The Sciences of the Artificial

Direct notes from my 2002 sketchook:
Artificial things are: 1. synthesized, 2. many imitate natural things whil lackign the reality of the natural world. 3. have functions, goods, adaptations. 4. discussed interms of imperaties and descriptives.
ARTIFACT is INTERFACE. A simulation is no better than the assumptions built into it.

Economic Rationality : Adaptive Artifice.
Substantive Rationality: An intelligent system adjusts to its outer environment.
Procedural Rationality: the ability (through knowledge and computation) to discover appropriate adaptive behavior. A basic example is economics: textbook economics is substantive, choosing a profit-maximizing course of action. But really, it's procedural, trying to find a way to pick a profitable course of action.

There's no such thing as real-world optimization so real-world actors are not optimizers but rather satisficers, who look for 'good enough.

Noted on May 23, 2010