Reason is the Shallow Version of Cognition

Reason is the more shallow version of cognition, yet you see how the current paradigm has been taught the opposite.

They cannot consider a process as anything other than a simplistic set of steps, so they are forced to view heuristics as surface-level approximations that leave out otherwise detailed data about the situation.

No. It is analytical reasoning that is extremely superficial, operating with a mere shadow of the complex richness that drives nontrivial patterns. A low dimensional, idealized facsimile.

Only heuristics solve hard problems because complexity is not complicated; it is not a more detailed version of simplicity. What exists at the surface of complex phenomena, what is visible, is a very small set of universal properties.

A harder problem thus does not have more knobs to turn. It is not more difficult to approach, as long as one does not force their reductionist concreteness into situations it doesn’t belong. Today’s paradigm would write a math proof to open a door, rather than just turn the key.

Heuristics are decisions that admit the pure epistemic transition between knowing the how and knowing (only) the what. They latch onto the universal properties of complexity. They are the only mechanism by which categorically hard problems become tractable. They took millions of years to be honed. They are true sophistication.

Reason is not deep. It cannot be. Heuristics on the other hand are made from the same depth as the situations they resolve.