wallowinmaya comments on In Praise of Maximizing – With Some Caveats - Less Wrong

22 Post author: wallowinmaya 15 March 2015 07:40PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 16 March 2015 02:59:47PM 5 points [-]

Satisficing means selecting the first option that is good enough, i.e. that meets or exceeds a certain threshold of acceptability. In contrast, maximizing means the tendency to search for so long until the best possible option is found.

I see no mention of costs in these definitions.

Let's try a basic and, dare I say it, rational way of trying to achieve some outcome: you look for a better alternative until your estimate of costs for further search exceeds your estimate of the gains you would get from finding a superior option.

That's not satisficing because I don't take the first option alternative that is good enough. That's also not maximizing as I am not committed to searching for the global optimum.

Comment author: wallowinmaya 16 March 2015 03:20:44PM *  3 points [-]

I see no mention of costs in these definitions.

Let's try a basic and, dare I say it, rational way of trying to achieve some outcome: you look for a better alternative until your estimate of costs for further search exceeds your estimate of the gains you would get from finding a superior option.

Agree. Thus in footnote 3 I wrote:

[3] Rational maximizers take the value of information and opportunity costs into account.

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