Symbolic compression

Historical Accuracy Can Miss the Point, 12'27"

the reason why we remember and the reason why we represent is for meaning’s sake, and not for detail’s sake. And if we have to remember one detail rather than another, it’s always because there’s a reason — because memory is expensive and representation is expensive in terms of action and effort. And if you’re representing something, you want it to be like a bull’s-eye. You want it to be like a funnel that leads you towards the reason for that memory and that representation.

The Black Swan, Chapter Six - The Narrative Fallacy

We, members of the human variety of primates, have a hunger for rules because we need to reduce the dimension of matters so they can get into our heads. Or, rather, sadly, so we can squeeze them into our heads. The more random information is, the greater the dimensionality, and thus the more difficult to summarize. The more you summarize, the more order you put in, the less randomness. Hence the same condition that makes us simplify pushes us to think that the world is less random than it actually is.