If David Epstein had to choose a single thinker whose work most influenced Inside the Box, it would be Herbert Simon:
Simon was trained as a political scientist, but a handful of disciplines claim him. He won the highest award in computer science (the Turing Award), and in psychology (Outstanding Lifetime Contributions), and in economics—the Nobel Prize. When a graduate student once asked Simon to explain his mastery of multiple fields, Simon replied that he was actually just fanatically exploring a single topic: how humans make decisions.
The fanaticism began with a class project in 1935, when he was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago writing a term paper on public recreation in Milwaukee.
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The public works department had recently upgraded playgrounds with new equipment and attractive landscaping, and wanted the budget to prioritize maintenance of the beautiful new grounds. The school board, on the other hand, wanted to prioritize hiring staff to lead activities at the playgrounds.
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As he later wrote: “My previous study of economics provided me with a ready hypothesis: Divide the funds so that the next dollar spent for maintenance will produce the same return as the next dollar spent for leaders’ salaries.” But he saw no evidence that anyone actually viewed the decision in that manner. In the end, the school board had more influence over the budget, and so maintenance took a back seat. The organizational structure determined the choice, not some perfect calculus that weighed options for the next dollar.
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“Now I had a new research problem,” he wrote. “How do human beings reason when the conditions for rationality postulated by neoclassical economics are not met?”
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Rather than “maximize,” or make the best choice from all available alternatives, Simon showed that humans must “satisfice”: Consider a limited menu of options and choose one that is “good enough.” He later used computers to simulate the process of real human thought, which led him to co-create the first true AI program in 1956.
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Simon always had the same breakfast (bowl of oatmeal, half grapefruit, black coffee), and lived in the same house for forty-six years. He didn’t agonize over keeping his options open. When he had to make a decision, he considered a few alternatives, sometimes solicited advice, chose, and then remained open to lessons but not to dwelling on regret. “I was never aware that he changed his mind or re-thought options after deciding on something,” Katherine wrote. “Once made, his decision stuck.” Simon knew maximizing was unrealistic, and so he eagerly satisficed, saving anxiety and cognitive bandwidth anywhere he could. He expertly avoided Fredkin’s paradox—the notion that the more similar our options, the less choosing between them matters, but the harder choosing between them is. Thus, we are likely to spend the most energy on the least-important decisions. “The best is enemy of the good,” Simon wrote. One might be tempted to accuse him of a lack of ambition, if not for his trophy case.