Satisficing

The brain can at times be a mechanical bull that we cling to with one grimy hand. Here, machines of modern convenience and hedonism come into intimate, messy contact with biological and neurotic human behavior. This film, Satisficing, explores resistance, interjection, and compulsion in everyday routines.

“Satisficing” is a combination of the words “to satisfy” and “to sacrifice” that describes the act of prioritizing realism and momentum, over the exhaustive and paralytic pursuit of perfection. A “satisficer” makes do and moves forward. It’s not laziness or settling — it’s steering and survival.

In psychology, satisficing pushes back against maximizing, trading endless analysis for quick, workable decisions. In economics, satisficing habits lean into bounded rationality, where time, energy, and information are always limited. In management, satisficers champion progress over perfection. Algorithms mirror human shortcuts to be fast, flexible, and efficient. In evolutionary biology, satisficers ensure survival by balancing resources and risk.

The nature of organisms, our connections, internal worlds, and the social and technological systems we create are dependent on the satisficer model, in many ways for better and for worse. All great truths are and/both, not either/or.

This film dives into how satisficing contributes to the neurotic underbelly of the social unconscious inhabited by the individual. Are we messy and scary, to the technology we’ve created to clean us and soothe our fears? How do satisficing and obsessive-compulsive tendencies become more than the sum of their parts for the contemporary individual?

October 2022

Screenings: Pop-up: Screendance Showing Fall ’22

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