Since we’re deeply convinced that we need that data, yet it wasn’t there to be found, we went and created some instead. We would like to know about these unknowable things so badly, that we pretend there’s some fact about societal engagement ‘there’, which our surveys tap into.
How Wrong Ideas about Knowledge Can Ruin Decisions
Campbell’s law, unknowable things, and the illusion of control
by Maarten van Doorn
https://medium.com/the-understanding-project/how-wrong-ideas-about-knowledge-ruin-decisions-ab6f1ed197ab
Campbell’s Law:
The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.