Scientific Definition
Herbert Simon's frame: agents use heuristics that work under real cognitive limits, not impossible global optima.
Plain-English Definition
Herbert Simon's frame: agents use heuristics that work under real cognitive limits, not impossible global optima.
Feynman Explanation
'Rational' inside the brain you actually have, not the one economists drew on the board.
Core Principle
Herbert Simon's frame: agents use heuristics that work under real cognitive limits, not impossible global optima.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Herbert Simon's frame: agents use heuristics that work under real cognitive limits, not impossible global optima.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Designing policies and tools that assume bounded, not infinite, decision capacity.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
'Rational' inside the brain you actually have, not the one economists drew on the board.
Examples
- Camerer & Loewenstein cite Simon to justify behavioral assumptions about willpower and computation.
- Designing policies and tools that assume bounded, not infinite, decision capacity.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Stop optimizing for the agent in the textbook. Optimize for the one in the meeting.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Stop optimizing for the agent in the textbook. Optimize for the one in the meeting.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Deriving general rules from specific examples; the leap from instance to concept.
The brain evolved to reason adaptively, not always truthfully, to reduce the cost of errors.
We solve problems by adding, even when subtracting would be better.
Assuming that if one option is true, another must be false, when both can be true.
Presuming a purposeful actor behind events that may have no actor at all.
What cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating.
A finite set of well-defined instructions for solving a problem or performing a computation.
Every model simplifies reality; some are still useful.
Researchers favor conclusions aligned with their school, team, or sponsor.
Using personal stories or isolated examples instead of evidence.
Claiming something is true or better because most people believe it.
Assuming something is true because it is probable or possible.