Comment by tmalsburg2

Great essay. Basically, they say that surprise doesn't tell us so much about the world but more about our model of the world. The degree of surprise can essentially be seen as a measure of our ignorance about some aspect of the world. As such surprise can serve as a guide for improving our understanding. However, it would be a mistake to see ignorance necessarily as a shortcoming. A simplifying model of the world is preferable if it gets the job done. In contrast to that, a perfectly accurate model of the world would render decision-making computationally intractable and is therefore not desirable.