Human brains do statistics at a low level. This is what the experiment tested.
An example experiment would be if you gave someone a rewards with different probabilities after some random event like clicking, and the brain would learn to estimate the probability that a sequence of clicks would lead to a reward.
On a high level this obviously breaks down. The brain doesn't have thousands of examples of slaughtering cows leading to starvation. Cognitive biases all operate at a high level of reasoning, and involve verbal arguments and stuff. But on a low level, the brain is absolutely statistically based.
This is actually completely incorrect. Many cognitive biases occur at low levels of cognition without involving language, take professional pilots and confirmation biases despite of a ton of training data.
I think professional pilots are still making mistakes at a higher level. By "low level" I mean things your brain does in a split second without thinking about.
An example experiment would be if you gave someone a rewards with different probabilities after some random event like clicking, and the brain would learn to estimate the probability that a sequence of clicks would lead to a reward.
On a high level this obviously breaks down. The brain doesn't have thousands of examples of slaughtering cows leading to starvation. Cognitive biases all operate at a high level of reasoning, and involve verbal arguments and stuff. But on a low level, the brain is absolutely statistically based.