Read on Twitter
Collapse of trust in expertise is largely about our collective realization that experts—and their public—have vastly overestimated the power of quantification to solve everything from justice to happiness to the right diet.
It is an overestimation on the scale of previous overestimations of other elite descriptive languages, like those of priestly classes or astrologers.
And while I am *emphatically* not saying quantification is useless or fraudulent, I am saying we are overdue for a reckoning about why we placed too much faith in its power, and how that faith serves a specific set of people with exclusive access to that descriptive language.
With everything from Big Data solving crime to FitBits solving personal health, the promise of quantified utopia has failed to deliver, frequently with economic and existential cost.
One way to think about this is how we are relying on quantification even when it's manifestly ridiculous. "Should hospital rooms have paintings or just bare walls? Let's run an expensive double-blinded study!" "New research shows having friends is good!"
Just imagine if we conducted our own lives in this way (which, increasingly, is the case with the so-called "quantified self" movement). Should I get married? Consult a happiness study first. What religion should I believe? Gotta look at lifespan and income of average believers.
