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Computational limits don't fully explain human cognitive limitations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Ernest S. Davis Open the ORCID record for Ernest S. Davis [Opens in a new window]  and
Gary F. Marcus
Ernest S. Davis
Affiliation:
Department of Computer Science, New York University, New York, NY10012. davise@cs.nyu.eduhttps://cs.nyu.edu/faculty/davise/
Gary F. Marcus
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY10003. gary.marcus@nyu.eduhttp://garymarcus.com/
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Abstract

The project of justifying all the limits and failings of human cognition as inevitable consequences of strategies that are actually “optimal” relative to the limits on computational resources available may have some value, but it is far from a complete explanation. It is inconsistent with both common observation and a large body of experimentation, and it is of limited use in explaining human cognition.

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Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 43 , 2020 , e7
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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