2024-02-03 03:27:00
I am interested in the data. I follow them, I review them, I compare them. I check every morning what the temperature of the day is; From time to time, in the relevant table, I consult the averages of the descent; I remember in my memory, since my primary school, that the French Revolution was in 1789, that the May Revolution was in 1810, that the United States became independent in 1776, that Argentina in 1816. Data, data; You can’t not count on them.
I do not agree, however, at all, with the deadly function that has been assigned to this part with striking insistence for some time: that of serving to kill stories. That antinomy seems unnecessary to me, and fallacious from the beginning. It works from a misleading premise, which is that a story is equivalent to a lie (of course there are stories that lie, but there are also stories that don’t; there are false ones, but there are true ones: the idea that everyone lies is nothing but a lie in itself itself).
The lie that every story is a lie, that it cannot but be, inevitably leads to a consecutive trap: the one that claims that every piece of information is in itself a truth. Not that it can express it, not that it expresses it or proves it, but that it directly is. And since it is, in itself, it does not require conceptual elaboration, it excludes interpretations, it exempts us from thinking, it does not allow for questioning. The data is. And there is no arguing with what it is.
But there is no data without data establishment criteria, that is, a prior instance in which it is decided when they are relevant or not; and then with what parameters they are measured and set. Once this is done, on the other hand, it is necessary to try to understand what these data mean, that is, read them and make sense of them. At this point we notice the inconsequentiality of the opposition between data and story, and even more so the claim that the first kills the second. Because narratives are nothing more than a primordial device to make sense of things in time. And that necessarily includes data. Instead of opposing or excluding each other, they combine and relate. Certain stories are supported by data. And certain data do not make sense except when they are narrated, that is, when they are inscribed in a significant sequence.
Take for example these data: 10:00 AM, 35°C, variable cloudiness; 10:40 AM, 30°C, rainfall of varying intensity; 11:00 AM, 27°C. Do these data, these pure data, not contain in themselves, arranged like this, a narrative? It was terribly hot, it started to rain, it let up quite a bit. It is data and it is a story (and the story is true). Take this story for example: that of the historical influence of the French Revolution on the May Revolution, or that of the historical influence of North American Independence on Argentine Independence. Doesn’t this story need to be supported by data that prove the precedence and enable the connection? Could someone who didn’t know the relevant dates concoct it?
So, in effect, data and stories intertwine. And it does nothing but distort a possible truth when an absolutization of the data is induced, as if they were a truth per se and the matter was exhausted right there. Let’s take an example: Jorman Campuzano has turned out to be, according to a reliable statistical basis, the best passer of balls in Argentine soccer in the last season. I have nothing against Jorman Campuzano; On the contrary, I appreciate him as a ball retriever (and I have applauded him for that). But it disconcerted me to know that it was at the top of the ranking of successful passes, until luckily someone appeared to comment (to interpret, to make sense of) the objective figures of that data. Most, if not all, of those passes were made backwards or to the sides, and to teammates who were often less than two meters away.
The data as such were true, the conclusion drawn from them was false. It is advisable to be warned about this, in times when the discourses of reductionist economism are again intensifying, overwhelming us with figures and curves and suspiciously cryptic jargon, with which they try to hit us with a supposedly incontestable truth. Until someone arrives who reads, thinks, interprets, gives meaning and denies. Data does not kill stories. But sometimes they commit suicide.
1706931634
#Data #stories #Profile