<h1>Bounded Rationality: A Response to <a href="analysis.html">Rational Analysis</a></h1> <a href="../../refer.html#simon">Simon</a> criticizes <a href="../../refer.html#anderson">Anderson</a>'s proposed <a href="analysis.html">rational analysis</a> as misdirected based on the following three arguments: <ol> <li>Humans are not <b>optimal</b> and only in some cases locally optimal; </li><li><b>Assumptions</b> made by cognitive modelers about <i>how</i> an agent performs architectural tasks, which Anderson labels unnecessary, are subsequently tacitly repeated by him in his analyses; </li><li>Data regarding <b>human behavior</b> on isomorphic task domains explicitly denies the theory. (Question: Item 2 in Anderson's recipe states that one must model the environment to which the agent has adapted. Does this not limit the task to domain to particular isomorphs and thereby negate the criticism?) </li></ol><p> </p><h2>Optimality</h2> Evolution did not give rise to optimal agents, but to agents which are in some senses locally optimal at best, locally satisfactory in norm, and becoming extinct at worst. Thus, a theory based upon optimal behaviors is tenuous at best.