This chapter outlines the action of passing off. It discusses whether goodwill is a thing (the metaphysical question) and whether passing off enables businesses to own goodwill (the conceptual question).

Put simply–although nothing about it is simple–public diplomacy is diplomacy carried out in public, as opposed to most of diplomacy, which is done in private. It is a set of activities that inform, engage and influence international public opinion to support policy objectives or create goodwill for the home country. It is important to understand what public diplomacy is not. It is not an advertising campaign to get foreigners to like your country–even if they dislike it, they can still support, or at least accept, a particular policy or action. It is not a propaganda effort to mislead or lie to audiences for tactical or other advantage. It is a sustained endeavor that advances your country’s policies and reflects a solid understanding of the host-country’s language, culture, history and traditions. Both public diplomacy and propaganda are means to project power.

Search for solution to problems inherently entails a problem of allocating attention in the face of uncertainty. It therefore requires the use of aspiration-based satisficing or other (dysfunctional or fast-and-frugal) heuristics and stopping rules to close off open-ended choice problems. In discussing the orthodox notion of optimal search, we end up concluding that it is logically deficient if applied to open-ended problems. Moreover, heuristic-based methods may be more effective means than lengthy deliberation for gathering information on which to base decisions – though it is shown how using heuristics can sometimes prove to be a dysfunctional way of navigating complex information environments. These issues are explored especially in relation to the challenges of choosing mobile (cell) phone connection contracts, filling job vacancies and finding marriage partners, with a focus on what is “procedurally rational,” i.e., contextually appropriate deliberation. The chapter’s analysis of shortcut search methods includes the role of market institutions, goodwill relationships and creative thinking, along with the use of heuristics for dealing with source credibility issues.