Herbert A. Simon
1916–2001
Herb Simon
Bounded rationality, satisficing, the economics of attention, and the founding of symbolic artificial intelligence.
- 1916LifeBorn
- 1947EventSimon argued in Administrative Behavior (1947) that real decisions are made by people who have partial information, limited attention and a deadline.
- 1956EventWith Allen Newell he built some of the first programs to solve problems by search through a space of possibilities rather than by algorithm,…
- 1971EventSimon observed in 1971 that a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
- 1978EventHe won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 and the Turing Award in 1975.
- 2001LifeDies
Herbert Simon (1916–2001) argued that human rationality is limited by information, time and mental capacity, and built a body of work across economics, psychology and artificial intelligence on that premise. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 and the Turing Award in 1975.
Bounded rationality
Economic models assumed decision-makers with complete information and unlimited capacity to compute. Simon argued in Administrative Behavior (1947) that real decisions are made by people who have partial information, limited attention and a deadline.
The consequence is not slightly worse optimization but a different procedure. People satisfice: they set a threshold for what counts as good enough and take the first option meeting it. Searching for the best option requires comparing all of them, which is usually impossible and always expensive. Satisficing is the rational response to the cost of search, which is why it is a description of intelligence rather than a failure of it.
Attention
Simon observed in 1971 that a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. When information is scarce, the constraint is getting it; when information is abundant, the constraint is deciding what to ignore. The observation anticipated most of what is now said about focus and is the sharpest available statement of why proxy work accumulates.
Organizations and AI
He treated organizations as devices for decomposing decisions that no individual could make alone, with hierarchy functioning as a structure for allocating attention.
With Allen Newell he built some of the first programs to solve problems by search through a space of possibilities rather than by algorithm, including the Logic Theorist in 1956. That work founded symbolic artificial intelligence and shares its premise with the economics: intelligence is search under constraint.
Concept web
Open the full webQuestions
What is bounded rationality?
Simon's term for the fact that real decision-makers have limited information, attention and time. Rationality operates within those limits rather than approximating an ideal of complete calculation.
What is satisficing?
Setting a threshold for an acceptable outcome and choosing the first option that meets it. Simon argued this is rational when searching for the optimum costs more than the improvement is worth.
What did Simon say about attention?
That an abundance of information creates a scarcity of attention. When information is plentiful, the binding constraint becomes deciding what to ignore rather than what to acquire.