Nowadays, it is common to hear everyone talking about the value of data.
Although data has been very important since forever, this recent hype has been caused after people realised they could sell even basic information.
For example, Facebook uses personal information of users to target advertisements, i.e they are selling data to marketers. With the world prepared to take on big data, it would be interesting to step back and look at the different aspects related to data.
The one important dimension of data we are going to discuss here is deception. The sender of the information has two basic choices: being honest or dishonest. The receiver has to either trust or not trust the sender. Assuming that we generally trust the sender (otherwise we would rather not take information from anyone), the sender can use deception to his/her benefit. This deception inherently works via the asymmetric information channel, which is defined by Investopedia as: “A situation in which one party in a transaction has more or superior information compared to another.”
The transaction here does not necessarily imply the transaction of goods or services but can also mean the transaction of one’s emotions etc. It is from this information asymmetry that data manifests its importance in our daily lives.
Starting off with the economic context, at some point in time, we have all suspected someone to be selling us overpriced stuff; either the widely understood stating of a higher price or selling something defected at the market price of a perfect piece (and so the price does not reflect its current state – read the market of lemons by Akerlof). The seller has the advantage of deception by faking the price as you are unaware of the true value and then trying to take away as much excess profit as he can from you.
If this information asymmetry were removed, you would know exactly what the product was worth and if you would be willing to buy it at that particular price or not. On the other hand consumers also hide the true worth they place on a commodity and try to negotiate to lower prices. Deception is also very evident in the political process. Voters are given information of how the party will govern through its manifesto (which is generally a document of complete lies), but the party knows what it ‘actually’ plans to do. In case the party does not wish to keep its word, this asymmetric information could make people vote for such insincere politicians. If this asymmetric information is cleared up, we will vote for all those who genuinely want to improve the conditions of our country as we are aware of their intentions.
The more obvious place where asymmetric information is evident is games. Bluff, Poker, Scrabble, UNO, etc are all is based on asymmetric information. Why do you hide your cards or tokens? Because they are your tool that you use to win the game!
Even with personal interactions, people deceive others and act all nice when they really are not. However asymmetric information does not always lead to deception; there are scenarios where even without deception it can cause issues. For example, what if someone believed you to be evil when you were actually a really nice person and maybe even trying to help him or her? Umar must have wondered for hours why Imran did not say ‘Hi’. Ruman stressed his mind to interpret the vibes he got from Ahmad. Uzma did not sleep all night because of Saher’s tone of voice. However, what if none of the latter meant anything bad? What if they had more information of their behaviour than the former? What if they had reacted to something in good faith? If information were open to all, these people would be on good terms with each other, but if that is not the case then World War III would be inevitable. Why would there be any unnecessary problems at all if everything was clearly presented? Asymmetric information can play a big role even in our personal lives.
Conclusively, hiding information is the key to deception. We have been doing it all our lives, consciously or unconsciously. It is all around us in different forms, with distinct people, in every scenario possible. Although humans can try and improve the access to information by for example making financial statements official, enforcing laws that ensure the correct information being spread, cross questioning, etc, but they can never completely control it. As we progress, the amount of information generated increases multi-folds, and screening it cannot keep up. False information spreads like wildfire and removing it from the system becomes impossible. The fact is that we humans have our limitations and this door to deception will always remain open, the only thing we can do is create slight hurdles till the door. After all we are merely humans and it is GOD alone, who enjoys the Monopoly over Perfect Information.