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Not everything - "data" does not trump philosophy. That we ought to go by the facts (i.e. data) and that we are capable of discovering the facts are examples of
by maxharris 14y ago
Not everything - "data" does not trump philosophy. That we ought to go by the facts (i.e. data) and that we are capable of discovering the facts are examples of philosophical ideas.
- outside1234 14y agoYou got me there! The larger trend I'm trying to point out though is the steady move away from intuition based companies and into companies nearly completely driven by data. The shift that we are seeing in lean startups reflects this - it is not a guru based process but a data driven one to start a company. Obviously, execution counts as well, but given two otherwise equal companies: One with a guru based approach (ala Steve Jobs) and one with a data driven process, I believe the inflection point has been reached where the data driven company wins consistently.
- stfu 14y agoWasn't that the approach of some Cybernetic idealistits in the 50s? That the world would be such a better place, if we just could ban intuition and let everything get run by machines? Even if that would be hypothetically be possible, I would neither want to work nor life in a world like that. Predictability kills any excitement.
- halvsjur 14y agoIsn't that a tad black and white?
- sopooneo 14y agoI feel like data helps you reach the peak of local maxima. And perhaps that lines up with absolute maxima for mature industries. But I expect people still need to be involved to get us in range of the target.
- lgas 14y agoWhat makes you think facts aren't data?
- maxharris 14y agoSorry for the confusion. I was using the two terms interchangeably. I've edited my original comment to make that more clear.
- mbell 14y agoI don't follow. Most 'facts' are considered facts because there is overwhelming data in support of their accuracy. I can't actually think about a 'fact' that isn't based on such study outside what are considered fundamental laws (which often time are discovered based on data collection). For a fact to exist without massive supporting evidence via test data is outside the realm of science which doesn't make it much of a fact in my opinion.
- shoo 14y agocrudely, the "philosophy that data trumps everything" trumps "data". which perhaps was roughly similar to what you were saying if we rephrase "the philosophy that data trumps everything" as "the ideas of the scientific method".
- wissler 14y agoOne might argue that good philosophy emerges from the datum of experience.
- shoo 14y agoi am reading David Deutsch's popular science book "the beginning of infinity", some of which of which seems to roughly line up with what you are saying here. Deutsch argues that human progress is essentially due to the power of "good explanations", and the circumstances that allow good explanations to be generated, improved, error-corrected, and discarded in favour of better explanations. Deutsch is critical of the idea that we should merely focus on predicting things rather than creating explanations for them. There has been a lot of recent progress and excitement about the application of statistical/predictive ideas to business and industry - machine learning, "big data". However there there has been little (or no) progress in understanding how to generate explanations. Deutsch argues that human creativity is a key component of the scientific method, that is often downplayed. We currently have no good explanation for how human creativity works, because if we did, he argues, we could go and program it tomorrow, and then we would have genuine AI. (n.b. this is all hugely paraphrased and possibly misrepresents Deutsch's arguments. But another of Deutsch's arguments is that creativity on behalf of the human recipient allows ideas to survive transmission through awfully lossy mediums, such as this one)