Who knows. I've considered this topic probably about as much as anyone has. And I don't know.

We can say that rules only inhibit behavior. Rules are fundamentally barriers that define the potential space of any system. That's all.

The more rules, the less possible outcomes because you're limiting the potential space in ways that intersect data. Use this data, don't use that data.

Even when we define really good rules, this is still true.

Yet, clearly rules are important. They define the interactions available to a system. Strange relationship, they're both the definers of the structure of data as well as the interactions available to data.

For instance, you can have a very simple grid-based game. Conway's Game of Life style. But without rules, the system produces nothing at all. No novel information. It doesn't interact because it has no rules that instruct it how.

Yet, the more rules you add to the simple game, the greater restraint on the possible combinations that can arise becomes. Sometimes that's a good thing, as it wouldn't do you any good to have infinite potential space if the novel information only showed up so rarely as to actually see it.

Rules. They're important. But too many constrain a system in ways that can only reduce its effectiveness.

I don't know what that balance is, but companies like OpenAI seem to be doing a pretty good job of it.