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Everybody Lies

Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
Jul 02, 2017JLMason rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
The information about human thoughts and behaviour revealed in this book is fascinating. Equally fascinating is the methodology used to gather the information, primarily millions of anonymized Google searches analyzed by geography, by frequency, by time, by choices. These are deemed to reveal "true thoughts” through real action vs what people tell you in person or in surveys. Common held views about human behaviour and even our intuition about what motivates people are proving wrong. One example: the change in on-line searches during and following two different President Obama speeches appealing for tolerance after a terrorist attack in the U.S. As with any new technology the ramifications can be both positive and negative. Finding “doppelgängers” - people who are statistically similar to you - could provide life-saving medical information or the means to manipulate you. The opportunities for social sciences - economics, sociology, and psychology - are significant; no longer will a small sample of paid students provide supposedly meaningful information about human behaviour through controlled experiments. Analysis of data for causal connections (e.g. socio-economic backgrounds of NBA players) also has power. But does Big Data like Google searches really reveal true human behaviour? Maybe sometimes. I think more work needs to be done on this point.