Good luck being purely data-driven

Good luck being purely data-driven

17 February, 2020 1 min read
data, rationality, decisions, narratives

This is a response to this unbelievably hot take on LinkedIn.

When you work with data, it’s to be expected that you also might think that making decisions and acting upon them must be solely based on data.

As if people are rational robots…

The Soviets also believed in using data to make decisions and plan ahead, and we all know how it turned out.

Just because you work with hammers doesn’t mean that everything transforms into a nail you can hit with abandon.

Data can be tortured to confess, as much as it can be used to support decisions.

Rhetoric can be used to mislead, as much as it can be used to stir people into the right actions.

PS: Not every government that didn’t act timely upon the pandemic data available is made of charismatic leaders. And not every government that acted timely has a charismatic leader.