The emptiness of evidence

Can a scientific study tell us how to live our lives?

Should we use AI in education?

Let’s wait. There are some studies coming out telling us about it.

However, there is another aspect that one may want to look at. This may sound sacrilegious coming from a scientist but… What if we don’t need evidence?

Our society is asking for scientific evidence (well, correlations) for many behavioral aspects of our lives. Are cell phones good or bad? Is exercising good or bad? Is eating meals with family good? Is reading a book better than watching a movie? Is working from home the same as going to work?

It seems to me that to answer “the life that is worth living” there is a higher place where we can find our answer. We can call that “our culture”, a sense of beauty, our values… add your spiritual flavor here. So, even if chatbots in education give good results in learning tests, what if that’s not how we want to live our lives? We can always argue that we don’t use learning-bots because we believe in strengthening human relationships… and that’s because… well, because these are our values, regardless of what the evidence says.