The Cave #47

Fresh from the oven this week, we’re looking at gut feeling, Davos, and the Beckham drama. 

Comms

Unappealing gut feeling   

We have a gut feeling you’ve skipped this section to get to the Beckham stuff, but we’ll continue regardless.

We’re in a world that has been deluged by data, and AI has supercharged our tendency to default to our technological overlords. 

The push to move from intuition to information has infiltrated everything, from hiring to insurance claims.

It’s even taken over dating. Cody Zervas, the chief product officer of Keeper, a matchmaking start-up built around artificial intelligence, tried using data to find a wife. He remains single.

Given the surfeit of options to make data-driven decisions, and the potential productivity gains they offer, it wouldn’t be surprising if gut feel went the way of the dinosaurs. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. 

A report from Monash University analysed data from almost 190,000 ER visits by children in Melbourne, and found that parents’ intuition was “significantly” linked to the likelihood of their child being admitted to ICU. 

UBS global head of quantitative research, Paul Winter, ran the numbers (as he often does, we suppose) and found that human insight performed better than an AI model.

And of course, the world is currently being torn apart and rearranged by a man who runs entirely on gut feel and an attempt to fill that huge empty hole where the sense of contented self should be.

It’s a strange dichotomy - we’ve never had more data to inform our opinions, and yet live in a world that proudly rejects the perspectives of evidence and experts. 

It has led to either blindly following what AI tells us is the right decision or defaulting entirely to gut instinct. Finding a middle ground would do everyone a world of good.

Culture

Davostating news

This week saw the return of everyone’s favourite hoopla of capitalism. 

Davos is Switzerland’s very own Disneyland - in that the attractions aren’t that great, it’s miles away from anything, and it’s really more about drinking to get through it.

As well as bringing together big hitters from the world of politics, business, and culture, Davos also sees the release of some interesting research.

Oxfam were first out of the blocks with analysis that is both shocking and completely unsurprising. 

According to their report, billionaire wealth rose by more than 16% last year, three times faster than the past five-year average, to more than $18 trillion. The value of the increase alone is enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over. Or book the best hotel room in Davos.

Edelman then reminded every comms consultancy on the planet that no matter how many times you do a brainstorm, the Trust Barometer will remain the gold standard in agency marketing (The Cave aside, of course).

Given the Oxfam findings, it’s unsurprising that this year’s report found the gap in trust between high and low income groups has more than doubled globally since 2012.

More interestingly, last year’s theme of grievance has turned to insularity, with 70% of citizens unwilling or hesitant to trust someone who has different values, facts, problem-solving approaches, or cultural background.

Culture has long since fractured into insular fandoms, but the disinclination to engage with anything that doesn’t fit neatly into your bubble is becoming ever more entrenched. 

The watercooler isn’t dead, but it’s now much more like the Meet the Plastics table than a communal discussion of shared experiences. Which, as an analogy for Davos, is pretty perfect.

Curiosities 

A short anthology of absurdity

The world is a joke so we may as well laugh at it.

This week, Elon Musk suggested he might buy budget airline, Ryanair, after getting into a spat with the company’s boss over access to Starlink. This may appear fanciful, but Ryanair would fit nicely next to X in Musk’s portfolio - both being constantly disappointing, with none of the features people want, and generally going nowhere.

Next week, Australia will celebrate its national day of arguing over its national day. Those who advocate for changing the date got an unlikely ally in anti-colonialism recently in, erm, Donald Trump. In a message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere about Greenland, the US President wrote “Why do they [Denmark] have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it's only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago.” Well, quite.

Despite all this, the biggest story of the past few days has undoubtedly been the Beckhams. Brooklyn Peltz Beckham’s attempt to make Instagram the new Substack with an 800 word post was the greatest example of ‘throwing your dad under the bus because you’ll never match his achievements’ since Prince Harry.

Speaking of the royals, Prince William recently declared his love for pubs and pledged to help the struggling industry bounce back. Unfortunately, he then completely trashed his reputation on this topic by ordering half a pint of cider.

One pub that could do with a helping hand right now is The Rec in Waroona, WA. Having advertised a ‘family fun day’, disappointed attendees turned up to find that none of the promised activity was actually happening. The venue was quick to issue an apology, admitting that “our staff [had] absolutely no knowledge of the advertised activities.” Which, in fairness, would present quite the challenge.

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