The 'data-driven' mindset feeds our dangerous craving for certainty

When we put too much focus on data, it feeds our natural craving for certainty through cognitive biases like confirmation bias. A decision-driven approach treats decisions, not data, as the focal point in order to directly challenge biases.

While data is important when used properly, it often becomes a filter to find what we want to believe, rather than what we need to understand.

The Uncertainty Project:

The pursuit of information is often in service of confirmation bias, not learning or understanding - but this isn’t done maliciously. It’s a natural, self-reinforcing tendency to confirm our existing beliefs and feel certain in our decisions.

The idea that perfect information is out there is an empty pursuit - it’s chasing the illusion of certainty.

Illusory certainty may very well be the current epidemic of modern strategy - which is likely why decision intelligence, as a combination of modern data science and decision science, presents a compelling evolution of the data-driven mindset.