Signal-to-noise ratio: Difference between revisions

If the information content of the universe, through all time and space is ''as good as'' infinite<ref>This assumes there is not a finite end-point to the Universe; by no means settled cosmology, but hardly a rash assumption. And given how little we have of it, the universe’s total information content ''might as well be'' infinite, when compared to our finite collection of mortal data. Even the total, ungathered-by-mortal-hand, information content generated by the whole universe ''to date'', not even counting the unknowable future, is as good as infinite.</ref> and the data ''homo sapiens'' has collected to date is necessarily finite<ref>[[There is no data from the future]].</ref> (even counting what we’ve lost along the way), it follows that the total value of our [[data]] — in which W. Edwards Deming would have us trust — is, like any other number divided by infinity, ''mathematically nil''.

And that is before considering its quality. If 90% of all gathered data originates from the internet age,<ref>Eric Schmidt said something like this in 2011, and it sounds [https://blog.rjmetrics.com/2011/02/07/eric-schmidts-5-exabytes-quote-is-a-load-of-crap/ totally made up], but let’s run with it, hey?</ref> a good portion is of our summed human knowledge takes form of cat videos and hot takes on [[Twitter]] — so is ''shite'' data, even on its own terms.<ref>[[Get off Twitter]], okay? For all of our sakes.</ref>  

In any case, it follows that, should we transcend our meagre [[hermeneutic]] bubbles, and free the incarcerate race of {{sex|man}}, so to speak the [[signal-to-noise ratio|signal]] of ''our'' data to the noise of all ''possible'' data out there is ''infinitesimal''.<ref>That means, ''really'' small.</ref>

If this is what we’re meant to trust, you might ask what is so wrong with God. We are [[The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning - Book Review|pattern-seeking machines]]. We don’t take the data as we find it, and coolly fashion objective axioms from it, carving nature at its joints: we bring our idiosyncratic prisms and pre-existing cognitive structures to it —our own “hot takes” — and wilfully create patterns from it to support our convictions.  

This is not a criticism about but an observation. This is the doom our incarcerate race endures.

It is not just the Twitterati.  Science, too, has its [[confirmation bias]]es at a meta-level, uncontrollable even by double-blind testing methodologies.  Experiments which ''confirm'' a hypothesis are ''a lot'' more likely to be published than those which ''don’t''.<ref>{{br|The Hidden Half: How the World Conceals its Secrets}}, by Michael Blastland.</ref> Of those failed experiments that ''are'' published, far fewer are cited in other literature. [[Falsification]]s ''die''.