^A heuristic is a beautiful thing. A heuristic is answers that
work but might not necessarily be perfect. There is always doubt
but mostly, they're practical. Seekers of ultimate truths tend
to not like heuristics much - mathematics and science generally
do not like heuristics, because there are always many answers to
a given problem, some of which are illogical, irrational but
somehow... work.
The beautiful thing about heuristics is that they never die -
they just go in and out of popularity. To say the Sun revolves
around the Earth is a heuristic. It may be scientifically
inaccurate but to this day, it's how we describe the motion of
the Sun. It works. "Sunrise / Sunset".
Proverbs, rules of thumb, all fall into this category of "get it
done". There are often long term problems that come from
depending on them for too long - but life is short and sometimes
we just don't have the time to perfect everything before
acting.^
