Those who visit my website know that I frequently respond to writing prompts from a terrific group I belong to called the Writer’s Workshop. Now and then, some prompts just strike a chord and are a great incentive to share my thoughts, feelings, and ravings. This is one of those times.
The prompt I’m responding to focuses on the late Scott Adams, an American cartoonist, author and conservative commentator, best known for the Dilbert comic strip along with nonfiction works of business, self-improvement, commentary and satire. Back in 1995, Scott Adams observed that “We live in a world where all data is wrong” and, for some odd reason, this started me thinking back to my parochial school education.
Stay with me here as I build a fairly long-winded response.
For those who attended Catholic school years and years ago, there was nothing like early exposure to weaponized stationery to sharpen our attention spans. Hey, all the public-school kids got gold stars while many of us in our rigid school uniforms received behavioral calibration via hardwood, courtesy of the nunnery in place. When your formative years involve someone in sensible black shoes enforcing reality with a heavy ruler, you come to learn quickly that drifting off into comforting illusions has consequences. Painful, very specific, consequences.
Herein lies my strange throughline between all of the above and what Scott Adams shared about data. As parochial school students, we were trained, in a very analog and mildly terrifying way, to distrust the easy answer. We double-checked and remained present. In the meantime, the rest of the world grew up getting gently reassured that their guesses were “close enough” and in current times, they treat half-baked data like gospel because it comes with a chart and a pastel color scheme.
Are you with me so far? I mean, am I making sense?
What I personally received was the human version of error correction, far from subtle, not gentle, but effective. Most people got vibes. So, in short, when someone ways, “the data proves it,” my particular brain doesn’t relax. It kind of leans in a little, like it’s waiting for that damn ruler to come crashing down on my head. Where’s the flow, what’s missing, what’s being smoothed over to make the situation at hand look cleaner than it actually is?
Yes, this is an annoyingly useful instinct as it keeps me from being easily convinced, but it also means that I don’t get to enjoy the comforting fiction that everything is neatly measurable and under control. I know that’s bullcrap and full of cracks; I notice the gaps and recognize when the numbers are doing a little too much storytelling.
In the end, the downside is obvious. For the most part, I am one hell of a lot harder to fool, and I paid for this skill with significant ruler trauma. Now, I get to spend the balance of my life side-eyeing dashboards like they owe me an explanation. The views of Scott Adams definitely made a point as they focused on the idea that objective reality is harder to determine than most people assume. And, we all too well know that perceived facts are often distorted by media narratives.
Adams argued that people rarely see reality as it actually is, but rather through a filtered, subjective lens. Some, like myself, long ago met reality, head-on, as holy data made its point with a ruler.
From the Writer’s Workshop: Scott Adams observed “We live in a world where all data is wrong.” Discuss
