Talk:Satisficing

optimisation
Italic textin clear terms describe the concept of optimisation in the theory of a firm

portmanteau
Is "satisficing" a portmanteau? When I first heard it, I figured it would be a portmanteau between "satisfy" and "sacrifice". I was going to edit this information it, but after reading the article, I'm not sure that it is correct. Does anyone know? Phasmatisnox 00:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe it is a portmanteau, but I assumed it was between "satisfy" and "suffice." I have no evidence of this.

I didn't think it was a portmanteau... Simon (1956) seems to have suggested that it's an old Northumbrian word meaning "satisfy". Maybe it was originally a portmanteau, but I don't remember reading any papers that explicitly say so. (Googling "satisficing + northumbria" seems to back this up, but I'm not really interested enough to do the work required to fix the page). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.210.164.43 (talk) 08:11, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

To think of the word "satisfice" as a portmanteau of "satisfy" and either "sacrifice" or "suffice" can be a useful means of remembering the sense of the word, as a satisficing strategy will sacrifice an optimal outcome in favour of a sufficient or satisfactory outcome. However, "satisfice" is not a portmanteau. The word originated as an alternative spelling of the transitive verb "satisfy" (influenced by the Latin "satisfacére") that is now obsolete except in northern dialects of England. ("satisfice" The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 12 Jul. 2010 ) —Andrew Fogg (talk) 12:39, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

--Arno Matthias (talk) 10:02, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

HAL
I don't get the part about HAL. I don't see how HAL's behavior supports the idea that satisficing is a primarily human behavior. If anything, it does the opposite -Domokato (talk) 21:19, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Novus Ordo??
I had a quick skim through Novus Ordo Mass and I don't quite get the connection. Any thoughts? --Slashme (talk) 05:54, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Rating
This article is well written and informative, but it needs inline citations. LK (talk) 19:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Citations Again
I agree that the attribution to Simon seems inadequately supported. The earliest use of the term that i'm aware of is by Roy Radner in 1975: "Satisficing," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Vol. 2, 1975, pp. 253-62. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.43.69.162 (talk) 20:29, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

1956 H. SIMON in Psychol. Rev. LXIII. 129/2 Evidently, organisms adapt well enough to ‘satisfice’; they do not, in general, ‘optimize’. —Andrew Fogg (talk) 12:44, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Relationship with optimisation
Anyone got anything against me creating a section called "relationship with optimization"?

This would take in the current "cybernetics and artificial intelligence" section as well as well as the stuff added in this edit to the "decision making" section.

Yaris678 (talk) 12:58, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * OK. Done that.
 * In the process I have taken out the following dubious statement:

During a 1997 chess game against Deep Blue, Garry Kasparov, after being defeated in a game where his computer opponent adopted a satisficing position, remarked that the computer was "playing like a human." Kasparov later explained that, when playing computers, chess masters could often defeat them by predicting the most "rational" move; however, satisficing made such a prediction unreliable.
 * I may do a bit more tidying up to the bit moved from the "decision making" section.
 * Yaris678 (talk) 13:21, 15 December 2011 (UTC)


 * It's highly misleading to characterize satisficing as maximizing the indicator function of the set of satisfactory solutions. A decision-maker generally does not operate on a dichotomous indicator. Instead it observes one or more attributes of a prospective solution x, and asks whether the quality of the attributes, and not x itself, is satisfactory. If not, the decision-maker may use a record of solutions, associated attributes, and associated qualities to select another prospective solution for evaluation. This is a far cry from maximizing the indicator function. It may hold that there is no free lunch for maximization of the indicator function when it does not hold for the map from prospective solutions to attributes/qualities. ThomHImself (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:46, 30 March 2012 (UTC).
 * Does that mean you want to remove the content added by User:Sniedo? Or maybe add something that indicates why this is not the best way of looking at satisficing?
 * The section on "Relationship with optimization" curently says the following
 * "One definition of satisficing is that it is optimization where all costs, including the cost of the optimization calculations themselves and the cost of getting information for use in those calculations, are considered."
 * This is contrasted to the idea of looking at satisficing as constraint satisfaction, which is what the indicator function stuff is all about. Do we need to make this contrast clearer?
 * Perhaps we could also expand on this definition. I think a helpful example when looking at the relationship with optimisation is this, which comes from the article:
 * "Example: A task is to sew a patch onto a pair of jeans. The best needle to do the threading is a 4 inch long needle with a 3 millimeter eye. This needle is hidden in a haystack along with 1000 other needles varying in size from 1 inch to 6 inches. Satisficing claims that the first needle that can sew on the patch is the one that should be used. Spending time searching for that one specific needle in the haystack is a waste of energy and resources."
 * Maybe there is a third way of looking at satisficing... something like...
 * "One definition of satisficing is that it is interruptible optimization where all costs, including the cost of the optimization calculations themselves and the cost of getting information for use in those calculations. The optimization will be interrupted at the point where the cost of further actions (such as gaining additional information) exceeds the benefit that can be gained by these actions."
 * Random thought: Is this the same as when you have a numerical method and have some tolerance and/or maximum number of iteration so that you don't need to go round in a loop forever?
 * Yaris678 (talk) 12:26, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi, do you know where the preexisting "Relationship with optimization" came from? I did some internet searching and wasn't to come up with a source that corroborates this idea. The section I'm referring to is
 * "One definition of satisficing is that it is optimization where all costs, including the cost of the optimization calculations themselves and the cost of getting information for use in those calculations, are considered."Thanks
 * 道僧 (talk) 02:00, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I think that this is a good section to have, but there is something missing. We need to relate the satisficing solution to the optimum. One way of doing this is by using the notion of an aspiration level in terms of the payoff function. We then have the satisficing solutions defined as those that achieve at least the aspiration, as opposed to the optimal solutions. I realise that this is an economists way of looking at it, so this could either go into the current section or an expanded economics section. I have put it in the optimization section for now: tell me what u think.Byronmercury (talk) 15:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)


 * OK, in the end I put it all in an expanded economics section. I also added something more about endogenous aspiration levels. Could any non-economics guys tell me if it makes any sense to them? I can add some more explanation with less jargon if required.Byronmercury (talk) 15:01, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Hello! I'm very interested in this topic of social psychology. I know that I am not at all a satisificer, and I generally think that men are more satisficing than are females. Perhaps you could look into studies related to gender differences in this trait to add to this article. Furthermore, a great article to refer to is "The Tyranny of Choice" by Barry Schwartz. Happy editting! - EHerman2015 (talk) 01:00, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

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Is EST section of appropriate length for this article?
Is there a particular reason why a multipage summary of EST (a very recently proposed theory, from a single doctoral dissertation from the University of Calgary) is in this article on a Nobel Laureate?

There are many hundreds of such dissertations which expand Simon's work; unless EST is judged to be a breakthrough contribution which dramatically changes the public's view of Simon's work, I would think it would be better placed in an article of its own and, if particularly noteworthy, a brief pointer to it would suffice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:405:4400:DF50:48B2:A10C:3B40:EFEB (talk) 16:12, 15 April 2018 (UTC)