We live in a world in which data convey authority. But authority has a way of descending to certitude, and certitude begets hubris.
Interpretation
Data can create a sense of authority, but this often leads to overconfidence and arrogance.
Bret Stephens suggests that in our current society, where data is often seen as the ultimate authority, there is a danger that this reliance on data can lead to an unwarranted certainty in our beliefs and decisions. This overconfidence, in turn, can breed hubris, where individuals or groups believe they are infallible due to their reliance on data, potentially leading to negative consequences.
In practice
In a business meeting discussing analytics, one could quote this to caution against overconfidence in the numbers.
I routinely interview college students, mostly from top schools, and I notice that their brains are like old maps, with lots of blank spaces for the uncharted terrain. It's not that they lack for motivation or IQ. It's that they can't connect the dots when they don't know where the dots are in the first place.
The most interesting conversation is not about why Donald Trump lies. Many public figures lie, and he's only a severe example of a common type. The interesting conversation concerns how we come to accept those lies.
The more afraid we are of the shadow of racism, the more conscious we might become of our own unsuspected biases.
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A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation.
It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it.
Present wars impoverish the lords that win as much as those that lose.
The nonconformist here may be "beat down" by life but still has a beauty in his or her longing for freedom and for an awakening of the mind.
Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus.
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