There’s a great line in Maciej Ceglowski’s excellent “Haunted by Data” talk about the conundrum between good data and good algorithms:
“There’s a little bit of a con going on here. On the data side, they tell you to collect all the data you can, because they have magic algorithms to help you make sense of it. On the algorithms side, where I live, they tell us not to worry too much about our models, because they have magical data. We can train on it without caring how the process works.”
If you don’t understand a system or a piece of technology, you shouldn’t assume it will magically solve your problems. In fact, when a feature or function comes off as magical, it’s probably a sign you need to dig deeper and understand what’s really going on.