Ed, The Forty-Five's Resident Optimist, got me thinking.
His response to an earlier post (in part) got me rambling along on my morning walk with Poppy the Brave:
"When I look back at the things that went wrong in my life with the power of 20/20 hindsight vision, if I really get to the very moment that triggered it, I would almost always make the same decision I did back then with the information and knowledge I had at the time.
I guess what I'm saying is that I think it is impossible to look back and think that we could have done any better then or look to the present and think we can avoid making mistakes now."
Ed is always a thoughtful commenter, and as I walked and chewed on his thoughts, the line that kept coming up was "with the information and knowledge I had at the time".
Information, knowledge - data if one wishes to name it as that - matters.
In my own life - the only one I can confidently comment on - I wonder how often I have truly sought out all the information and knowledge to make a truly informed decision. Which, of course, then brings into question precisely where one is deriving it from.
I have heard the argument from more than one person that college really only teaches two things: information and the ability to find and research said information in that it can give one a structured process for how one goes about researching a topic and what level of information or data is "enough" to make a conclusion (not to say by any means that this is solely the domain of college; many people learn it through other ways or simply "have the knack"). My rule of thumb that I eventually arrived at in graduate school was when all of my sources either a) essentially said the same thing or b) began quoting each other, I had likely gathered "enough" information to begin forming assessments.
It strikes me that while this is a thing which comes to be valued in college and graduate level thesis and dissertations, it is a strikingly absent practice of philosophy in most daily life.
In reality, information seeking is not something that we as a society seem to value much anymore. We value "news", which is really nothing more than stories told about (usually) current events. Our seeking of data and knowledge has been reduced to thirty second to two minute slices of time that usually tell us "what" happened, and maybe "who" was involved, but not much more.
In thinking through this, three elements of information or data gathering came to the fore:
1) The information - What information are we gathering? Where are we gathering it from? Who are we gathering it from? How many pieces are we gathering? A jigsaw puzzle of a 1000 pieces that only had the edge pieces and five pieces in the middle done would not tell anyone much about what it was intended to picture.
2) Totality of information - Do we have all the information we need to make the decision? Have we only undertaken gathering information from those sources that most comport with our own internal likings and bents (I am often guilty of this)?
3) Reliability of information - This is, to my mind, the hardest of all. We can have great pools of information (in the day, it was represented as individual pieces of data on 3 x 5 note cards), the information can essentially "rhyme" in terms of content, and we can even have gathered it from a variety of sources - but is it reliable? Is it true? How do we determine that (that could be an entirely separate post)?
To Ed's point, most of us do the best we can at the time with the inputs that we have. The question - at least for me - is if I am seeking out the very best information and casting a wide enough net, or if I am simply willing to settle for what agrees with the decision I may have already made.
"In reality, information seeking is not something that we as a society seem to value much anymore."
ReplyDeleteAmen to this statement! I am reminded of last year during the height of the pandemic when suddenly Asian hate crime came on the radar after a report by someone in New York saying Asian hate crime had increased 1800%. Being married to someone from Asia, I wondered if I was just so unplugged from the "real" world since my wife and I go about our lives without anybody showing any signs of hate towards her or I, or if something was flawed in the data. I started digging into the data and yes, it was indeed accurate in the sense that Asian hate violence went from 1 reported incident to 18 reported incidents in a single year of time. What was neglected and I think extremely relevant to this study was that the sample size was New York City, or 8.5 MILLION PEOPLE!
But everyone, without exception that I brought this up to had bought the reporting at face value, even Asians whom never experienced a hate crime against them that were suddenly taking precautions when out and about.
If we as a society continue to accept this sort of spoon fed, highly processed information, it makes me shudder for the future... and as you said, I'm an optimist!
Ed - We have been trained (apparently) to take in information without critical assessment anymore. Yours is a great example - context is everything (with the understanding, of course, that a single such event is appalling and unwarranted). Information, like everything else these days, only exists to serve particular agendas or narratives.
DeleteWe are now actively shutting down any sort of dissenting opinion to current approved narratives or policies. If this continues, God help us all.
I read widely about the most recent global medical event. I couldn't find much at first blush. But all indications from what I did find were cautionary, but not terrible. It seemed to be like your puzzle. Very few pieces were aligned, so the picture was impossible to see. I went slowly, and put my money on lab reports from almost anywhere but here.
ReplyDeleteWhen the data is flopping all over, and there is no way to explain why, I tend to go slowly. If I can postpone the decision, I will. I need solid trends to believe it accurate.
I have been guilty of trusting data from those that believe as I do, and been burned by it. Now, when I do find good hard rock, the internet misinformation bureau will scrub it a day after I read it, and I'll spend too much time looking for it again.
I can think of several decisions that I should have made differently. I wonder at times what the arc of my story would be if I had. But those poor decisions have taught me to make better ones.... even with poor data.
STxAR - The reality is that information about The Plague was limited of course - as most initial knowledge breaks are. The surprising to me on all of this is that on one side, we quickly moved to understand the virus. Where it came from, we had much less interest in for no particular reason.
DeleteI have been guilty of data trust exactly as you have. That said, the one thing I need to begin doing is insisting on data - factual, proven data, not people's opinions or interpretations. In that since, it is just like reading the Bible: Our concern should not be what people say the Bible says, but what the Bible actually says.
We have all made bad decisions - as you say, we learn to do better, even with poor data.
STxAR - The reality is that information about The Plague was limited of course - as most initial knowledge breaks are. The surprising to me on all of this is that on one side, we quickly moved to understand the virus. Where it came from, we had much less interest in for no particular reason.
DeleteI have been guilty of data trust exactly as you have. That said, the one thing I need to begin doing is insisting on data - factual, proven data, not people's opinions or interpretations. In that since, it is just like reading the Bible: Our concern should not be what people say the Bible says, but what the Bible actually says.
We have all made bad decisions - as you say, we learn to do better, even with poor data.
50% of all new businesses fail, TB. And no offence meant - but you don't strike me as an entrepreneur. From what I see of your psychology I'd say you are too introspective and introverted for it. Entrepreneurs are chaotic individuals and don't internalize failure the way you do. They shift gears on the fly, right off failures, and are always on the go looking for a new hustle. You strike me as a very disciplined man that imposes order on chaos rather than trying to harness it and use it.
ReplyDeletePlus there is the fact that you can do everything right in life and still fail. Terms like success and failure mean different things to the entrepreneur too. A lot of those guys are not nice people either... more than a few are absolute scoundrels. And blind, outhouse luck is important too. If I don't miss my guess you guys took a darned good swing... and simply missed. Chit happens.
For what it's worth in all these negative psychiatric assessments... I dunno if I am the kettle or the pot. We have to be careful, lest we become our own worst enemies.
Glen, for it is worth, I completely agree with you (and no offense given or taken). Honestly, for me to "entrepenurize" (is that even a word) I had to cast every what I now realize to be realistic concerns to the wind.
DeleteDid we take a good swing? Hard to know in retrospect - after all, one can (as you say) go down always thinking there was more that could have been done. And I do not truly know that there was - the work should have happened up front, not at the end.
Ah well, the past is behind us. I will say that it has certainly nipped any more "wild ideas" about become an entrepreneur unless it is something I know and come into organically.
Finding accurate and reliable information is a dilemma we all face. Computers and the internet were supposed to make it easier, but in fact, they don't. Most of what is presented as knowledge and fact, I see as opinion. Then too, the trend of the past couple of years to vilify anyone who questions the politically correct opinion, is not only counterproductive, but troubling, especially when that opinion turns out to be wrong.
ReplyDeleteWhen I research, I classify information into two categories: theoretical and experiential. When something can't be backed up with documented experience (either analytically as unbiased data or empirically as personal experimentation and practice) then I assume it's theoretical. That doesn't mean it should be dismissed, but neither am I going to base decisions on theory alone. There are a lot of good ideas out there, but not all of them work. It's most helpful to me when someone can explain what they did and why, and then comes back after a time and analyzes how well it worked.