Dataism
Discussion
From the transcript of Michael Kubler of the book:
- Homo Deus : A brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari.
"Dataism says that the universe consists of data flows and the value of any phenomenon or entity is determined by its contribution to data processing.
It's not some fringe movement, it's already become quite established within the scientific establishment. It was created in Computer Science within the field of Big Data but it was Biology's uptake which really made it rise to prominence.
Dataism points out that exactly the same underlying mathematical laws exist for both biochemical and electronic algorithms .
Dataism thereby collapses the barrier between animals and machines and expects electronic algorithms to eventually decipher and outperform bio-chemical ones.
For scientific scholars it promises to unify the sciences under a single theory. From Literature and musicology to economics and biology.
According to Dataism King Lear and the Flu virus are just two patterns of dataflow which can be analysed using the same basic concepts and tools.
This idea is extremely attractive as it gives scientists a common language, builds bridges over academic rifts and easily exports insights across disciplinary borders. Musicologists, cell biologists and political scientists can finally understand each other.
Dataism inverts the traditional pyramid of learning.
Until now data was seen as the first step in a long chain of intellectual activity.
Humans were meant to distill data into information. Information into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom.
Data -> Information -> Knowledge -> Wisdom
But there is now so much data that humans can't process it all.
The work of processing data should thus be entrusted into electronic algorithms whos capacity far exceeds that of the human brain. In practice this means that Dataists are sceptical of human knowledge and wisdom and prefer to put their trust in big data and computer algorithms.
Computer Science and Biology.
It was biology's acceptance of dataism which turned the Limited comp sci concept into a world shattering Cataclysm which might alter the very nature of life.
You might not agree with the idea that organisms are algorithms and that giraffes, tomatoes and humans are just different methods for processing data. But this is current scientific dogma. Entire societies are seen as data processing systems. From beehives and ant colonies to the stock market.
From a Dataist perspective Free Market Capitalism and Communism aren't competing Ideologies, ethical creeds or differing political institutions. At bottom they are competing data processing systems.
Capitalism uses distributed processing whilst Communism uses centralised processing.
Capitalism processes data by directly connecting consumers and producers and allowing them to directly exchange information freely and make decisions independently. For example in a free market system you determine the price of bread by every bakery being able to create as much bread as they like and charge whatever they like and the consumers can choose to buy the bread there at a competitors or not at all. The bakery could choose to charge USD$1,000 for a baguette but it's unlikely anyone will pay that much for it (about 900x the normal price)."