Data doesn’t necessarily measure what’s important to measure, so you need to be smart about harnessing data that is important to the problem you’re solving. But to say that it never measures what’s important to measure is straightforwardly false. For example, to believe that you’d have to write off all of modern science as ‘unimportant’.
I agree. Data has different meanings and uses- priors are forms of data. Right now I see data primarily as a tool of persuasion. It’s relevance varies across fields- data in psychology is very different from data in physical sciences. Like you mentioned, it’s accuracy depends on the people creating and conducting the study. Modern science is dissatisfying to me, with persuasion being one of the problems I have with it. Even the commenting guidelines in this reply say “aim to explain, not persuade” While I would never write off all of modern science, one of the projects I’m working on is an alternative to academia. One of the goals is to use data in much more progressive ways then it is used now.
What I meant to say in my original comment that data as it is collected and used in present and recent times should not be used. While that would remove the use of the majority of data we have now, that doesn’t mean there are not great amounts of relevant uncollected and unused data.
Data doesn’t necessarily measure what’s important to measure, so you need to be smart about harnessing data that is important to the problem you’re solving. But to say that it never measures what’s important to measure is straightforwardly false. For example, to believe that you’d have to write off all of modern science as ‘unimportant’.
I agree. Data has different meanings and uses- priors are forms of data. Right now I see data primarily as a tool of persuasion. It’s relevance varies across fields- data in psychology is very different from data in physical sciences. Like you mentioned, it’s accuracy depends on the people creating and conducting the study. Modern science is dissatisfying to me, with persuasion being one of the problems I have with it. Even the commenting guidelines in this reply say “aim to explain, not persuade” While I would never write off all of modern science, one of the projects I’m working on is an alternative to academia. One of the goals is to use data in much more progressive ways then it is used now.
What I meant to say in my original comment that data as it is collected and used in present and recent times should not be used. While that would remove the use of the majority of data we have now, that doesn’t mean there are not great amounts of relevant uncollected and unused data.