Luftwaffe, Hawks and Ducks, Dogs and Frisbees, Baseball Outfielders and Sidewinder Missiles—Oh My!
Author(s) -
Gigerenzer Gerd,
Gray Wayne D.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
topics in cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.191
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1756-8765
pISSN - 1756-8757
DOI - 10.1111/tops.12269
Subject(s) - heuristic , heuristics , ball (mathematics) , gaze , computer science , simple (philosophy) , artificial intelligence , point (geometry) , mathematics , epistemology , philosophy , mathematical analysis , geometry , operating system
Welcome to one of the most interesting but unexpected papers ever submitted to topiCS. This is the story of a natural heuristic that was discovered by the Royal Air Force (RAF) just prior to War World II. It is a dynamic adaptive heuristic in that it updates repeatedly in real time. To expand on our title and to warm up to our subject, it might be best to start with the story of the gaze heuristic as told by Gigerenzer and Brighton (2009). How does a baseball outfielder catch a fly ball? By solving a series of complex differential equations? Or by doing something simpler? According to Gigerenzer and Brighton (2009), outfielders rely on simple heuristics to catch flyballs. The most simple of these is the gaze heuristic, which is successful when the ball is already high up in the air: