Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-54qdv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-10T03:25:34.251Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Judgment under uncertainty: Evolution may not favor a probabilistic calculus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Lev R. Ginzburg
Affiliation:
Department of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794.
Charles Janson
Affiliation:
Department of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794.
Scott Ferson
Affiliation:
Applied Biomathematics, Setauket, NY 11733. risk@life.bio.sunysb.edu

Abstract

The environment in which humans evolved is strongly and positively autocorrelated in space and time. Probabilistic judgments based on the assumption of independence may not yield evolutionarily adaptive behavior. A number of “faults” of human reasoning are not faulty under fuzzy arithmetic, a nonprobabilistic calculus of reasoning under uncertainty that may be closer to that underlying human decision making.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable