The rationality principle postulates that decision-makers always choose the best action available to them. It underlies most modern theories of decision-making. The principle does not take into account the difficulty of finding the best option. Here, we propose that computational complexity theory (CCT) provides a framework for defining and quantifying the difficulty of decisions. We review evidence showing that human decision-making is affected by computational complexity. Building on this evidence, we argue that most models of decision-making, and metacognition, are intractable from a computational perspective. To be plausible, future theories of decision-making will need to take into account both the resources required for implementing the computations implied by the theory, and the resource constraints imposed on the decision-maker by biology.

中文翻译：

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计算复杂性和人类决策

理性原则假定决策者总是选择对他们可用的最佳行动。它是大多数现代决策理论的基础。该原则没有考虑找到最佳选择的难度。在这里，我们提出计算复杂性理论 (CCT) 为定义和量化决策难度提供了一个框架。我们回顾了表明人类决策受计算复杂性影响的证据。基于这一证据，我们认为大多数决策模型和元认知模型从计算的角度来看是难以处理的。为了合理起见，未来的决策理论将需要考虑实现理论所暗示的计算所需的资源，以及生物学强加给决策者的资源限制。