To understand why less information and computation can be…

To understand why less information and computation can be more, it is important to know that the complex policies base their estimates on existing data, such as the past performance of indus-try portfolios. The data fall into two categories, information that is useful to predicting the future, and arbitrary information or er-ror that is not. Since the future is unknown, it is impossible to dis-tinguish between these, and the complex strategies end up including arbitrary information.

— from Takeoff Into Chaos · Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer

In the book

We want every duck in a tidy, evenly spaced, aesthetically pleasing row before we will waddle anywhere. But the row never comes, and the waiting costs more than we think — past a point, more time, more memory, and more data do not sharpen the judgment, they dull it. The professional's discipline is the opposite of paralysis: he refuses to tolerate disorder, eliminates chaos from his workspace so as to banish it from his mind, and finds that the organization is what frees him to act and create. — Takeoff Into Chaos

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