Beware the Big Errors of Big Data

Nassem Taleb is at it again:

In his latest essay "Beware the Big Errors of Big Data," he writes:

We’re more fooled by noise than ever before, and it’s because of a nasty phenomenon called “big data.” With big data, researchers have brought cherry-picking to an industrial level.
Modernity provides too many variables, but too little data per variable. So the spurious relationships grow much, much faster than real information.

In other words: Big data may mean more information, but it also means more false information.


My takeaway:

1. Behavior changes and not everything is known
2. Correlation is not causation.
2. Designing models around averages changes the average itself.

Please see When Genius Failed, the last time we thought we knew everything.