We have been studying heuristics: "rules of thumb" that our memory system uses to make likelihood judgments. They're not perfect, but they give us a good idea about what's likely. Sure, we could be more accurate if we didn't use them, but we'd also be less efficient. The availability heuristic is particularly interesting: we make a judgment or assumption based on whatever is there. We could be given a totally unrelated figure and "latch onto it", using it in some unrelated guess.
It's as I study the issues like these of the memory system that I realize part of why we have the scientific method and, in math, the axiomatic method: we need to prevent the errors in human judgment affecting our ability to learn more about the world. If science was based on introspection and just figuring things out based on the way things appeared to be, we'd have so many false assumptions about the world. Our memory system is incredible, but it can also lead us to very powerful mistakes.
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