The Flaws of Big Data

Big data is an amazing thing. It’s all the rage in business and government circles. Every wonder exactly why companies want your personal information so badly? That information and all the information from millions of other people gets crunched by massively powerful computers.

It’s said that the future is predicted by the past. That’s the point of big data. Prediction. Think of it as the computer age version of the Oracle of Delphi. Instead of some mystic priestess we have massively parallel computers churning away in air conditioned basements all over the world. While big data lacks the allure of the priestess, it doesn’t speak in riddles. Proper analysis can yield solid results.

How are these results used? They are used in every way imaginable. They are used to sell people things -everything from corn chips to politicians. No doubt the military and spy agencies use the technique to predict how people are going to act.

The powers that be love a tool, especially a tool cloaked in science, that gives them an edge. From the beginning humans have wanted to be able to predict the future. With big data they think they have that tool.

In day to day operations, they sorta do. I’m only going with “sorta.” They can predict a lot under normal conditions. I did promise there were some flaws here. One big flaw is that people have free will. Most of the time it doesn’t matter. In reality most people don’t use a lot of their free will. The free will they use generally doesn’t matter. They are deciding if they should wear a green shirt or a blue shirt to work. Rarely do they question if they should forget the shirt and the job too. Most people don’t make radical changes.

Most people sleepwalk through life. However, people still have the ability to use free will. When their day to day conditions change, they could do the unpredictable. It could be the pressures of things slowly changing over time that suddenly reach a head. Perhaps there’s a major outside shock like a massive earthquake that upsets the normal routine for millions.

Big data uses past actions to predict future actions. If a lot of people discover better actions or if the old actions are no longer worth it, big data’s perdition powers are worthless.

Actually, I don’t think they’re doing that great a job of predicting things right now. For example, I just bought a new recliner. Since then I’ve been bombarded with advertising from various recliner manufacturers and dealers. Having just bought one doesn’t it make sense that I’m be the least likely guy to buy another one right now?

-Sixbears