Big data: Difference between revisions

Second, in its [[reductionism]], in its funnelling of a dispersed population into an essential homogeneity, it speaks to the underlying belief in a [[grand unifying theory]] of everything: a transcendent ''truth''. This, in the [[JC]]’s view, is a profoundly illiberal idea: to be unable to accommodate pluralism is to ''deny'' of pluralism.

It may be “true” that the richness of the universe boils down to a single simple algorithm — perhaps not [[Conway ’s Game of Life]], but maybe something winsomely similar — but if so, that we are in and of and ''part'' of the grand machine, and our trajectory through it is just as ineffably preordained — we are a subroutine — this means we cannot control, or know, what we cannot know, either we will attain certain knowledge of that algorithm, or we won't, but either way there's nothing to be done — so we might as well enjoy the illusion that there ''is'' control. Island if there is control, then we get to tell our stories —pluralistically plural — we don't know any better, we were going to do that anyway.