Deciding in a world of information overload
The growing number of available information, due to development of new technologies and easier ways to get information has a paradoxical effect on uncertainty. Instead of providing a more precise picture of the available decision possibilities, the increase in the number of available options introduces psychological noise in the individual information processing.
We end up with what we can call a paradoxical psychological uncertainty: uncertain of what we can choose, what we can do and how we can do it trying to give a meaning to all the specific probabilities, risks, costs and benefits we are dealing with.
In this information jungle, our cognitive system gets out of control: his adaptive function (to be attracted by novel stimuli, and by what is different from what we already know) is put on trial.
