{"id":10433,"date":"2023-05-08T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10433"},"modified":"2023-06-14T07:28:33","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T11:28:33","slug":"what-were-they-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10433","title":{"rendered":"What Were They Thinking?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Could the image of a four-drawer filing cabinet, whose drawers extend backwards into, well, near-infinity help explain some of society\u2019s current communication disconnects? In a recent New Yorker<\/em> article, Jill Lepore<\/a> suggests you can divide all human knowledge into these four drawers: The little paper label on the top drawer says \u201cMysteries,\u201d the second is \u201cFacts,\u201d the third is \u201cNumbers,\u201d and the bottom drawer is \u201cData.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her analogy, the Mysteries drawer (drawer 1) contains things only God knows, \u201clike what happens when you\u2019re dead.\u201d In the past, this drawer would have been crowded with speculations on such matters as how distant are the stars, what happened to the dinosaurs, how do cells and molecules and atoms work? Thanks to advances in the sciences, these topics have been moved into the Facts drawer (drawer 2). That drawer \u201ccontains files about things humans can prove by way of observation, detection, and experiment.\u201d The Numbers drawer (drawer 3) holds what you might think: censuses, polls, averages\u2014stuff that can be counted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s drawer 4 on the bottom, \u201cData,\u201d that captures most of Lepore\u2019s and society\u2019s attention today. Humans cannot know data directly, in her metaphor, but must derive it from a computer. This drawer used to be empty but is now jammed full. More full than we can use with all practicality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only do the drawers collect different types of knowledge and information, they work differently. They follow different logics. You learn about mysteries by revelation and the discipline that studies them is theology. You collect facts \u201cto find the truth\u201d and you study them by way of law, the humanities, and the natural sciences. Numbers are collected in the form of statistics, acquired through measurement, and you study them through the social sciences. Data analysis by computer enables prediction, pattern detection, based on data science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For any complicated question (the example she uses is mass shootings in the United States), she says \u201cyour best bet is to riffle through all four of these drawers.\u201d Each has something useful to contribute. However, the default in recent years has been to reach for that bottom drawer, as if data science contains the only answers. I saw evidence of the shortcomings of this approach in a news story last week about American students\u2019 declining test scores in history and civics. One commentator noted that the data do not point to reasons for the decline. \u201cOngoing debates over how to teach history may well be getting in the way of actually doing it,\u201d he said. Once the data are there, then what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data science certainly doesn\u2019t preclude the need to open the other three drawers; nor does it demand that we renounce \u201call the other ways of knowing,\u201d Lepore, a historian (drawer 2), says. Her article goes on to discuss other topics, but she also might have considered whether the main reason people today can\u2019t seem to reconcile differing points of view is that they are basing their views on the contents of different drawers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another cultural columnist, Virginia Heffernan<\/a>, writing in the current issue of Wired<\/em>, pulls all this together in a way that emphasizes the importance of data science in an article about the complexities of manufacturing modern silicon chips, \u201cI Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory.\u201d She calls these chips \u201cthe engine of nearly all modern abstraction, from laws to concepts to cognition itself\u201d (drawer 2). The global economy of semiconductor chips (drawer 3) is \u201cas mind-boggling as cryptocurrency markets and derivative securities (drawer 4). Or as certain theologies, ones that feature nano-angels dancing on nano-pins\u201d (drawer 1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another danger of over-reliance on technoscience and the hubris that goes with it is one familiar to people as far back as the ancient Greeks, whose myths addressed the world-changing intervention of fire. Just ask Prometheus how that worked out for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further Reading<\/em><\/strong>
How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms<\/a><\/em> by Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones
Technologies of Speculation: The Limits of Knowledge in a Data-Driven Society<\/a><\/em>, by Sun-ha Hong
\u201cFrankenstein\u2019s warning: the too-familiar hubris of today\u2019s technoscience\u201d by Richard King<\/a>, The Guardian<\/em> 30 Apr 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Could the image of a four-drawer filing cabinet, whose drawers extend backwards into, well, near-infinity help explain some of society\u2019s current communication disconnects? In a recent New Yorker article, Jill Lepore suggests you can divide all human knowledge into these … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A possible metaphor for our age of discommunication. ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[186,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Ih","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10435,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10433\/revisions\/10435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}