When Data and Decisions Collide: Unlearning Needs to Result
Posted in Future
Fellow blogger and change agent, Seth Godin, has an excellent post today entitled "When data and decisions collide." In it, he recounts numerous examples of people ignoring data because it doesn't line up with their "hunches" — or what people think they know but "just ain't so."
Godin is pessimistic about the time it will take most people to "get their arms around this avalanche of insight," but he is spot on in his assessment that those who do will have a huge advantage.
Of course, the first thing to do is to simply acknowledge that our hunches may be wrong. This simple, albeit difficult, act is the first step about the path of unlearning. As Godin points it can be the difference between getting into an accident while texting — or not; saving $80 on a bottle of a wine; or even saving thousands of dollars on your kid's college education.
So there you have it, folks: Unlearning can save your life and save you money! I've got the data to prove it.
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It could also be the difference between getting your drivers license or not. My wife and I moved to Saint Paul, MN in 1986. At that time, part of the exam was to look at a picture of a traffic situation and answer a question based on the visual data. My wife got only one question wrong. Upon further review we noticed that I also answered the same question incorrectly. It turns out that the picture was taken in front of our apartment building. We recognized the location and answered the question based on our knowledge of the street. Unfortunately, the picture had been doctored to show a one-way sign that was not actually there. We both got that question wrong because we trusted what we knew as opposed to the data presented to us. We both passed our exam, although I wondered if I had known the city better, would I have gotten other questions wrong too.