It is our differences that make us similar

Actions That Make Us Know

The knowability paradox is usually formulated as a problem about the static propositions which express the knowledge that we can achieve in principle. In this paper, I propose to put these issues in a more ’dynamic’ light, by shifting the emphasis to the epistemic actions that produce knowledge, or sometimes even ignorance. The very notion of ’knowability’ seems mainly an existentially quantifi...

When our body clocks run late: does it make us depressed?

Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart

To survive in a world where knowledge is limited, time is pressing, and deep thought is often an unattainable luxury, decision-makers must use bounded rationality. In this precis of Simple heuristics that make us smart, we explore fast and frugal heuristics—simple rules for making decisions with realistic mental resources. These heuristics enable smart choices to be made quickly and with a mini...

Homes That Make Us Smart 1 Alex

In this article we consider what it should mean to build ‘smartness’ or ‘intelligence’ into the home. We introduce an argument suggesting that it is people who imbue their homes with intelligence by continually weaving together things in their physical worlds with their everyday routines and distinct social arrangements. To develop this argument we draw on four ongoing projects concerned with d...

Environments That Make Us Smart Ecological Rationality

Traditional views of rationality posit generalpurpose decision mechanisms based on logic or optimization. The study of ecological rationality focuses on uncovering the ‘‘adaptive toolbox’’ of domain-specific simple heuristics that real, computationally bounded minds employ, and explaining how these heuristics produce accurate decisions by exploiting the structures of information in the environm...