What’s Possible Matters More Now Than What’s Probable
Enthralled by what we could measure, we made the mistake of undervaluing what we couldn't
I've always felt, and even more so the longer I live, that I understand bigger ideas more deeply through the lens of personal experience. I know that can annoy some people - like, who cares about your little life? We’re talking about serious stuff here, not your anecdata. But that’s just how I think. And when it comes to understanding something, there’s a difference between grasping it intellectually and truly “getting it”, through living it.
Take, for example, my experience with math and science (or, perhaps I should say, my chosen lack thereof). Back when I took such courses, getting high marks always came fairly easily for me, at least to the level I took them (which wasn’t very far). And this isn’t bragging - I wasn’t particularly interested, and did well without working all that hard. It’s not a point of pride, just a fact that while I don’t naturally gravitate toward the technical, I generally find it easy enough to understand.
This was true enough that my choice to pursue a creative field was lamented by some of my teachers at the time, as well as a friend who dubbed me a "waste of a brain" - particularly, I think, because I was a girl/am a woman, and it was in vogue to encourage more women to break up sausage parties.
A big part of why I didn’t was that I didn’t like the mindset common among those who gravitated toward more tech-y fields. There was a tendency to believe that to get ahead in life, you had to forgo actually living. Their life plans often sounded miserable - more like something to get through, than something to enjoy.
If I’m honest, that’s really why I never seriously considered that path. Spending too much time around that mindset just wasn’t good for me. It didn’t fit how I wanted to live; I found it limiting and depressing.
I preferred being around creative people because they tended to be more open and well-rounded. They knew what they were good at - but were also more humble about what they weren’t.
Indeed, what I found most trying about many of the so-called smart kids (the ones in the “hard subjects”) was the too-common assumption that their intelligence was universal - that they could do what my creative friends did too, if only they weren’t so focused on more “serious” things.
But as someone who was at least reasonably good at both, I knew better. Much as many of my creative friends lacked the aptitude for the more technical, these “smart kids” lacked it for the creative - but it wasn’t as common to acknowledge the reverse. They assumed creativity was something people with nothing better to do wasted their time on. It wasn’t. It’s its own talent, its own kind of smart - and they didn’t have it.
I figured that, for me and what I chose to pursue, it would be more of a niche to be someone in a creative field who actually understood both. I felt I was using my brain more fully this way, rather than “hunkering down” and committing to the “hard stuff” that I didn’t find hard - just less engaging.
I don’t mean this as a value judgment, truly. We need people who have more of a dedication to minutiae than I am capable of committing myself to. But I also know that way of thinking has its shortcomings. That kind of intense focus can lead to precision, sure, but it can also lead to an inability to see beyond what’s currently under the microscope.
And I don’t think we can say this type of person has been undervalued. My entire adult life has basically been their era. But I think that era is fading. The moment now belongs to those who prioritize new ways of understanding rather than clinging to "best practices" that only reinforce what’s already been seen and done.
I ended up in university just before the era of big data really took hold - when talk of how data would change the world still had a distinctly utopian tone. What I chose to study was an approach to design that was research driven, but qualitative - putting findings in context, valuing insights that would guide the design over data for its own sake. We were absolutely enthralled by all the things we imagined we could do with the benefit of so much information.
What all that data and analytics (note I didn’t say analysis) has done instead, to me, is make us think we know more than we do. Looking for context now somehow seems anti-science, anti-expert - when really, we need to remember that some people are better with precision, and others are better at navigating uncertainty.
It’s worth repeating that there’s an important distinction between those who simply enjoy the technical, and those who treat being on that side like a badge of superiority. The ones who bored me were usually in that second camp - not the people who were genuinely interested in it for its own sake (and I’m sure I would have met more of those if I’d pursued that side more seriously myself).
However, later applying the kind of design I’d learned to work in healthcare design and communications reminded me again just how many technical people don’t think that way. Far too many I met through that experience assumed that being good at their field meant they’d automatically be good at everything.
Let me tell you, I thought about that a lot during Covid - when the gap between technical certainty and lived reality was on full display.
