ABSTRACT
In the design of complex systems, there is often a tension between a desire to achieve solutions that are globally optimal and the limitations imposed by the cognitive complexity of determining such optimal solutions (Billings, 1997). These limitations can arise for one of two reasons:
The individual operators who are trying to make the system function could not deal with the cognitive complexity of the task if they were to fully consider all of the relevant goals and data in arriving at an optimal solution.
The designers of technological tools, who intended to make it possible to overcome the cognitive limitations of human operators, are themselves unable to fully model the true complexity of the system.
