Big Data is blind to the singular event that actually shapes history

Evidence

Transparency entails a compulsion to conform, which eliminates the Other, the Alien and the Deviant. Above all, Big Data makes collective patterns of behaviour visible. Dataism is augmenting Zunehmen im Gleichwerden, or hypertrophied sameness. Data-mining does not differ from statistics in any fundamental way. The correlations it lays bare represent only what is likely in statistical terms. It calculates average values. As such, Big Data has no access to what is unique. Big Data is wholly blind to the event. Not what is statistically likely, but what is unlikely – the singular, the event – will shape history, in other words, the future of mankind. Thus, Big Data is blind to the future too. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 176

Categorization

• XREF: Recalls Nietzsche from the earlier chapter excerpts; also connects to chapter’s claim that freedom requires an open future closed by behavioral prediction. — connects to: Correlation knowledge without causality is, for Hegel, primitive ignorance — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 159; Data-mining reveals a digital unconscious akin to Benjamin’s optical unconscious — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 148; Events are reversals of power that inaugurate wholly new states of affairs — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 178 (+6 more)

Related

• Big Data’s correlational mode is displacing causal and spirit-driven knowledge (similarity 0.84)
• Correlation knowledge without causality is, for Hegel, primitive ignorance (similarity 0.80)
• Syllogistic knowledge is narrative, while Big Data is purely additive (similarity 0.80)
• Predictive Big Data forecloses the future that freedom requires. (similarity 0.80)
• Transparency compels conformity and erases deviation (similarity 0.79)
• Biopolitical population statistics cannot reach the psyche that Big Data exploits (similarity 0.79)
• Big Data logic rejects theory-driven hypothesis testing in favor of raw pattern extraction (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Syllogistic knowledge is narrative, while Big Data is purely additive #expands (0.85) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 162
• Neohistorical explanation flattens history into raw material, stripping its causal function #expands (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 703
• Big data correlations alone cannot deliver causal knowledge to prediction systems #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 930
• Revolutionary moments compress time so individuals’ instant decisions shape history #expands (0.78)
• Big Data logic rejects theory-driven hypothesis testing in favor of raw pattern extraction #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 394