Two Bizarre Heuristics and One Sensible One

I have a friend who is giving some job talks soon, and she mentioned to me that's she's working her ass off like never before so that even if nothing comes of it, she won't be mad at herself. This reminded me of the the maxim that some people have of living in such a way that they won't have any regrets. This "no regret" heuristic is oddly helpful - after one has acquired some self-knowledge, one can (I think) be a pretty good judge of what will and will not regret after the fact. And the action that we believe we will regret either performing or not performing is often at odds with the course of action that we are otherwise inclined to pursue. This is bizarre for several reasons - here's one: regret normally works because we have access to information about the decision-point after we've made the decision that makes our actual decision regrettable (e.g. regretting ordering the flourless chocolate cake because it turns out to taste bad), so there's a prima facie puzzle as to how anticipating regret could work without access to the information that's out in the future.

Presumably, the answer is that anticipatory regret works by alerting us to certain *kinds* of mistakes that we're apt to make, and prevents us from making those -- e.g. if I order dessert, I'll regret it, because I always feel full when the dessert arrives. So there's no deep puzzle - but it's a bizarre heuristic in that it seems to work only because we have certain flaws.

A less familiar bizarre heuristic is one that would makes sense to employ only for smart but weak-willed poker players, viz., "what would a good poker player do here?" This only works if one knows what a good poker player would do -- and surprisingly, people I play against often do know what a good player would do, but do the opposite nonetheless, and their earning would increase if they kept this heuristic in mind.

The third, sensible, heuristic comes from Cass Sunstein: "many law students are drawn to a kind of 'Justice Antonin Scalia' heuristic.' If students are unsure how to analyze a constitutional problem, they might ask instead what Justice Scalia... thinks -- and either follow him or do the opposite." (my italics, Sunstein, C. R. "Moral Heuristics." Behavioral And Brain Sciences 28.4 (2005))