It really annoys me when I deal with people who believe that hard facts are a nicety but not a necessity. You know the type of people I mean – those who always have something to ‘add’ to a discussion, but that ’something’ seems to come from nowhere but their own @#$!. The type of people for whom a little bit of knowledge is dangerous, and whose strength of conviction, while admirable, is stupefyingly ignorant.

We should all strive to base our opinions and actions on hard data. Such a data-driven approach is the only way we can ever approach the truth (of course I’m making a huge assumption here in that the truth is what people seek, and not just the enjoyment of speaking and being heard).

On this topic, I enjoyed the following paragraph by Russ Bakke, Chairman of American Mensa in the February Mensa Bulletin. He begins by discussing author Robert Heinlein and his proclivity to invent words (such as the now popular grok), and follows with:

“Recently I found myself missing Heinlein for a reason beyond his superb storytelling. I realized that this society, and the world in general, is sorely in need of yet another new word. We need one that translates to a reminder that true and complete communication is best achieved when those doing the talking do not rely on either hearsay or assumptions or personal interpretations of incoming information, but instead go to the source of that information and talk about it with one another. This new word should be a command, one to cut through all the finger-pointing, emotion, and argumentative inclination and head straight for the facts.”

If only it were this easy. The problem with dealing with ‘non-data driven’ people is that they do not necessarily respond to logic or rational arguments, and would likely respond to any such attempt to ‘cut to the facts’ with an emotional attack (“how dare you not treat what I’m saying to you as gospel?”)

I apologize if this post is somewhat abstract, and seemingly hostile. It’s just something that really gets on my nerves and is proximate in my life. I’m also unable to offer any sort of solution, other than to suggest we all (myself included) constantly question whether we are being data driven in our day to day dealings.