Objective and Subjective

Science has reduced everything to bits and bytes. Everything is atoms, and everything is now data. It is all subject to being measured, analyzed, and used to make decisions. Because we trust objective data, it’s used to make predictions about the future.

We trust data because we trust things that we can measure. You can rely on measurements. You can use data to make sober, rational, clinical, reasoned decisions. Data isn’t subjective, and it isn’t emotional.

Data doesn’t care what story it tells. It just tells the story.

The human mind is subjective. It’s not made up of bits and bytes. The information it stores isn’t data, at least not the way we think of data now.

Trust isn’t made up of atoms or bits and bytes. Love, even if it produces a measurable increase in serotonin, can’t be measured. The sacrifices that human beings make to help others isn’t measured on an objective “altruism” scale. Neither is integrity – or fear, hope, joy, or disappointment.

Fortunately, we have evolved in such a way as to allow us to make somewhat objective decisions with a subjective mind about another subjective mind.

Objective data is good at telling its part of the story. But the subjective mind is even better at telling its part of the story. You are wise to use both.