
Laplace’s Theories of Cognitive Illusions, Heuristics and Biases - nabla9
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/06/05/laplaces-theories-of-cognitive-illusions-heuristics-and-biases/
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ableal
The second Laplace quotation in their paper is rather pithy:

 _" The mind, like the sense of sight, has its illusions; and just as touch
corrects those of the latter, so thought and calculation correct the former.
(Laplace, 1825, p. 91)"_

(Paper at
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3149224](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3149224),
link in a first Mar. 2018 post, linked by this post).

P.S.

as an amusing bonus to the 2018 post, a commenter quoted "Come, let us cast
lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity."

It's from Jonah 1:7, which I hadn't come across before. I'm now trying to
resist the rabbit hole:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleromancy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleromancy)

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cmehdy
The paper is interesting, thanks for pointing it out. They make a curious
reference to the US political elections in 2016 that could have probably been
replaced by a less 2010s-US-centered topic.

For those skeptical of the necessity to revisit centuries-old documents for
anything other than the history of science, the authors give their insights at
the end of the paper:

> Laplace’s attempts to understand the underlying mechanisms for people’s
> biases were highly original, insightful, in many ways were centuries ahead
> of their time, and in at least two instances produced novel conjectures that
> have not been tested to this day. We believe that modern-day social and
> behavioral scientists can benefit from revisiting Laplace’s thinking on
> illusions in the estimation of probabilities, and beyond.

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cbsmith
Can we all agree that "lies, damn lies, and statistics" should be originally
attributed to Laplace? ;-)

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tranchms
Hume laid the philosophical foundations of empiricism for Laplace.

