

Can data be evil? - fuckpig
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/magazine/can-data-be-evil.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1&

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fuckpig
In his study of meaninglessness, Donald Crosby writes that the source of
modern nihilism paradoxically stems from a commitment to honest intellectual
openness. “Once set in motion, the process of questioning could come to but
one end, the erosion of conviction and certitude and collapse into despair”
(The Specter of the Absurd, 1988). When sincere inquiry is extended to moral
convictions and social consensus, it can prove deadly, Crosby continues,
promoting forces that ultimately destroy civilizations. Michael Novak’s
recently revised The Experience of Nothingness (1968, 1998) tells a similar
story. Both studies are responses to the existentialists’ gloomy findings from
earlier in the century. And both optimistically discuss ways out of the abyss
by focusing of the positive implications nothingness reveals, such as liberty,
freedom, and creative possibilities. Novak, for example, describes how since
WWII we have been working to “climb out of nihilism” on the way to building a
new civilization.

[http://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism/](http://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism/)

