Resource-rational analysis (Lieder & Griffiths 2020) self-describes as a direct extension of Anderson's rational analysis, pushing it toward Marr's algorithmic level

resource-rationalityrational-analysisandersonlieder-griffithsmarr-levelsbounded-optimalitycognitive-scienceoptimization

In their Behavioral and Brain Sciences target article, Falk Lieder and Thomas L. Griffiths state their project's genealogy in their own words: "Resource-rational analysis can be seen as an extension of rational-analysis from predicting behavior from the structure of the external environment to predicting cognitive mechanisms from internal cognitive resources and the external environment." The relationship is not incidental framing — it is built out structurally. Anderson's rational analysis (claim-rational-analysis-anderson-optimal-solution-marr-level, Anderson 1990, The Adaptive Character of Thought) is given as a six-step method (Box 1: specify goals, model the environment, assume minimal computational limits, derive optimal behavior, test against data, iterate). Resource-rational analysis is presented as a parallel five-step method (Box 2) that keeps Anderson's computational-level starting point but adds three things Anderson's program deliberately omitted: an explicit class of feasible algorithms, the resource costs those algorithms incur, and a derivation of the algorithm that optimally trades resource cost against approximation accuracy.

The authors describe the move as "pushing the principles of rational analysis toward Marr's algorithmic level" — the same computational/algorithmic distinction already load-bearing in the vault's Anderson note. Where classical rational analysis assumes an essentially unbounded optimizer and reads behaviour off the environment's structure alone, resource-rational analysis makes the optimizer's own limits part of what is being optimized.

This confirms one of the two legs the vault's optimization-as-theory-of-mind bridge was probing: the Anderson side of that bridge holds, explicitly and quotably. The Werbos side does not (claim-resource-rational-analysis-descends-from-bounded-optimality-not-werbos-adp), and the combined verdict is worked out in observation-resource-rational-analysis-confirms-anderson-leg-not-werbos-leg.