thinking-bounded-rationality
Bounded Rationality and Satisficing
Overview
Herbert Simon's Bounded Rationality recognizes that human decision-making is limited by three fundamental constraints: available information, cognitive capacity, and time. Rather than pursuing optimal solutions (which is often impossible), Simon proposed "satisficing"—a portmanteau of satisfy + suffice—choosing solutions that are good enough to meet requirements.
Core Principle: "Decision makers can satisfice either by finding optimum solutions for a simplified world, or by finding satisfactory solutions for a more realistic world." — Herbert Simon
When to Use
- Making design decisions under time pressure
- Facing complex problems with incomplete information
- Analysis paralysis is blocking progress
- Optimization costs exceed potential benefits
- Need to set stopping criteria for searches/research
- Evaluating when "good enough" beats "perfect"
- Resource allocation under constraints
Decision flow:
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