Too many of the things presented as scientific simply weren’t. They were moral judgments, not technical ones. There was no way to empirically prove someone’s grandma would die because you took your kid to a park - it was just that too many in power didn’t feel those kinds of “what ifs” were worth the risk, while deeply undervaluing the “what if” of things like what happens to kids who can’t go to school, can’t go to parks, and don’t really interact with the wider world beyond their little bubble for years during key developmental phases.
I don’t think politicians deferring to health bureaucrats should have been the ones making that kind of call. It was something we all should have thought about more carefully and insisted on having a much bigger say in - what was a worthwhile trade-off and what wasn’t. These were far too complex a set of questions to leave to people so prone to if/when, black-and-white thinking.
By refusing to adequately weigh risks beyond a single disease, I really do think we failed the trolley problem - though that’s not something any data model could ever truly capture.
Everyone was expected to fully comply without question with what was, in truth, mostly catastrophic thinking and hypochondriac behaviour - the product of handing too much power to overly precise people who were thrilled to finally force the world to conform to their neat little constructs of how life should work.
Free from the burden of dealing with real-life messiness, they relished being listened to - finally acknowledged as the always-right ones they believed themselves to be.
This kind of technocratic overreach - authoritarian in practice, even if framed as neutral and evidence-based - is what ultimately lost the argument for the technocratic side as the sane, safe, stable option.
It was the very people who presented themselves as a safeguard against chaos who ended up disrupting lives more than even the Trumps of the world ever could.
Under their “careful” watch, nobody could reliably plan for or look forward to anything - not even an outdoor, drive-through light show was safe.
More seriously - life trajectories were permanently altered in the name of an “abundance of caution”. Many businesses never recovered. Relationships were strained or lost. Milestones - personal, academic, and professional - were delayed or erased, often at the most formative moments of people’s lives. There are things people will never get back.
But instead of empathy for any of this, there was condescension if anyone so much as questioned whether it all really needed to go quite that far - as if absolutely every measure taken was both unavoidable and obviously correct.
Some seemed to feel that anyone who questioned anything at all may as well just die. Not even Trump has gone quite that far against those who oppose him (yet).
Protecting lives should have meant equally considering the fullness of the lives being lived - not just how well people could live in service of a preferred model.
That, I believe, is a big part of what led to him being elected again, more decisively than the first time.
Which is why, though I remain insulted that someone like Trump even exists - let alone succeeds - I nonetheless find it harder to muster the same outrage over his every new affront to normalcy than I did the first time around.
Normal has long since become a distant memory.
Basically, "the right people" took authoritarianism out for a spin, then clutched their pearls when someone like Trump got the keys next.
I think they believed that because they’re technical, rules-based people, they didn’t actually have to follow the rules. Like it was fine if they broke them - because they knew how. And while that might hold in terms of expertise, it can never hold in terms of society.
I don’t get to decide who deserves to live or die just because I’m Dexter and I’m arguably better at it. Vigilantism is still a door we shouldn’t open.
So now, when Trump does things like invoke wartime powers for deportations, and the opposition (correctly) insists such tools should be reserved for war - even though I agree, I have to say my sense of solidarity with them isn’t what it used to be.
I can’t help but think of how many were all too happy to let emergency powers drag on for years. Because it seemed easier than doing the hard work of convincing people, adapting policy, or facing trade-offs head-on.
It’s not that I actually think it should be a free-for-all now. More like, well, if you normalize using emergency powers that way, you can’t be surprised when others you don’t agree with start doing the same for their own ends.
Trump and his ilk aren’t the opposite of the technocratic class that governed the pandemic response - they’re the other side of the same coin. Both operate from a place of certainty, not caution. Both think the rules don’t apply to them, because they believe they’re the ones who know best.
This is the world those technocrats helped bring about. By putting us under the thrall of an old-timey threat like a pandemic - clinging to control, ignoring trade-offs, pushing limits they shouldn’t have - they set the stage for us to now be similarly thrown into daily chaos over the old-timey threat of tariffs.
They set us back. To Trump - and maybe even further.
That’s why I can’t get behind the idea that the answer lies in putting the Mark Carneys of the world back in charge. I get the appeal - stability, order, spreadsheets - but it was that very faith in numbers over nuance, models over reality, that helped get us here.
