Ian Leslie says we really can be too clever for our own good:
“If a rat is faced with a puzzle in which food is placed on its left 60% of the time and on the right 40% of the time, it will quickly deduce that the left side is more rewarding, and head there every time, thus achieving a 60% success rate. Young children adopt the same strategy. When Yale undergraduates play the game, they try to figure out some underlying pattern, and end up doing worse than the rat or the child.”
The higher the stakes, the more over-thinking becomes a problem. So—good news!—all we have to do is get better at ignoring information.
Finally, something I can excel at.
