The Perils of False Precision and Information Obesity

Ignoring information helps us make higher-quality decisions and recover our precious time and attention

In all aspects of our lives, we must constantly intake information, analyze it, and then act upon it.

Examples of this information may include the following.

• Listed calories on the Nutritional Information labels on the food we eat
• Body weight reading when we step on the scale
• The profit and loss of various positions in our investment account

There’s a hidden trap in that information in that it may be falsely precise, so excessive attention, time, and emotion may be wasted for no reason. More specifically:

• The calorie count in food does not account for how your body may process it since some people may convert carbohydrates into fat more efficiently or simply retain the fat itself more efficiently.
  Furthermore, the way calories are measured via food calorimetry involves burning a unit of food to see how much it heats up a unit of water, a process that doesn’t account for different biochemical reactions in different human bodies. Thus, the effective calorie count may vary considerably.
• Much of our body…