Check out these three concepts and how they do the same thing, but in different ways. This is important to consider when building your deck because it gets at the heart of what the designers are trying to do with the cards.
Tutoring, Card Drawing, and Deck Manipulation
Two of these cards are restricted in the Vintage format (where almost everything is legal) and banned in the Legacy format. One of them is not. The reason for the restrictions is that two of these cards are not costed properly. They "warp" or even "break" the formats where they are played, especially in multiple copies. Natural Selection is all good, though. Go nuts.
Warping and Breaking is what happens when something is under pressure. In Magic, there are a several ways to win. Cards that let you get other cards (tutoring), draw lots of cards (card drawing), or manipulate your library (deck manipulation) enable winning scenarios. In other words, in a game where one of the fundamental concepts is "randomness," being able to get the card(s) you want when you want them puts the rules under pressure. It breaks the game.
Of course, breaking the game is fun. Lots of cards break the game. Look at Omniscience. That's pretty broken... or it would be if the cost was 2U. Demonic Tutor costs two measly mana (1B), only one of which is Black. Compare this to Diabolic Tutor. It does the same thing, but at 4 mana (2BB), two of which are Black.
If Demonic Tutor is broken, Diabolic Tutor is the "fixed" version of the card. They figure that you have a heavier commitment to Black, need to generate two colored mana instead of one, and the total cost is 4, putting it in the turn 3-4 range. All that combined make for a card that works as intended. Tutoring is strong, but not format-warping at 4 mana.
Okay, so what about Ancestral Recall? If Demonic Tutor, a Black card, lets me get any card I want for only two mana (1B), what should a Blue card look like? Since I can't get any ol' card I want like I can with the tutor, I should be able to draw three cards instead. Plus, it's not like I can even necessarily use the cards. What if they are lands and I've already played a land this turn? So, it should cost even less mana to cast. Oh, and it should be an Instant so that I can cast it on my opponent's turn. Yeah, that sounds fair. Well, it did at the time because that's how they printed it. Ancestral Recall is totally broken.
There isn't really anything like Ancestral Recall. The designers have made many variations on card drawing, though. The closest Blue, Instant that draws three cards without any other funny business is probably Jace's Ingenuity at 5 mana (3UU). Otherwise, you could run Concentrate at Sorcery speed for 4 mana (2UU). Either way, you can't force your opponent to draw the cards like you could with Ancestral Recall. For that, you could run Inspiration at 4 mana (3U), but someone draws only two cards that way instead of three.
It's not a coincidence that all this card drawing shows up in the 4-5 mana range. The designers figure that at that point in the game, you deserve to draw some cards. Go ahead, treat yourself.
The last concept is deck manipulation. This started in Green, as you can see with Natural Selection, but mostly ended up in Blue. Green got a few other cards along this line, but not as many (or as good) as what Blue got. Cards like, Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, and Impulse let the Blue mage see a bunch of cards and choose the one they like the most. It's somewhere between tutoring for the exact card you want and outright drawing the cards you are looking at.
Notice the costs of the Blue mini-tutors, though. They are usually one or two mana, bringing them in line with the "fixed" versions of the cards above. Tutoring and card drawing both cost 4-5 mana. Manipulating your deck, however is much less mana-intensive. With tutoring, you effectively choose the card you want to "draw." With card drawing, even though you don't get to choose the cards you want to draw, you get to hold onto all of them to give yourself more options later. Deck manipulation works in a different way, giving you access to three or four cards on top of your library. Pick the best one! You can manipulate sooner, since the cost is lower. And, you can actually play the card you keep somewhere around the turn you'd be using the fixed tutors and card drawing.
What does this have to do with Commander? Well, this is foundation-of-the-game kind of stuff here. So, it applies to all formats. By all means, if you have a Demonic Tutor to run in your Commander deck, go for it. Just know that it is way under-costed. Running the properly-costed tutors (especially if you run all of them) makes your deck less "random," but you also usually give up the turn you tutor unless it's late in the game. I hate that. At two mana (1B), I can cast Demonic Tutor and usually play the card I got right there. Making things happen. At four mana (2UU), I can cast Diabolic Tutor and often pass my turn. Boo-hoo.
Ancestral Recall is banned in Commander, so that's out. But if you want to draw a bunch of cards, there are options: Fact or Fiction, Covenant of Minds, Fathom Trawl, and even Tidings are all going to give you a bunch of cards for about the right price. But you have the same problem as the tutoring. You draw a bunch of cards, but now what? If you've tapped out, you now have a snazzy handful of "waiting until your next turn while getting attacked."
Deck manipulation doesn't give you the exact card you need, but it does give you options. Options are king because they open up new lines of play. Options make good cards better and good decks better, without making every game a carbon copy of the last one. There's little doubt why Sensei's Divining Top is one of the best cards in the format. It's a low-cost artifact, cheap to activate, that manipulates your deck turn after turn, with a way to protect itself, and draw the card you really need when you need it. Woo doggie.
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