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===It is illiberal=== | ===It is illiberal=== | ||
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. | 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. | |||
===It is noisy=== | ===It is noisy=== | ||
Thirdly, to embrace all the data you can find is to degrade the [[signal-to-noise ratio]]. Even if you buy into the incoherent [[reductionist]] idea that the “signal” is some kind of transcendent truth, by industrialising your data, you risk burying it and if you don’t — if like we pluralists you see ''any'' signal as not just a suitable narrative for your present purposes, the more data you gather, the more possible narratives — conflicting narratives; [[incommensurable]] narratives — you will have. Now this is, for a pluralist, is a good thing: every narrative is a tool in your workshop, the more you have the better you are equipped to deal with the [[unknown unknown]]s our [[complex]] world will surely throw at us — but that tends ''not'' to be what big data disciples are after. | Thirdly, to embrace all the data you can find is to degrade the [[signal-to-noise ratio]]. Even if you buy into the incoherent [[reductionist]] idea that the “signal” is some kind of transcendent truth, by industrialising your data, you risk burying it and if you don’t — if like we pluralists you see ''any'' signal as not just a suitable narrative for your present purposes, the more data you gather, the more possible narratives — conflicting narratives; [[incommensurable]] narratives — you will have. Now this is, for a pluralist, is a good thing: every narrative is a tool in your workshop, the more you have the better you are equipped to deal with the [[unknown unknown]]s our [[complex]] world will surely throw at us — but that tends ''not'' to be what big data disciples are after. | ||