Herbert A. Simon
A Nobel laureate who made significant contributions to cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and decision-making, co-developing early AI programs.
Quotes by Herbert A. Simon
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
The capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world—or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.
Satisficing is a portmanteau of 'satisfy' and 'suffice'.
Decision making is a matter of finding a good enough solution, not necessarily the best one.
The proper study of mankind is the science of design.
Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its potential for adapting to its environment.
The world is not a collection of independent variables.
Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
The computer is not a brain, but a tool for the brain.
Rationality is bounded when it is not possible to compute the optimal solution.
The problem of management is not to find the optimal solution, but to find a good enough solution.
The central task of a theory of organization is to explain how organizations behave.
The decision maker is not an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly rational being.
The world is not a collection of independent variables, but a system of interacting parts.
The process of scientific discovery is not a logical process, but a psychological one.
The computer is a tool for extending human intelligence.
The most important thing in science is not to get the right answer, but to ask the right question.
The human mind is a symbol-manipulating system.
The future of artificial intelligence is not to replace human intelligence, but to augment it.