Databank and Polls - Limitations and all That

This is what we are lead to believe is the answer, our decision making tool - Big Data

As I was reading Philip Ball’s How Life Works, these sentences, I am paraphrasing to

some extent, caught my mind,

 

Sometimes this rush to next big data challenge is justified with the implication

that’s all that is needed. This is done in the absence of framing the how and

why question in scientific terms: hypothesis to test. It is almost as if there is a

belief that insights will simply begin to seep out of the data bank once it

reaches the critical mass.

 

Mimicking the idea that evolution is not goal-directed and is totally random, patterns

can emerge, and we can come up with the ‘right’ relationship and the correct answer,

and, that is all there is to human intelligence, pattern recognition. The premise of big

data for answers primarily rests on this premise. Artificial Intelligence, the

advancement that we see in the computing area, relies on big data to predict

behaviour, actions and decisions and is, to a considerable extent, used to predict

outcomes and, therefore, can be and is a mechanism used to manipulate behaviour. This has

been the success of social media enterprises that have capitalised on this, and big

data has become the new fuel that fires this engine. The larger the data set, the

better the capacity for AI to learn and predict, increasing its accuracy and influence

on behaviour.

 

So what happened with the US pre-election polls?

 

A significant majority of polls were predicting a neck-in-neck race, in the end, between

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but the polls, running on data, got it wrong. It is

not just wrong within its window of margin of error, but out of the kilter wrong. If we

consider the prediction a chart to navigate a rocket to land on the moon, we would 

end up in the direction of Mars wrong. Notwithstanding the biases that creep into the

framing of questions and stratification of samples, one would have thought that

given the number of polls, these errors would have, if not cancelled the biases out, at

least would have muted the impact. But, despite all the tests, checks and

balances, computing power, verification of responses and all that, this got it wrong.

I think Philip Ball’s insight from how life works, and I am, once again, paraphrasing,  

Knowing, however accurately, about the fundamental unit of life – cell, even

with all the biochemical details and functioning, will not give us an

understanding of how immune or digestive systems work or how the heart and

brain functions.

 

Even more so, let alone how our mind works, where ideas come from, how we

feel or are able to associate and form social bonds. It is true that we have indeed

identified certain biochemistry that either precedes or concurrently occurs with the

functioning of the mind or eliciting of the feeling, if we were to dig deeper into the

how and why of occurrence of the biochemistry, peeling layer upon layer, we

eventually, end up with, we can guess, but don’t really know.

 

It is possible that someday, in the future, computing power and big data may be able

to predict and manipulate our behaviour more than it does now: it works on most

likely, on averages now and how it would work outside these parameters is

something that would remain a question, in my view, if not forever, for a very, very

long time.

 

What gives me comfort, what leaves hope in me, is that, unless we cede our

independence and control, our desire to remain curious and have independent

thought, we will not become the Pavlovian Dogs. Our behaviour is not fixed rationally

or emotionally; we alternative between the two, I believe- altruism and sacrifice is

unselfish and irrational, avoiding pain and seeking pleasure is rational, but our

behaviour is not consistently goal-directed towards avoiding pain and seeking

pleasure.

 

I guess we are more than the numbers, data, or markers we are labelled

with, more than the statistics that become a part of the databank, and more than how we are

classified and categorised. Or, in the language of Shakespeare,

 

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties,

in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel,

in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of

animals – and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights me

not.

And,

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you

poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

And finally,

              There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

 

For what it's worth.