topic: [[Creating]] created: 2023-02-16 *How meaning can be obscured unintentionally by data.* This reminds me of the [[modern ancient mismatch]], and how as humans [[We see the world in stories]]. We craft stories from little information and [[climb the ladder of inference]]. This reminds me that [[the answers you get come from the questions you ask]], make sure you don't mistake measuring what you can to measuring what's important. [[When a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure]], that signal can overwhelm what's important, and you can loose track of the importance of if it "worked or not" and don't forget to go [[beyond "did it work?"]] to the why. Signal-to-Noise is a shorthand way of talking that is borrowed from science, where the signal is the important information and the noise is the background unimportant information. The question is in the moment where do we [[focus attention]] since [[you amplify what you focus on]], so you can unintentionally make certain information more important than it needs to be, drowning out the important information. ##### What would the opposite argument be? You have to maintain [[🐓 Idea Farm/3 Inbox of ideas/situational awareness]] in order to be able to tell the signal from the noise. You have to zoom in and out to see both the forest and the trees, which you cannot do at the same time, but BOTH are important. Sometimes, if you're fishing, the red herrings are the thing you want to catch. tags: #note/idea | #on/science | #on/attention | #on/research ##### Sources: "Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR or S/N) is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise." > [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal-to-noise%20ratio) "To place this problem in more common terms, imagine you are talking to someone 6 meters away. If the two of you are in a quiet, empty room then a conversation is quite easy to hold at normal voice levels. In a loud, crowded bar, it would be impossible to hear the same voice level, and the only solution (for that distance) is for both you and your friend to speak louder. Of course, this increases the overall noise level in the bar, and every other patron has to talk louder too (this is equivalent to power control runaway). Eventually, everyone has to shout to make themselves heard by a person standing right beside them, and it is impossible to communicate with anyone more than half a meter away. In general, however, a human is very capable of filtering out loud sounds; similar techniques can be deployed in signal processing where suitable criteria for distinguishing between signals can be established (see [signal processing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_processing "Signal processing") and notably [adaptive signal processing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_filter "Adaptive filter"))." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near–far_problem