Tyler Cowen argues in a TED talk (~15 min) that stories pervade our mental lives. He thinks they are a major source of cognitive biases and, on the margin, we should be more suspicious of them - especially simple stories. Here's an interesting quote about the meta-level:
What story do you take away from Tyler Cowen? ...Another possibility is you might tell a story of rebirth. You might say, "I used to think too much in terms of stories, but then I heard Tyler Cowen, and now I think less in terms of stories". ...You could also tell a story of deep tragedy. "This guy Tyler Cowen came and he told us not to think in terms of stories, but all he could do was tell us stories about how other people think too much in terms of stories."
It's getting more and more obvious that my neurology is a significant factor, here. I deal poorly with situations with some kinds of limited context; I seem to have never developed the heuristics that most people use to make sense of them, which is a fairly common issue for autistics. I don't make the tradeoff you suggest as often as most people do, and I do tend to juggle more bits of information at any given time, because it's the only way I've found that leads me, personally, to reasonably accurate conclusions. Instances where I can meaningfully address a situation with limited context are rare enough that tools to handle them seem useless to me.
I may need to work on not generalizing from one example about this kind of thing, though, to avoid offending people if nothing else.
Btw, see also Yvain's The Trouble With "Good".