Cartoon 870: Big Data

A couple of decades ago there was a television series based on the book, “The Day the Universe Changed”, by James Burke. Initiates realized that dramatic insights are most often the result of happenstance.

Big Data seeks to identify a correlation from the deluge of data available. Not all correlations are meaningful insights. For some correlations there is no reasonable explanation. Other correlations may represent epiphanies that demand greater exploration.

We have at our finger tips with big data the ability to jump over happenstance. We can acquire insights that greatly improve our understanding of ourselves and the human condition. The downside is that it may be such things we are not intellectually or culturally willing to embrace.

I will give you a few hypothetical examples.

• Suppose there is a correlation with superior human survivability among sub Saharan Africans.

• Suppose, that as an ethnic group, South East Asians lead in intelligence among humans.

• Suppose the Eastern European Jews are not as closely part of the Jewish genome as Ethiopian sects.

• Suppose humans have a none exclusive heterosexual rate of nearly 20% like other primates and it is the force of culture that masks this fact.

None of these things can be definitively derived from traditional modes of data gathering and analysis. You can clearly see the volatility they would create.

We cannot improve the human condition without understanding.

“... My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge” Hosea 4:6