The Problem of Too Much Info
March 17, 2020
The belief is that the more information one has the better decision one can make. Is this really true? The Eurasia Review shares how too much information might be a bad thing in the article, “More Information Doesn’t Necessarily Help People Make Better Decisions.”
According to the Stevens Institute of Technology, too much knowledge causes people to make worse decisions. The finding explains that there is a critical gap between assimilating new information with past knowledge and beliefs. Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Steves Institute Samantha Kleinberg is studying the phenomenon using AI and machine learning to investigate how financial advisors and healthcare professionals to their clients. She discovered:
“ ‘Being accurate is not enough for information to be useful,’ said Kleinberg. ‘It’s assumed that AI and machine learning will uncover great information, we’ll give it to people and they’ll make good decisions. However, the basic point of the paper is that there is a step missing: we need to help people build upon what they already know and understand how they will use the new information.’
For example: when doctors communicate information to patients, such as recommending blood pressure medication or explaining risk factors for diabetes, people may be thinking about the cost of medication or alternative ways to reach the same goal. ‘So, if you don’t understand all these other beliefs, it’s really hard to treat them in an effective way,’ said Kleinberg, whose work appears in the Feb. 13 issue of Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications.”
Kleinberg and her team studied 4,000 participants on their decision making processes with scenarios they would be familiar with to ones they would not. When confronted with an unusual problem, participants focused on the problem without any extra knowledge, but if they were asked to deal with a regular scenario such as healthcare or finances their prior knowledge got in the way.
Information overload and not being able to merge old information with the new is a problem. How do you fix it? Your answer is as good as mine.
Whitney Grace, March 17, 2020
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
