The Myth of Objective Data

At our disposal we have a detailed manifestation of how the world works: data’s recording of what happened. From that we seek to generalize, to draw grand conclusions, to ascertain patterns that will hold true in situations not yet seen. We attempt to reverse engineer the world’s laws and principles. It’s the discovery of the method in the madness.

The traditional model holds that in order to be rigorous, one must insist on making data-based decisions. A more effective model holds that in one domain of the world, that is correct, but in another it leads to dangerously flawed choices, and there, imagination is critical.

As scientific practice has matured, we’ve come to understand the value of interpretation, situated knowledge and trained judgement; but this fallacy has been perpetuated by our technologies, which flatten and lump together the myriad different expressions of the world.

any dataset begins with somebody deciding to collect the numbers. What numbers are and aren’t collected, what is and isn’t measured, and who is included or excluded are the result of all-too-human assumptions, preconceptions, and oversights.

OBJECTIVISM. This is what market researchers, pollsters, and social scientists do. They observe behavior, design surveys, and collect data on people. This is a great way to understand the trends among populations of people, but it’s a terrible way to see an individual person. If you adopt this detached, dispassionate, and objective stance, it’s har