How can we build systems that are committed to fostering trust in data when, so often, facts don’t change people’s minds?
I love the article Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds by James Clear because it ends with a beautiful quote by Haruki Murakami: “Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.” As a statistician, I often think about public distrust in data, statistics, and science more generally, and I always come back to that Murakami quote. An individual’s distrust comes from their very real lived experiences. Only true connection with an individual can reveal those lived experiences and pave the way for openness to new perspectives.Â
I wish that we could create systems where individuals could voice their needs and have a say in the data collection that addresses those needs. I think the default experience for most people with data is one of an adversarial nature (cookies during web browsing, privacy notices, jumping through hoops to access one’s own medical data), so it’s hard for people to see that data can be for them rather than something that is taken from them. For example, I love that there is a map of Little Free Library locations—what a great example of data that is meant to create opportunities for joy in the community. I think that individuals having a say in how data are collected and having an interest in the results is fundamental to society having a better relationship with data.
A problem related to voicing needs, which touches on the question How can we keep building new ways to encourage healthy collaboration between groups despite numerous barriers?, is that there is often no easy way to see that the wants and needs that we have are shared by others. In a vague sense, we know that we can’t be alone in our wants and needs, but the way we go about addressing them is largely on an individual basis. We seek out solutions on our own through our own research. But if we were connected to others who wanted the same thing, we could pool resources and collectively ask for more. Along this line, I wonder about using community/neighborhood online groups (like Nextdoor and Facebook groups) as an avenue for learning about community data needs.