Talk:Bounded rationality

Suggestions for Improvement
I would suggest removing the "conclusion" section, and finding an appropriate location for that information. This section creates an "essay-like" tone. I also believe this article has too many "see also" links. SpiralSource (talk) 06:56, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Is a system
is a system in which decisions are driven by the desire to identify and select the first acceptable alternative (satisficing).

I believe satisficing is a more specific term. Perhaps it should be mentioned, but I don't think the concept is synonymous with "bounded rationality"


 * The term was coined by Prof. Herbert Simon in 1981.

Its use in Simon 1957 suggests otherwise. Are we even sure Simon coined the term at all? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.148.115.157 (talk) 19:49, 9 September 2002

Albert Einstein
He gives Albert Einstein as an example of bounded rationality. How is Einstein a better example of bounded rationality than, say, me? In fact, how can Einstein be an example of bounded rationality? He lived his live within the limitations of bounded rationality, but Einstein was not a concept. That Einstein sentence makes no sense.
 * I agree, need an example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.158.162.75 (talk) 20:33, 3 March 2006

model extensions
Please do not alter the section on "Model extensions" without reading about the history of development and connection to potential games. User who took down material has had issues with wikipedia administration and has been reported Please do not take down the bounded rational section - you clearly do not understand the history of "citations needed" in other articles (namely econophysics) that required this section here. Topics in econophysics are critically linked to potential games, and the background is necessary here. Please understand the history and content of the development of the econophysics article before altering this section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:301:772A:E580:9184:6E6F:3252:F8EA (talk) 18:39, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

User who took out Bounded Rational section has issues with wikipedia administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Attic_Salt#Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Repeated_closure_of_RfC_by_involved_editor_.2B_alteration_of_others.27_talk_page_comments — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:301:772A:E580:9184:6E6F:3252:F8EA (talk) 18:59, 16 December 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:301:772A:E580:9184:6E6F:3252:F8EA (talk)

Do references go before or after see also? The article looks a bit wierd. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Forwardmeasure (talk • contribs) 22:22, 29 March 2007 (UTC).
 * See also goes before References read the instructions here: Guide_to_layout for more information. Trade2tradewell 08:37, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The use of "epsilon" requires explanation. Having looked it up, I *think* the meaning here is "an arbitrarily small quantity", but it is not at all clear.

Bounded Emotionality
Yeah, I totally agree. I have no idea why it's even here. I think someone is trying to put in there personal say. I am going to remove it. If anyone has any objections please discuss. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.14.65.64 (talk) 03:57, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

This seems to have snuck in here. It should be in it's own article not in this article as a section. Kevin Purcell (talk) 22:36, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Frankly this section is unreadable. I sincerely hope it's intended as a parody of feminism 90.214.138.35 (talk) 23:14, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Hyperrationality
Why does "hyperrational" redirect here when the phrase "hyper" doesn't even occur in the article? 85.180.64.52 (talk)

Ariel Rubenstein
Note as written:

"This puts the study of decision procedures on the research agenda."

This sentence draws my curiosity, but I don't fully understand .. is it clear?

Does it mean something like the following:

''Rubenstein's way of approaching bounded rationality provides an model through which it can be researched empirically. ''

--Ihaveabutt (talk) 03:20, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

On the three statements about Rubenstein, Khaneman and the comment below, there is not enough information in the current page. What is needed is a paragraph explaining why if you do not have perfect rationality, the way you decide what to do matters. I also think that we need to explain why "bounded rationality" should not be understood as some "super-rationality" of optimizing subject to lots of information and processing constraints. Will do this when I have the timeByronmercury (talk) 14:03, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Heuristics vs theoretical optima
The article says:

"Gigerenzer ... and his colleagues have shown that such simple heuristics frequently lead to better decisions than the theoretically optimal procedure."

That's ridiculous. The "theoretically optimal procedure", by definition, leads to the best possible decision. At best, the heuristics can equal it, but they can never lead to _better_ decisions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.33.24.212 (talk) 16:04, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Pair-of-scissors analogy.
IMHO, this sentence:


 * [Herbert A.] Simon used the analogy of a pair of scissors, where one blade is the "cognitive limitations" of actual humans and the other the "structures of the environment"; minds with limited cognitive resources can thus be successful by exploiting pre-existing structure and regularity in the environment.[1]

is more confusing than enlightening. I think it should either be expanded to actually explain the analogy, or else trimmed to remove mention of it.

—Ruakh TALK 16:00, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

epsilon optimization
added brief summary of this idea. I hope it is clear to the general reader.Byronmercury (talk) 10:19, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * In reponse to the expert ideas review by Valente. The concept of epsilon optimization and Epsilon-equilibrium are more of a game theoretic (and information theoretic) idea rather than simply an economic one. However, it is also used in economics, for example in macroeconomics - Akerloff and Yellen's work on Menu costs use the phrase "Near rationality" in their 1985 QJE article. It would however be good to see some more material on Bounded rationality in other disciplines such as economics, management and psychology.Byronmercury (talk) 10:28, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Valente's comment on this article
Dr. Valente has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Huw Dixon later argues that it may not be necessary to analyze in detail the process of reasoning underlying bounded rationality.[4] If we believe that agents will choose an action that gets them "close" to the optimum, then we can use the notion of epsilon-optimization, that means you choose your actions so that the payoff is within epsilon of the optimum. If we define the optimum (best possible) payoff as U U^{*}, then the set of epsilon-optimizing options S(ε) can be defined as all those options s such that:

U s U ϵU(s)\geq U^{*}-\epsilon.

The notion of strict rationality is then a special case (ε=0). The advantage of this approach is that it avoids having to specify in detail the process of reasoning, but rather simply assumes that whatever the process is, it is good enough to get near to the optimum.

This paragraph seems a bit unwarranted. Even considering that the literature on bounded rationality is very heterogeneous, this definition of bounded rationality is, to my knowledge, rarely used in the economic literature, and actually contrasts with the very core idea of rationality-as-procedure.

The article could be improved by mentioning the fields where the bounded rational principles have been applied. Concerning Economics they could be: management (e.g. organizational theory), economics of innovation, theory of consumption."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Valente has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Marco Valente & Giorgio Fagiolo & Luigi Marengo, 2003. "Endogenous Networks in Random Population Games," Computing in Economics and Finance 2003 68, Society for Computational Economics.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 15:09, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

HaeB edit on 29th Nov, 2016
Hi,

This refers to your edit on Bounded Rationality page. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bounded_rationality&diff=751579327&oldid=751530005 This article satisfy WP:RS requirements as this is a published article published by a peer reviewed journal. Kindly let me know what is the concern/issue. Thanks !!! TANI0208 (talk) 19:07, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Nietzschean utilitarianism
Some critics of Nudge have lodged attacks that modifying choice architectures will lead to people becoming worse decision-makers.

Also known as paternalistic Nietzschean utilitarianism.

Why does this kind of perverse sentiment slide under the radar so easily? The word "worse" conceals a multitude of problems, as a feasible observational correlate of "freeing people to invest their energy elsewhere", which is whose idea of "worse", anyway?

And if a person wanted to become a better decision maker, would filling the world with random decision challenges be the best strategy?


 * How to get better at the things you care about — Eduardo Briceño, November 2016

No, actually, to become better in an effective way, one would construct the challenge gradient with great thought and care.

It pains me to see this kind of sentence being given equal air time, but what can you do? &mdash; MaxEnt 23:46, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Etymology
Should be of interest: Matthias Klaes, "A conceptual history of the emergence of bounded rationality". Paradoctor (talk) 08:24, 28 April 2018 (UTC)