p.48 Creativity is that thinking which results in the production of ideas (or other products) that are both novel and worth while (Taylor, 1960a).
p.53 Consideration of this paradox [JLJ - the St. Petersburg Paradox] and of the fact that people buy insurance even though the seller makes a profit led Bernoulli (1738) to suggest that individuals choose so as to maximize not expected value, but expected utility.
p.54 The theory of games is by no means limited to what is popularly called a "game." Instead, it may be said at least roughly to deal with those decision situations in which the decision-maker has an opponent - in which his choice of action is contingent upon what one or more other decision-makers do. In a sense, game theory is concerned with one kind of decision making under uncertainty - uncertainty introduced because of the unknown decisions of the other players. [JLJ - I would say uncertainty applies to the connection between cause and effect of actions.]
p.62 Return to the example of the individual involved in purchasing a new car. He sets out to find alternate possibilities. In the examination of each in turn there may be implicit or explicit the thought that he wants a car which will sell for not more than $3,000, be regarded as one appropriate to a man of his status... [JLJ - this is 1965... Year End Close Dow Jones Industrial Average 969 Average Cost of new house $13,600.00 Average Income per year $6,450.00 Gas per Gallon 31 cents Average Cost of a new car $2,650.00 Loaf of bread 21 cents Average Rent per month $118.00 ]
p.62 The essential idea is that the individual searches until he finds an alternative which is "good enough." [JLJ - perhaps, but the reason "good enough" triggers the stop point is that we have other problems which are also contesting for our attention. Once we have a "good enough" solution, our attention is now directed to another pressing problem, another "good enough" solution which we might then want to improve, or to relaxation/recreation interests. Once we have diagnostically determined that a "certain move" in a game is not the most likely, and we have a stable position/fallback margin, our attention is diverted to other pressing concerns. We will return to this "certain move" later, if we have time, and if the shallowness of our previous explorations raises our concerns.]
p.79 The size of the maze or game tree involved in playing chess is so large that, as previously pointed out, choice of a move by considering all possible continuations of the game to termination is simply not feasible. [JLJ - this strategy does not require any intelligence.]
p.80 We believe that any information processing system - a human, a computer, or any other - that plays chess successfully will use heuristics generically similar to those used by humans ([Newell, Shaw & Simon] 1958a, p. 334).[JLJ - yes, but tactical chess can be played using a Null-move pruning heuristic, and this is NOT how humans play chess. It seems that NS&S have not addressed the complexity of the position on the board, or the loose/tight coupling of the game pieces. The positional style of chess is played by constructing an ultra-stable, resilient position and by enacting diagnostic tests to estimate stability. We prepare ourselves for the future situation where we will be surprised by the response of our opponent, or by the changed response of our diagnostic tests.]
p.80 "The evidence suggests strongly that expert chess players discover combinations because their programs incorporate powerful selective heuristics and not because they think faster or memorize better than other people" (Simon & Simon, 1962, p. 429) [JLJ - perhaps, but in correspondence chess such combinations are foreseen many moves ahead and are avoided by the player who would then have the disadvantage. Now what do you do? You need a heuristic that plays a strong positional game of chess, prepared of course to leverage any discovered tactical shots as necessary. In this case, you could benefit from management experiments which untangle cause and effect.]
