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[Essay] Trial and error

ScienceNOW - Fetched: December 1st, 2016, 3:00pm UTC

We are all prediction-making machines. Granted, our predictions are often wrong—as the old saying goes, “It's tough to make predictions—especially about the future.” But even wrong predictions serve a purpose: They help us learn. Each time we make a choice, we predict the outcome of that choice. When the outcome matches our prediction, there is no need to learn. When the outcome is unexpected, however, we update our predictions, hoping to do better next time. Author: Neir Eshel

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