I don’t think the author does a good job of explaining the actual problem. The novice bowler example has nothing to do the tightness of the feedback loop. The

I don’t think the author does a good job of explaining the actual problem. The novice bowler example has nothing to do the tightness of the feedback loop. The issue is solely the statistical variation in the results. The novice bowler sometimes bowls too far to the left, sometimes to the right. This isn’t a result of conscious action, rather a lack of control. When the bowler aims for the middle of the lane and the ball randomly goes to the left on one occasion, aiming to the right on the next shot will not fix the problem; it will make it worse. Summarizing the real issue for the bowler: don’t make decisions based on random data. If you don’t know to what extent the data you’re looking at contains a random element, you should try to figure out how much before attempting a correction. Lengthening the feedback loop in this example might involve obscuring the bowler’s vision of the pins once the ball has begun rolling and presenting a video of the results 10 minutes later. It’s hard for me to imagine how this could be anything other than detrimental.