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A review by sukidookie
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us about Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
dark
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
I remember going to Dalhousie University for a brief lecture about big data while attending the Humanities for Young People program. The concept of big data was a world-altering, ground-breaking technological advance that would push the human race forward. That was when I was about fifteen, so around seven years ago. Reading Everybody Lies now was exceptionally informative, while simultaneously stating the obvious. It both asked you to challenge your natural instincts about how the world works, and said that sometimes, according to the data — prejudices are factual. Basically, one of the biggest lessons from this book is to test everything before accepting it as a fact.
Something I liked about this book was that the author acknowledged their own bias, and practiced what they preached by declaring that they were an unreliable narrator. I thought it was all very meta, especially at the end of the final chapter, where Seth stated that according to the data most people don’t finish non-fiction novels, instead taking a few points from the beginning and middle and moving on with their lives. So he ended with something a bit lacklustre, assuring himself that according to the data, nobody was reading that far. I admire the craftiness of this conclusion, considering that one of the biggest points of the book was that big data isn’t entirely accurate and shouldn’t be solely relied upon.
While I found the concept and research behind Everybody Lies significant and informative, I thought it was a touch redundant to continue to repeat similar big data cases. I felt the text was repeating itself at times to make the book longer or to hammer down a point. Also, I couldn’t tell if the author was sex-crazed or if the big data surrounding human Google searches was sex-crazed. According to the book, sex isn’t searched that often in comparison to most searches, and yet the book continued to return to sexuality and pornography. Is Seth a sex-obsessed hermit, an unreliable narrator trying to prove a point, or is this an example of the “Coin 361” rule he speaks of when trying to pinpoint correlations in data? (I don’t remember the exact number of the coin, but it was something close to that.)
Something else I disliked about the book was the very obvious political agenda. When I read non-fiction, I favour those novels that have a clear attempt to stay away from their own biased political views. From the beginning of this book, it was constantly labelling Trump and his voters as racist, and constantly reprimanding Trump. I thought it was interesting how big data pointed to cities that searched the “N word” the most as those cities that also voted for Trump, and I liked how the book doubled back on itself later by mentioning that just because two things are correlated doesn’t always make them true, however the narrative took a consistent negative stand toward multiple political leaders in a way that I felt was unnecessary to the overarching message. (This is coming from someone who generally detests Trump’s whole vibe. I felt the same way about Michelle Obama’s memoir.)
Overall, though, I think Everybody Lies opened my eyes to just how useful big data can be; and simultaneously, how meaningless.
Something I liked about this book was that the author acknowledged their own bias, and practiced what they preached by declaring that they were an unreliable narrator. I thought it was all very meta, especially at the end of the final chapter, where Seth stated that according to the data most people don’t finish non-fiction novels, instead taking a few points from the beginning and middle and moving on with their lives. So he ended with something a bit lacklustre, assuring himself that according to the data, nobody was reading that far. I admire the craftiness of this conclusion, considering that one of the biggest points of the book was that big data isn’t entirely accurate and shouldn’t be solely relied upon.
While I found the concept and research behind Everybody Lies significant and informative, I thought it was a touch redundant to continue to repeat similar big data cases. I felt the text was repeating itself at times to make the book longer or to hammer down a point. Also, I couldn’t tell if the author was sex-crazed or if the big data surrounding human Google searches was sex-crazed. According to the book, sex isn’t searched that often in comparison to most searches, and yet the book continued to return to sexuality and pornography. Is Seth a sex-obsessed hermit, an unreliable narrator trying to prove a point, or is this an example of the “Coin 361” rule he speaks of when trying to pinpoint correlations in data? (I don’t remember the exact number of the coin, but it was something close to that.)
Something else I disliked about the book was the very obvious political agenda. When I read non-fiction, I favour those novels that have a clear attempt to stay away from their own biased political views. From the beginning of this book, it was constantly labelling Trump and his voters as racist, and constantly reprimanding Trump. I thought it was interesting how big data pointed to cities that searched the “N word” the most as those cities that also voted for Trump, and I liked how the book doubled back on itself later by mentioning that just because two things are correlated doesn’t always make them true, however the narrative took a consistent negative stand toward multiple political leaders in a way that I felt was unnecessary to the overarching message. (This is coming from someone who generally detests Trump’s whole vibe. I felt the same way about Michelle Obama’s memoir.)
Overall, though, I think Everybody Lies opened my eyes to just how useful big data can be; and simultaneously, how meaningless.