Sally Kohn: More information is not always better. In a world of risk, you can fine-tune and that means more information is always better if you forget the costs... But in a world of uncertainty that doesn't hold. So we have shown for a number of heuristics that they do better if you have only a certain amount of information.
Psychologist and author Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development talks about his book Gut Feelings with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Gigerenzer argues for the power of simple heuristics--rules of thumb--over more complex models when making real-world decisions. He argues that many results in behavioral economics that appear irrational can be understood as sensible ways of coping with complexity.