I am not data-driven
Are you data-driven or data-informed?
I actually cringe at the former (akin to the virtuous “I believe in science” phrase). Being data-driven sounds like you’re flying in the wind, willing to move in any direction so long as the “data says”. But there’s almost even a flaw in the concept that makes the entire thing illogical: data doesn’t make decisions, people do. So even if you are self-proclaimed to be “driven by data”, there has to be some foundation underlying it otherwise no decisions would ever be made. It would essentially be meaningless.
Data-informed is a much sturdier phrase. It conveys a steadiness and grounding in something. The data is just there to help push and pull. The focus is on the decision being made, or the problem to be solved. Data in this process becomes a supplement to other considerations at play that shape why people decide what they decide, and do what they do: logical reasoning, intuition, tradeoffs, balances, risk-reward, weighting, values.
Decisions need to be made regardless of how much information you have when you need to make it, so being data informed just means seeking out what additional information is going to help you make that decision. You might be willing to be swayed based on certain information you deem sufficient to sway your decision (and it’s not the same for everyone). Being data-informed is partly then just the willingness to seek it out rather than always living in a state of blissful (willful) ignorance.
I think the foreword of Jordan Peterson’s, “12 Rules of Life: An Antidote to Chaos” (page xxi) sums it up perfectly:
“Modern moral relativism has many sources. As we in the West learned more history, we understood that different epochs had different moral codes. As we travelled the seas and explored the globe, we learned of far-flung tribes on different continents whose different moral codes made sense relative to, or within the framework of, their societies. Science played a role, too, by attacking the religious grounds for ethics and rules. Materialist social science implied that we could divide the world into facts (which all could observe, and were objective and”real”) and values (which were subjective and personal). Then we could first agree on the facts, and, maybe, one day, develop a scientific code of ethics (which has yet to arrive). Moreover, by implying that values had a lesser reality than facts, science contributed in yet another way to moral relativism, for it treated “value” as secondary. (But the idea that we can easily separate facts and values was and remains naive; to some extent, one’s values determine what one will pay attention to, and what will count as a fact.)” - Dr. Norman Doidge, MD