Data
&
Analysis

So we know that there are endless traps that lay in wait

in any gathering or handling of data,

at all stages of its collection, organisation and presentation,

and one way of trying to better approximate the truth

is to gather ever larger amounts of data,

data in such vast quantities that it would be impossible for humans

to handle it without electro- mechanical help.

The handling of data becomes

ever more dependent on computers.

Which means that just as when we are analysing data

we have a need to analyse ourselves

to see if we are personally affecting the data,

so it is that we need to find ways to make sure

that if a computer is handling our information

we guard against that computer influencing our information in unexpected ways.

We need to know how much we can trust it.

As the world becomes ever more digital,

and the technology that provides our information and entertainment

becomes ever more personally inaccessible,

that question of trust becomes ever more relevant.

Can computers be trusted?

Even before the further development of quantum computing

it could be said that computing

was already moving beyond what is checkable.

So if we are to accept numerical data as the criterion for truth,

we need to be rigorous in our critical analysis

if we are to truly understand what the numbers say,

if we are to clearly distinguish what is true from what is false.

Technology is not just hardware,

it is software,

and with that we have to bear in mind that somebody wrote it,

and usually somebody owns it

and is trying to make money from it.

Our digital assistants learn from our choices

and are tailored to use what they know in their responses

and suggestions as to what else we might like.

So whatever it is that has interested you

they offer you more of the same,

and the more of that you choose to look at,

the more you get

and the less you get of anything different,

that you might disagree with

or learn something new from.

If we are not careful

what we end up with is a digital information feedback loop,

designed to keep us interested

but not critically involved.

Our digital assistants learn to talk to us individually,

like friends

but the friend that we deal with is actually

a digital employee of a giant corporation

with a pressing need to recover investment costs

by using your digital assistant to sell you stuff

or to steer you in a particular political direction.

Information about us

has become the most valuable commodity to be traded,

with the giant software firms making the money that keeps them that size,

by selling information they have learned about you.

After which they can sell access to you

through your digital assistant,

for others to send you the information they want you to receive

in the form of advertising or paid content.

Of course, rules have been made,

minimal as they may be,

to try to keep the worst excesses of false information from the media,

but careful data presentation can easily cover

deliberate distortions in the presentation of statistics,

by politicians, and advertisers

and other self-publicists.

In the world of digital information

it is important to be able to recognise not-quite-lies.

Humans need to search f or truth,

because the search for truth is the search for God.

The search for truth is the search for knowledge,

ever ongoing

but no matter how hard we try we can never reach a point

where there is no more knowledge for us to find.

The little truth we are capable of knowing

will always be no more than a glimpse of the Divine Truth that is God.