Biopolitical population statistics cannot reach the psyche that Big Data exploits

Evidence

However, this approach proves altogether unsuited to the neoliberal regime, which exploits the psyche above all. Biopolitics, which makes use of population statistics, has no access to the psychic realm. It can deliver no material for drawing up a psychogram of the population. Demography is not the same thing as psychography. It cannot tap into or disclose the psyche. On this score, statistics and Big Data lie worlds apart. Big Data provides the means for establishing not just an individual but a collective psychogram – perhaps even the psychogram of the unconscious itself. As such, it may yet shine a light into the depths of the psyche and exploit the unconscious entirely. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 58

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely dense distinction — demography versus psychography, statistics versus Big Data as two different epistemic orders with radical political stakes. The claim that Big Data could produce a psychogram of the unconscious is paradigm-shifting in scope.
• XREF: Directly pays off the chapter-3 theme that behavioral prediction closes the open future freedom requires, now extended to the unconscious itself. Also resonates with surveillance-capitalism literature (Zuboff). — connects to: Big Data epistemology replaces population sampling with continuous extraction from whole populations — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 398; Neoliberals rejected population-level statistics and risk insurance as hubristic — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 210; Good theory explains data but cannot remain at data’s level — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2456 (+2 more)
• SEED: The demography/psychography distinction is a strong spine for an essay contrasting census-era biopolitics with algorithm-era psychopolitics as two regimes of knowing populations.

Related

• Neoliberal power exploits the psyche, which biopolitical statistics cannot reach. (similarity 0.91)
• Big Data epistemology replaces population sampling with continuous extraction from whole populations (similarity 0.82)
• Big Data logic rejects theory-driven hypothesis testing in favor of raw pattern extraction (similarity 0.80)
• Big Data is blind to the singular event that actually shapes history (similarity 0.79)
• Good theory explains data but cannot remain at data’s level (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Good theory explains data but cannot remain at data’s level #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2456
• Big Data epistemology replaces population sampling with continuous extraction from whole populations #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 398
• Syllogistic knowledge is narrative, while Big Data is purely additive #qualifies (0.80) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 162
• Neoliberals rejected population-level statistics and risk insurance as hubristic #contradicts (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 210