About Heuristics

"The name heuristics applies to every rule, conclusion, evaluation, and principle that works in certain situations most of the time, but not always."
"The word comes from Archimedes' famous exclamation when in the bath it suddenly struck him how he could decide whether King Hieron's crown was made of real gold or not. Sreaming "heureka" (I got it, I found it), Archimedes ran naked along the main street of Syracuse to make the test as soon as possible."
"At every moment man applies heuristic procedures in almost all his trains of thought, as this is the only way he can act appropriately within a reasonable time without thinking over the host of possibilities with all their consequences and all the possible consequences of the consequences. Artificial Intelligence also needs heuristics, because thinking over all the branches of the chains of reasoning is mostly impossible even by the fastest computers."
---from "Ways of Thinking: The Limits of Rational Thought and Artificial Intelligence"

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