No Gut Feelings: All Decisions Are Data-Driven
Seemingly intangible aspects of decision-making are rooted in some form of information processing
Data can be anything. When we talk to each other, read books, listen to podcasts, consume media, all of them are different forms of data. Natural Language, Visual data, auditory data, the smell of coffee and flowers in the morning, hormonal responses of the body, all of these are different ways we consume and absorb information.
What people consider gut-based decision-making is generally a lifetime of knowledge collection from various sources that allows that person to have a combination of different ideas and methodologies and the situation they are facing and then come up with a solution/proposal. For instance, a seasoned entrepreneur might make a quick business decision that seems intuitive. Still, it's based on years of experience in the industry, countless conversations with mentors, and observations of market trends. Of course, genetics is also at play, which means the expression of genes in terms of protein synthesis and other factors is just another type of data.
People make decisions based on the data they find relevant. Sometimes, you don't have access to it, and sometimes, the relevant data is absent from the current view, which is an expression of people's perspectives and biases. They might not consider new perspectives or give them much weightage. Consider a hiring manager who relies heavily on university pedigree when selecting candidates—they may be overlooking relevant data about a candidate's practical skills or work ethic due to their bias towards academic credentials.
Access, Relevance, and Action become the basic framework for the approach. And not necessarily in the same order. You might consider the data that you have access to to be relevant because it's more accessible or because you think this is the best information source or close to the best. Access could mean whether you have access to the data. It could also mean the rate of absorption. You could access the relevant data, but how much do you understand? This can be a combination of factors like how much relevant knowledge you have accumulated before, genetics, how the data is presented to you, etc.
The data presented to you and your understanding of it can be very different. Even if you know it, you can assign different priorities to it, assigning it different relevance. If you understand it and assign priority, you may not be able to act on it or want to because of external factors like peer pressure, stakeholder pressure, market opinions, etc. For example, a climate scientist might have access to and understand data about global warming, but societal and political pressures could influence how they present or act on this information.
We should think of it in terms of biases and perspectives and the priorities we assign to each(knowingly or unknowingly) as the fundamental driver of decisions. Our personal experiences, cultural background, and even recent events can shape these biases and priorities, influencing what we perceive as relevant data. Maybe there are other important factors to be fleshed out later, but I think any factor can be represented as data, and we make all decisions based on data, whether it is relevant or not.
If we fleshed out the true meaning of data, it would encompass everything, or the rest can be converted to a point where it can be represented as data. It's in a latent form, which can be relevant but not truly accessible now. This expansive view of data challenges us to reconsider what we typically classify as intuition or gut feeling, suggesting that even these seemingly intangible aspects of decision-making are rooted in some form of information processing.