It’s ‘Wood Age’ not ‘Stone Age’.
Why data make us think our ancestors live in caves?
Yuval Noah Harari, Author of the famous book ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ mentioned in his book that ‘Stone age is actually Wood age’, our ancestors 70,000+ years ago do not necessarily live in caves. They were hunter-gatherers that uses more wood & bamboo than tools crafted of stone. Why then do we call it the ‘Stone Age’? Because woods and bamboo cannot withstand the erosion of the environment after so many years, only the tools made of stone, and graffiti written in caves get preserved and thus discovered.
In the book ‘Competing Against Luck’, Clayton mentioned data has an annoying way of conforming itself to support whatever point-of-view we want it to support, he called it ‘the fallacy of conforming data’.
Data provide amazing insights, but relying on it will exacerbate our confirmation bias. Data-driven companies need to have humans that can provide the necessary context to use their data correctly.
Previous Post: Pay more attention to all the bite-sized videos you are watching. Major decision rarely happens overnight.
