Limited Rationality Shapes Better Decisions: Insights from Herbert A. Simon

Something I’ve really become aware of recently is that rationality is sort of a bell curve. I think really successful people tend to be more biased than people in the middle of the curve.

I think this is because of optimization. Some people try to optimize for true beliefs, because it’s a defense mechanism, because of values, etc. whereas others try to optimize for useful beliefs, and contrarian beliefs can be more useful than perfectly accurate beliefs.