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Here's an interesting passage a relative sent me from a book called "The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do to Make Them Right," by Dietrich Dorner:

Anyone who has a lot of information, thinks a lot, and by thinking increases his understanding of the situation, will have not less but more trouble coming to a decision. To the ignorant, the world looks simple. If we dispense with gathering information, it is easy for us to form a clear picture of reality and come to clear decisions based on that picture.

Sometimes there is probably even positive feedback between the amount of information we have and our uncertainty. If we know nothing at all about something, we can form a simple picture of it and function on that basis. Once we gather a little information, however, we run into trouble. We realize how much we still don’t know, and we feel a strong desire to learn more. The more we know, the more clearly we realize what we don't know. Anyone who is fully informed will see much more than the bare outlines and will therefore find it extremely difficult to reach a clear decision.

Positive feedback between uncertainty and information gathering may explain why people sometimes deliberately refuse to take in information. It is said that before the Seven Years' War Frederick the Great declined to hear about the modernization of Austrian and Russian artillery. And it is said that before his invasion of Poland Hitler deliberately ignored a report that England was serious about coming to the aid of its ally if Germany attacked Poland.

New Information muddies the picture. Once we finally reach a decision we are relieved to have the uncertainty of decision making behind us. And now somebody turns up and tells us things that call the wisdom of that decision into question again. So we prefer not to listen.

To deal with a system as if it were a bundle of unrelated individual systems is, on the one hand, the method that saves the most cognitive energy. On the other hand, it is the method that guarantees neglect of side effects and repercussions and therefore guarantees failure.

A reductive hypothesis tying everything to one of variable has, of course, the positive virtue of being a holistic hypothesis, which is desirable because it encompasses the entire system. But it does so in a certain way, namely, reducing the investment of cognitive energy. The fact that reductive hypotheses provide simplistic explanations for what goes on in the world accounts not only for their popularity but also for their persistence. Once we know what the glue is that really holds the world together, we are reluctant to abandon that knowledge and fall back on an unsurveyable system made up of interacting variables linked together in no immediately obvious hierarchy. Unsurveyability produces uncertainty; uncertainty produces a fear. People use many dodges to defend their pet hypotheses against logical argument or the evidence of experience. One excellent way to maintain a hypothesis indefinitely is to ignore information that does not conform to it.

We are infatuated with the hypotheses we propose because we assume they give us power over things. We therefore avoid exposing them to the harsh light of real experience, and we prefer to gather only information that supports our hypotheses. In extreme cases, we may devise elaborate and dogmatic defenses to protect hypotheses that in no way reflect reality.