Re: Too Much Information
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In conclusion, more is better unless you can't handle it.
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I don't think that is a perfect conclusion. It is hard to determine if we are actually able to "handle" new information well. Often times the additional information you are getting seems helpful, but is just noise that can impair your decision making abilities. Once additional information is confirmed as just noise or is only very marginally beneficial, it is worth it to ignore it even if you can "handle it". To take an example from Blink, Dr. Brendan Reilly, the chairman of the Department of Medicine at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, instructed that the diagnosis of heart attacks be boiled down to 4 simple risk factors. The doctors were smart people who could use much additional and seemingly relevant information like if the patient has diabetes, a history of heart attacks, etc. However, once doctors used the simplified decision tree, it improved their ability to identify true heart attack patients by 70%. The key is that many years of evaluating and analyzing the evidence took place before the extra information was deemed as unhelpful.
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