Maxificing: Life on a Budget; or, If You Would Maximize, Then Satisfice!

Abstract

In recent times, the view that the doctrine of maximization is too something — too demanding, too unrealistic, too stringent, or some such thing — has come into a certain vogue. Not that we are supposed to "minimize," however: The Hegelian synthesis proposed has it that instead, the rational individual "satisfices." Roughly, the idea is that we set a threshold such that the next sample of what we are looking for — call it F — that meets that criterion is to be chosen, even though we may be well aware that somewhere out there, there are bigger and better Fs.