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Ecological rationality

The framework, associated above all with Gerd Gigerenzer and Peter Todd's ABC Research Group, holding that rationality is a fit between strategy and environment rather than conformity to a context-free norm. Its currency is adaptive, good-enough performance achieved by simple heuristics (e.g. take-the-best) that exploit environmental structure — explicitly "not optimization." It descends from Simon's bounded rationality and is one of the rehabilitations of human reasoning that share the "the yardstick was wrong, not the reasoner" move (claim-oaksford-chater-redefine-rationality-as-reasoning-about-uncertainty).

Its relationship to Oaksford & Chater's optimality-referenced rational analysis is contested, not compatible: the two agree on the diagnosis but disagree on whether the mind maximizes or merely manages (observation-ecological-rationality-and-rational-analysis-are-contested-not-compatible).

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