Shit I say on Facebook.

While I have you here, at the risk of accidentally writing waaaay too much for a monday morning coffee break:

When I say, "all data is qualitative" I do not mean to suggest that it is invalid to say some data is quantitative. Math exists beyond humanity. Math is part of the natural order of reality such that it can be recognized by nature.

When I say, "all data is qualitative" what I'm actually expressing is a working theory that due to the subjective nature of human cognition and the fundamental functions of the amygdala to choice architecture, no data can be rationally executed on by a human mind without the weight of emotional preference. Whether your preference is efficiency, optimization, fairness, convenience, hedonism, etc. there is always some underlying emotional preference that allows you to choose.

If you keep a human brain functional, but impair or neutralize the amygdala, decisions cannot be made "logically". For example, a preference for numbers, be they high or low, must exist for a person to be able to make a choice based on empirical preferences.

So, even in computing we run into the same problem. Computers are coded by human minds so any "choice" a "computer" makes must be first run through the choice architecture dictated by a human. Even if a computer makes the decision algorithmically for the sake of efficiency, a human first had a preference.