Thermodynamics as a theory of decision-making with information-processing costs
2013
Article
ei
Perfectly rational decision-makers maximize expected utility, but crucially ignore the resource costs incurred when determining optimal actions. Here, we propose a thermodynamically inspired formalization of bounded rational decision-making where information processing is modelled as state changes in thermodynamic systems that can be quantified by differences in free energy. By optimizing a free energy, bounded rational decision-makers trade off expected utility gains and information-processing costs measured by the relative entropy. As a result, the bounded rational decision-making problem can be rephrased in terms of well-known variational principles from statistical physics. In the limit when computational costs are ignored, the maximum expected utility principle is recovered. We discuss links to existing decision-making frameworks and applications to human decision-making experiments that are at odds with expected utility theory. Since most of the mathematical machinery can be borrowed from statistical physics, the main contribution is to re-interpret the formalism of thermodynamic free-energy differences in terms of bounded rational decision-making and to discuss its relationship to human decision-making experiments.
Author(s): | Ortega, PA and Braun, DA |
Journal: | Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A |
Volume: | 469 |
Number (issue): | 2153 |
Pages: | 1-18 |
Year: | 2013 |
Month: | May |
Department(s): | Empirical Inference |
Bibtex Type: | Article (article) |
DOI: | 10.1098/rspa.2012.0683 |
BibTex @article{OrtegaB2013, title = {Thermodynamics as a theory of decision-making with information-processing costs}, author = {Ortega, PA and Braun, DA}, journal = {Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A}, volume = {469}, number = {2153}, pages = {1-18}, month = may, year = {2013}, doi = {10.1098/rspa.2012.0683}, month_numeric = {5} } |