Just kidding! But according to a new book by Ian Ayres, an econometrician and law professor at Yale, this is a microcosm of a powerful trend that will shape the economy for years to come: the replacement of expertise and intuition by objective, data-based decision making, made possible by a virtually inexhaustible supply of inexpensive information. Those who control and manipulate this data will be the masters of the new economic universe. Ayres calls them “Super Crunchers,” which is also the title of his book, the latest attempt to siphon off a bit of the buzz that surrounds the hugely successful “Freakonomics.” In fields from criminal law (where statistical projections of recidivism are taking discretion away from judges and parole boards) to oenophilia (where a formula involving temperature and rainfall is a better predictor of the quality of a vintage than the palates of the most vaunted experts), “intuitivists” are on the defensive against the Super Crunchers.
And this power necessarily resides in a central computer, not with the agent at the ticket counter. Increasingly, jobs that used to call for independent judgment, especially about other people, are being routinized and dumbed down. Banks no longer care about a loan officer’s assessment of whether a borrower is a good risk; everything they need to know is in the numbers. Baseball managers increasingly judge prospects by quantifiable statistics, not their “drive” or “hustle.” “We are living in an age when dispersed discretion is on the wane,” Ayres writes, even in such intimate settings as the doctor’s office. Evidence-based medicine, the use of statistical models to guide diagnoses and treatment, is already changing how doctors practice. “Many physicians have effectively ceded a large chunk of control of treatment choice to Super Crunchers,” he writes, and the trend will continue despite understandable resistance from the profession. No one wants to throw away a lifetime of specialized training and experience. Which is why the editors request that if you liked this article, or even more so if you didn’t … please keep it to yourself. Just kidding.
title: “Era Of The Super Cruncher” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-10” author: “Jessica Brooks”
Just kidding! But according to a new book by Ian Ayres, an econometrician and law professor at Yale, this is a microcosm of a powerful trend that will shape the economy for years to come: the replacement of expertise and intuition by objective, data-based decision making, made possible by a virtually inexhaustible supply of inexpensive information. Those who control and manipulate this data will be the masters of the new economic universe. Ayres calls them “Super Crunchers,” which is also the title of his book, the latest attempt to siphon off a bit of the buzz that surrounds the hugely successful “Freakonomics.” In fields from criminal law (where statistical projections of recidivism are taking discretion away from judges and parole boards) to oenophilia (where a formula involving temperature and rainfall is a better predictor of the quality of a vintage than the palates of the most vaunted experts), “intuitivists” are on the defensive against the Super Crunchers.
And this power necessarily resides in a central computer, not with the agent at the ticket counter. Increasingly, jobs that used to call for independent judgment, especially about other people, are being routinized and dumbed down. Banks no longer care about a loan officer’s assessment of whether a borrower is a good risk; everything they need to know is in the numbers. Baseball managers increasingly judge prospects by quantifiable statistics, not their “drive” or “hustle.” “We are living in an age when dispersed discretion is on the wane,” Ayres writes, even in such intimate settings as the doctor’s office. Evidence-based medicine, the use of statistical models to guide diagnoses and treatment, is already changing how doctors practice. “Many physicians have effectively ceded a large chunk of control of treatment choice to Super Crunchers,” he writes, and the trend will continue despite understandable resistance from the profession. No one wants to throw away a lifetime of specialized training and experience. Which is why the editors request that if you liked this article, or even more so if you didn’t … please keep it to yourself. Just kidding.
