Why We're All Practitioners Of Data Divination

It’s easy for us to look around our world populated by iPhones, AI-driven data analysis, self-driving cars, and self-flying planes, and think that we, and our contemporary technology-rich culture, are at the peak of sophistication. We think we’re all rational, that we use data and logic to make our decisions, and that we’d never succumb to the type of overt superstition that our ancestors relied upon.

But it’s unfair for us, at this peak of modernity, to look back at our ancient forebears with judgment and condescension – especially when we’re talking about the practice of divination. Divination has been employed by humans for as long as we’ve been standing upright. Divination has been used in a variety of contexts all throughout history. We opened up animals to read their entrails, predicted the future based on rolls of the dice, and read deeply into the flight pattern of birds.

Now, granted, there’s no scientific backing for any of this and there’s a reason we don’t (at least the vast majority of us) still use these things to guess at the future. But if you look around the world of technology and data, there are a lot more similarities between us and previous generations. We should admit that in our modern use of data, we are practicing divination all the time. And you know what? We should be okay with the fact that we’re doing data divination.

Dan Woods of Forbes writes on What data divination?

How could I possibly equate someone looking at a data dashboard to predicting the future based on entrails lying in the dirt?

Data divination in the modern world

My definition of data divination is a practice where you look at data and use it as an indication of a future, even when you don’t have a model of how the evidence you’re looking at actually affects the decision you’re trying to make. You make a decision, couch it in rationality and data, but really, at best you’re mistaking correlation for causation or at worst, purely guessing.

Think my argument is crazy? For me, the easiest place to see divination every day of week is by turning your TV to CNBC and listen to their pundits describe why the stock market is going up or down.

You’ll hear them blame the weather, a decision made by the Fed, or the announcement of some new economic data. But all of this is conjecture. Sometimes there’s logic to the argument you can buy into, but often, if you listen closely, the reasoning is specious – just like reading entrails. There is not a model that connects the evidence cited with the outcome predicted. The use of data is comforting, not scientific. Sounds a lot like divination to me.

Why data divination makes sense...In some instances

I don’t think data divination is entirely wrong. There’s no reason to view it entirely with derision. In fact, I think we’re all right to use divination in certain cases. Why? Two main reasons.