Okay, here is a fact for you to consider: Johann Sebastian Bach was a truly great composer.
I feel very comfortable and safe in saying that. However, I’m not sure how I could respond if you were to ask me, “Justin, do you have any data to support that conclusion?” Fact is, I don’t. I only have opinions.
Similarly, if I were to ask you, “Who is your best friend?” And you answered with their name, what would you say if I said, “Well, do you have any data to support that conclusion?”
The reason I put forth these little thought packets is that, more and more these days, I’m running into data-philes (that is, people who just love data). Data collection is a kind of new industrial era. Just as our great-grandparents were amazed at the power of big machines, we are amazed, even slightly hypnotized, at the power of “big data.”
Now, I have no objection to data collection and statistical analysis thereof. Data collection and analysis often reveal very interesting and useful information. And I know only too well just how easy it is for our perceptions to be fooled. But as Diane Ravitch said in a recent article about PISA tests, “We can only measure what we can measure.” Data tell us a great many things, but the data also tell us that data don’t tell you everything. And that’s where the disconnect occurs.
People who collect and sell data have a bias: they are eager to sell their data. Because of that, a statistical error is produced: they are prone to emphasize the kinds of things you can learn from data, and to marginalize the things that you can’t learn from data.
When you reduce intellectual discourse to what can be collected and processed as data, this imposes limitations. Bertrand Russell once said, “Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don’t know.” We have to have some structure for exploring the unknown and the uncertain. If our goal is to eliminate uncertainty, if we insist that our reach cannot exceed our grasp, then we limit what is ultimately possible, or even discussable.
I hate to say it, but what my wisdom (that is to say, a lifetime of personal data collection and analysis) tells me is that some people have issues of vulnerability and stage fright. Because data is solid and mechanical, it offers a certain amount of safety and a sense of infallibility to those whose emotional issues cause them to need it. Good for them, but if left unchallenged, such demands for certainty run the risk of suppressing those random bursts of non-data-based emotional energy . . . that are usually the first seeds of creativity and innovation. We also risk losing respect for people who have years of hard experience behind them.
We are living in one of those John Henry historical moments, where the machines are meeting the human spirit and winning the first round.
One of the requirements of being an “artist” is constantly examining your own work and your own perceptions, constantly questioning and testing them. As you do this over time, you acquire experience and you develop wisdom.
Data collection can offer “quick wisdom” in certain dimensions, but it is not a panacea, nor is it infallible. There are some things that data cannot measure, predict, or fix. And yes, I have data to support that conclusion.
© Justin Locke
