There are people whose "vibes" are closer to reality than hard cold data. And then there are people who think their "vibes" are closer to reality than hard cold data.

The second group is much, much larger.

I don't trust vibes.

Do you trust your own intuition and judgment on at least some matters or topics where data is scarce, ambiguous, or contradictory?

In the absence of data yes, but intuition and judgement are just heuristics; they suffer strongly from personal biases and are not necessarily representative of reality.

It also requires judgment and critical thinking to decide things like:

a) is this data accurate

b) is this data complete

c) is this data relevant

etc.

So even the act of selecting data is subject to bias, good judgment.

You make it sound like you’re just shifting the problem elsewhere, when this isn’t the case.

It’s not wholly subjective. Some of the processes you can use to understand your data are mathematically proven. Many others are well-tested.

In any case the idea is to try to minimise your biases and check whether your assumptions are valid so that you can make better, more reliable, more informed decisions. It doesn’t have to be a perfect system to be better.

You might not want to, of course.

Sometimes vibes includes things we're trying to get away from like stereotyping visible groups of people.

You're right. Of course i'm not rejecting "data" or "analysis" entirely, what im pushing back against is the (very common) thing that happens in companies where you get into a situation of "who you going to trust? the data or your own lying eyes" kind of thing

Yeah I agree with you. I think it's a good approach to check vibes against data and vice-versa, and not blindly trust one over the other - use one to look critically at the other. They both have defects.

Interesting your mind went there.