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Can anyone point me to some Objectivist writings on heuristics?

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The short answer is that I've never seen any Objectivist writings on the topic. My understanding is that, in computer science, heuristics are techniques for identifying high-likelihood paths through an infinite or impracticably large number of possibilities. This is itself a reasoning process, and you have to know the truth in order to judge how well or badly your heuristics did in getting at it. What are the arguments that using heuristics invalidates reason?

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  • 7 months later...

Ms. Rand alludes to heuristics in the main chapter of The Virtue of Selfishness, entitled "The Objectivist Ethics."

She says that once our emotions are programmed by the values of our mind, they serve as "lightning calculators" of our interests.

Emotion is quicker than reason.

As long as our emotions are properly programmed by our values, they can be useful for quick answers.

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"Emotions are the automatic results of man's value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man's values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him - lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss."

-"The Objectivist Ethics"

from The Virtue of Selfishness

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