Abstract
Herb Simon pioneered the study of bounded models of rationality. Simon famously argued that decision makers typically satisfice rather than optimize. According to Simon, a decision maker normally chooses an alternative that meets or exceeds specified criteria, even when this alternative is not guaranteed to be unique or in any sense optimal. For example, Simon argued that an organism – instead of scanning all the possible alternatives, computing each probability of every outcome of each alternative, calculating the utility of each alternative, and thereupon selecting the optimal option with respect to expected utility – typically chooses the first option that satisfies its “aspiration level.”
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Notes
- 1.
See [7, pp. 174–175] for an account of the empirical evidence supporting Take The Best.
- 2.
It is well known that if we require that ≥ be understood as the asymmetric part of >, then an M-rational choice function is G-rational, but not vice-versa in general.
- 3.
For example, if one thinks that the stopping rule used in Take The Best is psychologically more adequate.
- 4.
In fact, Gigerenzer’s interest is to question the view – that he sees as common and widespread – that only “rational” methods are accurate.
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Costa, H.A., Pedersen, A.P. (2011). Bounded Rationality: Models for Some Fast and Frugal Heuristics. In: van Benthem, J., Gupta, A., Pacuit, E. (eds) Games, Norms and Reasons. Synthese Library, vol 353. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0714-6_1
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