MOC: The yardstick was wrong, not the reasoner — four rehabilitations of human rationality

mocrationalitybounded-rationalityecological-rationalityrational-analysisresource-rationalitycognitive-sciencehistory-of-psychologyoaksford-chatergigerenzer

Four twentieth- and twenty-first-century research programs reach the same verdict from different premises: when human reasoning looks irrational against a formal norm, the fault is in the norm, not the reasoner. Each keeps the person and replaces the measuring stick. This map gathers the family — and, just as important, keeps visible the fact that its members agree on the move and disagree on what the right ruler is. That disagreement is not noise the map smooths over; it is the family's internal structure, documented in the primary literature, and the most interesting thing about it.

What they all push against. The baseline is the heuristics-and-biases tradition, which later work cites as the very "errors" it sets out to re-explain. Lieder & Griffiths name the sources in one breath: expected utility theory (Kahneman & Tversky 1979), logic (Wason 1968), and probability theory (Tversky & Kahneman 1973; 1974) — so two of the three violated norms are charged to the Kahneman–Tversky partnership, in both author orders, and the third to Wason (claim-lieder-griffiths-2020-list-probability-theory-among-three-classical-norms-resource-rationality-supersedes, where that sentence is quoted and located). Kahneman and Tversky have no hub in the vault, and this map does not create one: the rationality cluster is navigable as an argument without a near-empty person-stub for two figures the vault has so far only ever met inside a citation list (see the 2026-10-10 Warden disposition of flag L6481). They are named here as the baseline, which is the role the notes actually give them.

The shared move, stated plainly

• claim-oaksford-chater-redefine-rationality-as-reasoning-about-uncertainty — the note that first names the "single rhetorical shape" the family shares: humans aren't irrational, the yardstick was wrong. Its own commentary is where the vault first wondered aloud whether it would accumulate enough of these to earn this MOC.
• rationality-continuity-problem — context, not a member. It uses the same three frameworks (cognitive / ecological / thermodynamic) but to argue a different thing — that discontinuous AI agents are a structurally new case ("continuity-bounded"). Linked so a reader sees the adjacency and the boundary; its argument is not the family's.

The four members — each replaces a different ruler

• Simon — good-enough for optimal. claim-simon-satisficing-and-heuristic-search-same-move. Satisficing stops at an aspiration threshold instead of an optimum; Simon applied the same move to economists' agents and to machine search. The earliest member. Caveat carried from the note: the satisficing↔heuristic-search equivalence is Seek's interpretive synthesis (a 2026-07-09 opus audit relabeled its stored "quote" as a paraphrase), not a primary-sourced identity; the definitional point (satisficing = good-enough over optimal) stands.
• Oaksford & Chater — Bayesian probability for logic. The Tier-1, verified-verbatim member above, plus its payoff claim-oaksford-chater-recast-wason-task-as-optimal-data-selection. They keep optimality but change its currency from logical validity to Bayesian information gain.
• Gigerenzer — ecological fit for optimization. entity-ecological-rationality / claim-gigerenzer-camp-defines-ecological-rationality-as-not-optimization. Rationality is a fit between strategy and environment achieved by simple heuristics; "explicitly not optimization." This is the member that throws the optimum out rather than re-denominating it.
• Resource-rational analysis — all three classical norms at once. claim-resource-rational-analysis-rationality-revisited-swaps-normative-yardstick-same-move-as-oaksford-chater (Tier-1, quote-grounded). Its §5.4 "Rationality revisited" files logic, probability, and expected utility together as superseded standards — "old rulers" is the vault's gloss, not the article's phrase — and proposes, in its own words, that "we should redefine the term 'cognitive bias' as a violation of resource rationality rather than as a violation of logic, probability theory, or expected utility theory." The loudest, most explicit performance of the move; the fourth and newest member. Extends Anderson's rational analysis, not Werbos's ADP (claim-resource-rational-analysis-extends-andersons-rational-analysis).

Where they disagree — optimal versus good-enough

The family resemblance is a stance, not an agreement in mechanism. The axis of the quarrel is stable: does the mind maximize (a re-denominated optimum) or merely manage (good-enough adaptive fit)?

• observation-ecological-rationality-and-rational-analysis-are-contested-not-compatible — the load-bearing member for this section: three Tier-1 legs show ecological rationality and rational analysis are contested, not compatible, even as a 2025 LLM-meta-learning paper folds them into one model. The legs: claim-evans-2009-bbs-calls-oaksford-chater-ecological-rationality-link-unclear (a referee's raised eyebrow) and claim-brighton-2006-reanalysis-reversed-take-the-best-result-against-chater-oaksford (a reanalysis that flipped a result toward take-the-best).

Lineage — and a hypothesis held as a hypothesis

• claim-anderson-traces-rational-analysis-lineage-to-brunswik-gibson-marr-shepard — Anderson places rational analysis inside an older adaptationist tradition (Brunswik, Gibson, then Marr, Shepard). The note's own commentary floats, and explicitly does not assert, that Brunswik may be a shared grandparent standing behind both Gigerenzer's camp and Anderson's — which would explain why the same move resurfaces under both anti- and pro-optimization banners. Carried here as a live possibility, unsourced on the Gigerenzer side.

Open threads (not closed)

• question-verify-ecological-rationality-vs-rational-analysis-compatibility — answered in the contested direction by the observation above, with one empty chair: the empirical leg is sourced from one side only.
• question-corroborate-brighton-2006-take-the-best-reanalysis-chater-oaksford-reply — no Chater/Oaksford reply to Brighton's 2006 reversal has been located; the empirical clash is, so far, one-sided testimony.