After the three years that I have pushed out other people’s ideas on judgement and decision making, at this moment, I can recall three huge ideas.
- Egon Brunswik’s Lens model as elucidated by Ken Hammond and examined by Karelaia & Hogarth (see post What has Brunswik’s Lens Model Taught? et al)
- Parallel Constraint Satisfaction model through Andreas Glockner and his colleagues (see post Parallel Constraint Satisfaction Theory et al)
- Surprise Minimization or Free Energy Minimization (see post Prediction Machine et al) as presented by Andy Clark and including the ideas of Karl Friston and others
I continually look for commment on and expansion of these ideas, and I often do this in the most lazy of ways, I google them. Recently I seemed to find the last two mentioned on the same page of a philosophy book. That was not actually true, but it did remind me of similarities that I could point out. The idea of a compensatory process where one changes his belief a little to match the current set of “facts” tracks well with the idea that we can get predictions correct by moving our hand to catch the ball so that it does not have to be thrown perfectly. Both clearly try to match up the environment and ourselves. The Parallel Constraint Satisfaction model minimizes dissonance while the Free Energy model minimizes surprise. Both dissonance and surprise can create instability. The Free Energy model is more universal than the Parallel Constraint Satisfaction model, while for decision making PCS is more precise. The Free Energy model also gives us the idea that heuristic models could fit within process models. All this points out what is obvious to us all. We need the right model for the right job.