The sciences of the artificial

What Hacker News says

1. saintblasphemerJan 2024
   The Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert A. Simon. Absolutely foundational.
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2. mreidAug 2022
   I learnt the strategy of "satisficing" from Herbert Simons' "Sciences of the Artificial" book. It suggests not bothering to split hairs amongst alternatives once options have met some threshold for acceptance.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing

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3. ilophuAug 2020
   Going to plug a couple of relevant things here.

   - A book I saw recommended here called "The Sciences of the Artificial," which talks about the purpose and practice of modeling with computers.

   - An old post of mine, where I wrote that "creating knowledge is a philosophical act that businesses mostly didn't realize they were getting into when they got on the data science bandwagon."

   - A post by HN user "wenc," a practicing data scientist. I'm going to copy-paste the whole thing because I think it's that good and relevant:

   ---

   Data science is correctly valued when you realize how relatively unimportant it is. It is a small cog in a larger machinery (or at least it ought to be). You see, decision-making involves (1) getting data, (2) summarizing and predicting, and (3) taking action. Continuous decision-making -- the kind that leads to impact -- involves doing this repeatedly in a principled fashion, which means creating a system around the decision process. For systems thinkers, this is analogous to a feedback control loop which includes sensor measurements + filters, controllers and actuators. (1) involves programmers/data engineers who have to create/manage/monitor data pipelines (that often break). This the sensor + filters part, which is ~40% of the system. (2) involves data scientists creating a model that guides the decision-making process. This is the model of the controller (not even the controller itself!), which is ~20% of the system. Having the right model is great, but as most control engineers will tell you, even having the wrong model is not as terrible as most people think because the feedback loop is self-correcting. A good-enough model is all you need. (3) involves business/front-line peoplewho actually implement decisions in real-life. This is where impact is delivered. ~40% of the system. This is the controller + actuator part, which makes the decisions and carries them out. Most data scientists think their value is in creating the most accurate model possible in Jupyter. This is nice, but in real-life not really that critical because the feedback-loop inherently moderates the error when deployed in a complex, stochastic environment. The right level of optimization would be to optimize the entire decision-making control feedback loop instead of just the small part that is "data science". p.s. data scientists who have particularly low-impact are those who focus on producing once-off reports (like consultant reports). Reports are rarely read, and often forgotten. Real impact comes from continuous decision-making and implementing actions with feedback. Source: practicing data scientist

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4. dr_dshivSep 2019
   That's a good example of disenchantment in AI. It's not magic, but seems to be, so the more it's understandable, the more people tend to claim it isn't AI. I like how your comment pins this on the nature of designing -- Herb Simon gives a good definition of design in "sciences of the artificial" and this system seems to be designing. Not drawing, but designing.
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5. DyslexicAtheistFeb 2019

     - Jacques Ellul "The Technological Society"
     - N.N.Taleb "The Black Swan"
     - Danny Kahneman "Thinking Fast & Slow" (also his papers with Amos Tversky)
     - Thomas Ligotti "The Conspiracy against the Human Race"
     - Peter Wessel Zapffe "On the Tragic" & "The Last Messiah"
     - Sokal, Alan D "Intellectual Impostures"
     - Simon Herbert "A The Sciences of the Artificial"
     - Herbert Marcuse "One-Dimensional Man"
     - Schopenhauer "Parerga and Paralipomena"
     - Lewis Mumford "The Story of Utopias"
     - Michel Foucault "Discipline and Punish"
     - Edward S. Herman "Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass Media"
     - Franklin Foer "World Without Mind The Existential Threat of Big Tech"
     - Ben Goldacre "Bad science"
     - Emil Cioran "The Book of Delusions"
     - Gracian "The Art of Worldly Wisdom"
     - Heidegger Martin "The Question Concerning Technology"
     - Jacques Ellul "Propaganda The Formation of Mens Attitudes"
     - Mumford Lewis "The Culture of Cities"
     - Orwell "1984", "Down and Out in Paris and London", "Animal Farm"
     - Huxley "Brave New World", "The Doors Of Perception"
     - Michael Pollan "How to change your mind"
     - Jeff Hawkins "On Intelligence"
     - Fyodor Dostoevsky "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man", "Notes from the Underground", "The Brothers Kasamarov", "The Gambler", "The Idiot", "Crime & Punishment"
     - Peter Smith "Teach Yourself Logic"
     - Thomas More "Utopia"
     - Emil Cioran "The Trouble With Being Born"
     - Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago"
     - Nietzsche "Complete works"
     - Bulgakov "Master and Margarita"
     - Gerald M. Weinberg "The Secrets of Consulting"

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6. scrootMar 2018
   Seconding the recommendation of Herbert Simon, especially Sciences of the Artificial.
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