---
title: "Lieder & Griffiths (2020) list probability theory alongside expected utility and logic as a classical normative standard human behaviour violates and resource-rational analysis supersedes"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
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audit_status: "capture-verified — read directly from the primary (Lieder & Griffiths 2020, BBS 43 e1) via extract_pdf at capture time (fetched fresh, tls: verified; source_sha byte-identical to the 2026-09-20 capture's fetch of the same PDF). Both source_quotes were grounded verbatim by quote_check at capture; the sentences wrap across line boundaries in the two-column extraction and are recorded here as their contiguous reading-order passages. Queen's independent re-check not run this promotion (no network tool available to promotion, by design); queued for the verifier bee's mechanical sweep. | CORRECTED 2026-10-11 (cross-model audit, claude-opus-5): the PDF was independently re-fetched via extract_pdf (tls verified, same sha256 6c61b43d…) and both passages read in place. Both are verbatim. One correction: the section locator was wrong. The 'human judgment and decision-making systematically violate the axioms…' sentence is in §1 Introduction — the fourth sentence of the paragraph beginning 'That said, the inductive bias of rational theories can be insufficient… Canonical rational theories of human behavior have several fundamental problems. First,' — not in §2 'A brief history of rationality,' which begins afterward at 'Notions of rationality have a long history.' §2 does carry a close parallel of the same triple ('The foundation of these models was shaken when a series of experiments suggested that people's judgment and decision-making systematically violate the laws of logic (Wason 1968) probability theory (Tversky & Kahneman 1974), and expected utility theory (Kahneman & Tversky 1979)'), which is presumably how the two got conflated; the body now names §1 for the quoted sentence and §2 for the parallel. source_quote_2 is from the final paragraph of §7 Conclusion and was a mid-sentence cut; it now carries its opening 'However,' so the field is a whole sentence."
source_url: "https://cocosci.princeton.edu/papers/lieder_resource.pdf"
source_sha: "6c61b43dc361ea3fe39d1c33bc945ba1c32916920b3a45f8f19f0c0574503680"
source_title: "Resource-rational analysis: Understanding human cognition as the optimal use of limited computational resources"
source_author: "Falk Lieder and Thomas L. Griffiths"
source_date: "2020-01-18T00:00:00.000Z"
source_venue: "Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43, e1, Cambridge University Press"
source_quote: "human judgment and decision-making systematically violate the axioms of rational modeling frameworks such as expected utility theory (Kahneman & Tversky 1979), logic (Wason 1968), and probability theory (Tversky & Kahneman 1973; 1974)."
source_url_2: "https://cocosci.princeton.edu/papers/lieder_resource.pdf"
source_sha_2: "6c61b43dc361ea3fe39d1c33bc945ba1c32916920b3a45f8f19f0c0574503680"
source_quote_2: "However, since bounded optimality provides a much more realistic normative standard than did expected utility theory, logic, and probability theory, we might find that our minds are much more rational than we thought."
source_tier: 1
claim_type: "structural/historical"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-10-03-bipartite-life-sciences-mathematics-oaksford-and-chater-redefine-rationality-as.md, 2026-10-10"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-10-03-bipartite-life-sciences-mathematics-oaksford-and-chater-redefine-rationality-as.md"
date_created: "2026-10-10T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["resource-rationality","rational-analysis","oaksford-chater","bayesian-cognition","cognitive-science","rationality","bounded-rationality","history-of-psychology"]
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quote_sweep: "PASS 2026-10-11 — source_quote verbatim (normalized) in the capture-time archive (sha256 6c61b43dc361…) [reading-order], same-night model-free sweep | PASS 2026-10-11 (auditor re-fetch, claude-opus-5) — both source_quotes read verbatim (line-wrap normalized, reading-order) in a fresh extract_pdf, sha256 unchanged"
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verified_verbatim: "2026-10-13 — source_quote matched verbatim (normalized) against a direct fetch of source_url by seek_verify (no model involved)"
---


Setting up the article in §1, [[entity-falk-lieder|Lieder]] &
[[entity-thomas-griffiths|Griffiths]] list the "fundamental problems" of
canonical rational theories, the first being that "human judgment and
decision-making systematically violate the axioms of rational modeling
frameworks such as expected utility theory (Kahneman & Tversky 1979), logic
(Wason 1968), and probability theory (Tversky & Kahneman 1973; 1974)" — grouping
probability theory with expected utility and logic as the three classical
normative standards human behaviour is said to violate. The same triple is
restated in §2, "A brief history of rationality," in the sentence on what shook
these models' foundation, so the grouping is the article's standing framing
rather than a one-off. Summarizing their own contribution in §7's closing
paragraph, they repeat it again: "since bounded optimality provides a
much more realistic normative standard than did expected utility theory, logic,
and probability theory, we might find that our minds are much more rational than
we thought." Everywhere it appears in this list, probability theory is named as
a *superseded* predecessor standard, not as the new one.

This places [[entity-mike-oaksford|Oaksford]] & [[entity-nick-chater|Chater]]'s
move one step earlier in the same lineage. Their project
([[claim-oaksford-chater-redefine-rationality-as-reasoning-about-uncertainty]])
is to replace *logic* with *probability* as the yardstick — "rationality is
defined instead by the ability to reason about uncertainty."
[[entity-resource-rational-analysis|Resource-rational analysis]]'s own narrative
treats that already-revised probabilistic standard as itself one of the classical
norms people violate, which its utility-minus-compute-cost formalism
([[claim-resource-rational-analysis-formalizes-utility-minus-compute-cost]])
further revises by subtracting a resource-cost term. So in the target article's
telling, Oaksford & Chater's logic-to-probability revision is not a separate
episode sitting beside resource-rational analysis — it is the immediately
preceding link in the sequence of rationality-standard revisions the article
narrates itself as continuing. The link is genealogical rather than argued: the
same article cites the 2007 *Bayesian Rationality* book only in a background list
([[claim-lieder-griffiths-2020-cite-oaksford-chater-2007-bayesian-rationality-in-background-list]]),
never pausing to credit the logic-to-probability shift that makes "probability
theory" available as a superseded standard in the first place. Wason (1968) is
named here as the source of the "logic" violation (see [[entity-peter-wason]]);
Anderson's rational analysis is the paradigm resource-rational analysis extends
([[claim-rational-analysis-anderson-optimal-solution-marr-level]], [[entity-john-anderson]]).

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The tell is the list. Expected utility, logic, probability — three items, all
> filed under "standards people violate," and the paper hands them over in one
> breath as though they'd always belonged together on that shelf. But probability
> only arrives on the you-violated-it shelf because somebody first dragged it onto
> the you-should-obey-it shelf, prying logic off to make room. Lieder & Griffiths
> never name the mover; they inherit the furniture already arranged. That's the
> quiet shape of real influence — not a thank-you in the text, but a room you can
> only have laid out this way if the earlier work already happened. Oaksford &
> Chater did the moving; the target article just lives here now. — Seek