It should be remembered that just as the Declaration of Independence promises the pursuit of happiness rather than happiness itself, so the iterative scientific model building process offers only the pursuit of the perfect model. For even when we feel we have carried the model building process to a conclusion some new initiative may make further improvement possible. Fortunately to be useful a model does not have to be perfect. George E. Box (1979)

complexity may work in the odd case, but more often than not it reduces validity

humans are incorrigibly inconsistent in making summary judgments of complex information. When asked to evaluate the same information twice, they frequently give different answers.

Unreliable judgements cannot be predictors of anything.

Since all models are wrong the scientist must be alert to what is importantly wrong. It is inappropriate to be concerned about mice when there are tigers abroad. George E. P. Box (1976)

I’m planning to put this into Arxiv, but thought I’d share via a blog post first in case there’s any feedback.

TL;DR Variation is important in decision making.

Introduction

In the book “Justice: What’s The Right Thing to Do?”