Relevance Realisation

John Vervaeke suggests that the way we deal with overwhelming complexity is by selectively ignoring the information that is not relevant to our situation or goals in a given moment. He calls this Relevance Realization, noting that intelligence may be defined not by the amount of information at one’s disposal, but by the ability to ignore most of it to focus on what is relevant.

There’s way too much information to pay attention to. There’s way too much information in your long-term memory and all the possible combinations. It’s combinatorially explosive. … you’re intelligent by ignoring overwhelmingly most of the information. And you zero in on the relevant information.

That’s what you need to play chess. You cannot evaluate all possible moves and permutations….