When Dominic Cummings arrived in Downing Street, some of his new colleagues were puzzled by one of his mantras: “Get Brexit done, then Arpa”. Alerting applicants to the riskiness of employment by him, Cummings writes: “I’ll bin you within weeks if you don’t fit – don’t complain later because I made it clear now.”The ad provoked predictable outrage and even the odd parody. Note that all these inspirational projects have some interesting things in common: no “politics”, no bureaucratic processes and no legal niceties. The first is that he has swallowed the Silicon Valley delusion that data (and data science) provide the key to life, the universe and everything. In this regard, writes Cowen, “sometimes the problem is too much government, sometimes the problem is not enough government.

Source: The Guardian January 05, 2020 03:11 UTC