Carney might have made an okay prime minister in a different time. But his approach doesn’t feel suited to now. It’s not just dated - it represents the very mindset that caused many of the problems we’re facing. He’s focused on preserving what we have, not leading us toward the meaningful change we need - as shown by his administration’s stubborn stance that housing prices must be preserved at all costs.
But we’re clearly entering a period where a lot is going to have to change. Carney just isn’t the guy for that. He’s the defend–what–we–have guy (“elbows up!”), not the imagine–something–new–to–meet–a–shifting–global–order guy.
Deferring too much to what we know - “the facts” - ignores that facts can change. It prioritizes what has been over what could be. And I don’t think any of us can count on the way things used to be anymore.
The world order has already shifted. Trump’s chaotic approach to global trade only deepened the cracks in an economic system long propped up by US stability.
But it was Covid that first fractured it - showing just how hollow that foundation had become. That we didn’t really have to keep doing things the way we always had. We now have to think more seriously about what might be possible - for better or worse.
That doesn’t mean we need the Doug Fords of the world either. They might at least recognize the chaos, but they aren’t particularly forward-looking. Like Trump, they sometimes find a sense of direction - just with all the wrong ideas about where to go from there.
What we need now are people who can see the chaos for what it is, imagine where it might lead, and steer it toward something better - people who can think beyond the next quarter or election cycle, and who aren’t afraid to rewrite the rules when the old ones stop working.
I think a lot of people go along with too much simply because they’re not comfortable with anything technical or involving numbers. For them, the dogma of "trust the science" or "trust the experts" has to be just that - because they don’t have the ability to follow it, let alone question it.
I’m sure many people, like me, also just don’t want to micromanage every little thing. I’m perfectly capable of doing my own taxes, but I pay someone else to do them because I don’t want to - and I assume he’s more likely to stay on top of changing rules than I am. I’m sure he makes some minor errors here and there, but I don’t go over his work like a teacher grading homework. His track record is solid enough that I trust he’s doing a good job overall.
If anything ever seemed off, though, or if the logic behind something didn’t seem to add up - I’d absolutely question it, respectfully. I’m comfortable with my ability to ask informed questions. Many people aren’t. And I’m also confident enough to listen to the answer and be open to being wrong.
What I take issue with are experts who get mad at being questioned. Do you know more than me about your field? Of course. But maybe I see something you don’t - fresh eyes, and all that. Or maybe you’ve stepped outside your lane, and now this actually is more my area than yours.
The idea that the economy is overly rational or predictable is cute - when really, markets follow moods.
The Covid-era fantasy that you could just flick the economy on and off like a switch was always going to blow a fuse. And that’s only been worsened by the collapse of the economic world order as we knew it, with the loss of the US as a grounding force for the global economy.
Too much is assumed to be rational when it’s not.
Like the idea that houses cost what they do because of input costs. In reality, a lot of those costs only rose because they could, when prices were high. When the crash comes, they’ll fall too - because they’ll have to.
Feelings make facts.
They shape how people behave, vote, spend, react, and what they believe to be true. No hard data outweighs what people feel is possible.
If people feel unsafe, they avoid places or demand policy changes, even when crime is low.
If investors feel confident or panicked, markets shift, no matter the fundamentals.
If a population feels hopeful or hopeless, it shows in birth rates, innovation, and migration.
Feelings aren’t facts, but they make facts real by shaping what happens next.
The things I saw on March 12th, 2020, at the Yorkville Whole Foods will amuse and amaze me forever.
One that stood out was a guy with his shopping cart full to an extent I never even realized was possible - absolutely stuffed to the brim with packs upon packs of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, the remainder of the space filled with myriad protein and energy drinks. Another was a lady just as clearly concerned she’d run out of kale and sweet potatoes as that man was about his gains, seemingly having put all the store had of those two items into her cart, similarly packed to absolute capacity.
I’ll always remember it not only as hilarious, but as a vivid snapshot of that first wave of panic buying, when people were desperately trying to hold on to whatever version of normal they could. And I think that’s still what we’re doing now. But we can’t count on what we’re used to anymore.
We can’t just stockpile normal. If we want something worth holding on to, we have to stop clinging to scraps of the past and start reaching - not for whatever we can cobble together from leftovers, but for fresher, more exciting things.
We can do more than just salvage. We can create.