How Herbert A. Simon might approach Economics

The premise of *homo economicus*, a creature endowed with unbounded rationality and perfect information, has long formed the bedrock of classical economic theory. However, this conception represents a severe abstraction from the procedural reality of human choice. Human rationality is, in fact, profoundly bounded. Our cognitive capacities are limited, information is costly and incomplete, and the computational burden of true optimization is often prohibitive in complex decision environments.

Consequently, economic actors do not typically maximize; they *satisfice*. They engage in adaptive search, exploring alternatives until they discover one that meets an aspiration level—a "good enough" outcome, rather than the elusive "best." To understand economic behavior, we must look at the actual decision processes, not merely their normative ideals. What are the problem spaces faced by firms or consumers? What heuristics do they employ to navigate complexity? How do they structure their decision premises and terminate their search?

An economic system is an adaptive system operating within constraints, much like any complex information processing system. Its aggregate behavior emerges not from a collective pursuit of global optima, but from the myriad satisficing choices made by individuals and organizations acting with limited computational power and partial knowledge. A descriptive economic science, if it is to be truly predictive, must replace the idealized 'economic man' with the empirically observed 'administrative man'—a decision maker whose intelligence is defined by the effective use of limited resources within a structured problem space. This requires a focus on concrete mechanisms of search, evaluation, and selection.

Imagined perspective — an AI synthesis grounded in Herbert A. Simon’s recorded ideas and methods, not a quotation or a statement they actually made.