“These are the four principal components of the SEU model: a cardinal utility function, an exhaustive set of alternative strategies, a probability distribution of scenarios for the future associated with each strategy, and a policy of maximizing expected utility.” — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
“In the past half century, however, an impressive body of formal theory has been erected by mathematical statisticians and economists to help us reason about these matters-without introducing a new kind of logic. The basic idea of this theory is… — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent - not with how things are but with… — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
Technology may create a condition, but the questions are what do we do about ourselves. We better understand ourselves pretty clearly and we better… — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
The world is vast, beautiful, and fascinating, even awe-inspiring - but impersonal. It demands nothing of me, and allows me to demand nothing of… — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
Innovation has a lot to do with your ability to recognise surprising and unusual phenomena. — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
All correct reasoning is a grand system of tautologies, but only God can make direct use of that fact. — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
“We see that reason is wholly instrumental. It cannot tell us where to go; at best it can tell us how to get there.… — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
“It is not my aim to surprise or shock you—but the simplest way I can summarize is to say that there are now in… — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
No one has characterized market mechanisms better than Friedrich von Hayek. — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
One of the first rules of science is if somebody delivers a secret weapon to you, you better use it. — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be - how they ought to be in order to… — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
“[Stated in 1965:] Machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do.” — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image
“Reason, then, goes to work only after it has been supplied with a suitable set of inputs, or premises. If reason is to be… — Herbert Simon Copy Share Image