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|In: Cognitive Enterprise|Last Updated:

I bet you’re expecting a Cubs-themed KJR this week. It’s a rich vein to tap, what with a World Series featuring two excellent managers who are class acts all the way; who win by recruiting the best talent, treating players with respect, turning them into team, and not over-reacting when things don’t go their way … and I could go on and on and on, but there’s already been so much written about the subject that really, what would be the point.

On a personal note, there were two big events I was hoping to enjoy during my stay here on earth: Halley’s comet, and the Cubs winning the World Series. Halley’s comet was a serious let-down. But the Cubs? After 59 years of rooting, the Cubbies, along with their partners in coronary sports the Cleveland Indians, gave us what might have been the best Game 7 in history.

One out of two ain’t bad. Even the best hitters don’t do that well.

* * *

Tomorrow is election day. We appear to have a national consensus on the most important issue: Is this the best we can do?

Please don’t vote. Every citizen who refrains makes me more important. Mathematically speaking, my vote constitutes 1/nth of the POTUS decision. Those who don’t vote make n smaller. So stay away from the polls, and ask all your friends to do likewise. Thanks.

If you insist, but still can’t make up your mind, try this: List of all the reasons to vote against each of the two major-party candidates … tangible, separate reasons, not vague statements like “she’s corrupt” or “he’s a horrible human being,” no matter how fervently you believe such things.

List only those issues that are tangible and backed by evidence that doesn’t require a conspiracy with a hundred or more members to be credible.

So Clinton’s email server is in. Vince Foster is out. The Trump Foundation paying to settle lawsuits against Trump’s for-profit businesses is in. The rumor that he molested 13-year-old girls is out.

The shorter list wins, no matter how angry any one transgression makes you.

Or, take the advice given in this space from time to time: Ignore policy and ethics completely, and vote for whichever candidate you think would be more competent in the job.

Competence matters most. Competence is what separates those who trust evidence and logic from those who trust their instincts. It’s what separates those who appoint the most qualified people they can find from those who prefer cronies who tell them what they want to hear.

It’s what separates those who take Salvor Hardin’s advice (The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov) that “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent,” from those whose first instinct is to nuke ’em.

* * *

Following my recent Sherlock Holmes pastiche, some correspondents raised a significant challenge to making evidence-and-logic based decisions: Given the ease of setting up plausible-looking but phony websites, how can anyone decide which sources are credible and which should be ignored?

Here’s how I go about it, for whatever it’s worth:

  • Read multiple fact checkers. Any one fact-checking site could be a fraud. When FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” agree, fraud would require a conspiracy.
  • Spot-check the fact checks. Don’t just read the ratings. Read some of the essays behind the ratings. If you detect ranting, raving, and expressions of outrage, chances are good it’s a fraudulent site.
  • Spot-check sources. No matter what you’re reading, if the author’s evidence mostly traces back to a few obviously partisan sources (e.g. Breitbart, Michael Moore) you’re looking at a phony fact checker.
  • Look for one-sidedness. If every claim of falsehood is about one political tribe while confirmations of veracity are always about the other, someone is trying to sucker you.
  • Read the opinion columns. I rely on these more than on news stories, with these provisos: (1) I ignore columnists who demonize those they disagree with. This cuts out at least 90% of the noise. And (2) I search for writers I don’t agree with who aren’t screened out by proviso #1.

What’s this have to do with the worlds of business and IT? Well, there is a nice irony: While we’re busily turning into a post-factual society, the world of business, awash in data that’s subjected to sophisticated multivariate analysis, is becoming increasingly dependent on evidence and logic for decision-making.

Other than that, not much. We’ll get back to it next week. That’s a promise.

Not a campaign promise. A real promise.

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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

The Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota Library store more than 60,000 items of various kinds. It’s the largest repository of Holmes-related material in the world.

It seemed like the perfect refuge from some of the more acrimonious replies to last week’s re-run about intellectual relativism and my comments that preceded it. In case you missed it, here are some excerpts:

“I’ve been warning of the dangers of intellectual relativism for more than a decade now, for all the good it’s done.

Check out PolitiFact’s statistics about the two leading candidates for president and you’ll find that one almost literally invents his own facts, while the other speaks with reasonable accuracy in about 75% of her statements.

Which one is more honest isn’t in serious doubt. What is in serious doubt are our standards for veracity: Were we to grade on a curve, the candidate who misstates the facts in one out of every four utterances is getting an A.

As a nation I don’t know that we ever truly had a culture of honest inquiry, but it’s clear we don’t have one now and even more clear each and every one of us needs to do what we can to make this happen.

Starting with ourselves, because confirmation bias is alive and well and living in each of our minds.

– Bob”

In the archives I discovered a curious document. It records an exchange between Holmes and Dr. Watson that had nothing to do with a case. It’s a conversation between two friends regarding the value of facts, evidence, and logic when drawing conclusions about important topics.

As with most of what we know about Holmes, it was written by Dr. Watson. I reproduce it here for your edification, education, and consideration:

“My dear Holmes!” I exclaimed. I was, as was often the case, astonished at his insistence on reading volume upon volume of the most unreliable … I hesitate to call them “newspapers” given that their content covers a spectrum that begins with hyperbole and ends with out-and-out libel, but I have no other word to substitute.

I had observed this habit for years, but found I could not bear for another day watching the world’s finest intellect engaged for an hour a day on utterly worthless rubbish.

Having been asked about the reason for his fascination with such drivel in direct terms, he replied in terms no less direct: “But my dear Watson. This drivel, this rubbish, this waste of tree pulp and ink as you so amusingly describe it, is anything but worthless.”

“Please observe: Who do you and I associate and converse with during the normal course of our lives?”

As it happens, neither Holmes nor I socialize to any great extent, so the accurate answer would have been each other. Having pointed this out, I added, “When we’re investigating some matter or other, we interview witnesses and, to his frequent dismay, interact with Lestrade. Other than that there’s your brother Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson. Beyond this, when we do find ourselves at a social gathering it is hosted by the Lords and Ladies of London society.”

“Precisely!” he congratulated me. “And please tell me, when we find ourselves in substantive conversations with these worthies, how often it happens that we disagree on what we consider to be the fundamental and important truths?”

“Seldom, if ever,” I conceded. “But surely you aren’t claiming that reading these exploitative publications will expose you to important and differing perspectives, and the evidence and logic behind them.”

“Of course not, Watson. To the extent these publications offer evidence, it is distorted or fabricated, and what they call logic would cause Aristotle to rotate in his tomb with considerable velocity.”

“No,” he continued, “I read these to gain insight into how those who firmly adhere to utterly preposterous opinions and worldviews have come to do so.”

“Is Moriarty the source of it all?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “Moriarty would be far more subtle, his propositions more difficult to disprove. And in any event, my goal is to understand the psychology that prefers implausible nonsense to reliable evidence.”

“Have you reached any conclusions?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “It is that most people, most of the time, accept without dispute any statement that justifies what they wish to be true, while rejecting on even the flimsiest of pretexts any declaration that contradicts it.”

“Ah,” I said. “I’ve heard people say they ‘trust their guts.’ Are you saying that this is how people choose what they believe?”

Holmes smiled approvingly. “It’s alimentary, my dear Watson.”

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