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Friday, December 30, 2022

Herbert A. Simon and attention

Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001) was an American political scientist best known for his contributions to economics, psychology and computer science. Wikipedia says,

 

"...Simon was among the pioneers of several modern-day scientific domains such as artificial intelligence, information processing, decision-making, problem solving, organization theory, and complex systems." (Wikipedia: Herbert A. Simon, 12.19.22 UTC 07:17)

 

The rest of this post is some quotes from Simon.

 

Attention and information

 

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, an a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." (Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World, 1971)

 

"Solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent." (The Sciences of the Artificial, 1969)