For instance, this is the first “card” of the “What is Bitcoin?” ongoing storyline:
Put simply,
Data Journalism: both relates to the sefirah of chochmah (depth of the beginning) and the nature of reporting, whereas
Explanatory Journalism: relates to the sefirah of binah (depth of the end) and “nurture”.
Resolving the Debate
The problem is that we are still left searching for objectivity. Given that there are these two approaches ingrained not only in journalism, but into the fabric of the cosmos, how can we reconcile the two?
Although not everyone can be the brother-in-law of Reish Lakish, since they spoke openly and freely with each other, their debates resulted in lucid and profound Torah lessons. When Reish Lakish passed away, Rabbi Yochanan was close to losing his mind because he had no one to spar with. And in the merit of the “sparring match” we quoted in the beginning, we learn a great principle that spans the entire Talmud (with ramifications till today).
Since this article is not a history lesson, we’d like to resolve the nature vs. nurture debate right here and now. Are you ready? The way to resolve a debate is to fully appreciate the other side, even to the extent of explaining their arguments in a clear and lucid manner. But more than a rhetorical technique to gain audience interest, the hope of understanding the other side is that some common ground will result.
We recently witnessed a glimmer of this call for common ground in a nature vs. nurture debate between David Epstein and Malcolm Gladwell, written about in, “How to Have an Honest Data-Driven Debate.” For those who are familiar with David’s book Sports Gene, or Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule from Outliers, you probably realize that David was the nature side of the debate, and Malcolm the nurture. But what is relevant for our present discussion, and why this Harvard Business Review article was written, was because of the hope that such a debate inspires.
I said this debate reflects only a “glimmer” of this call for common ground because while being able to debate the other side shows open-mindedness, it still doesn’t explain the connection between the two sides. For instance, in physics, either you have Albert Einstein’s relatively stable world of classical physics, or Richard Feynman’s chaotic world of quantum mechanics. The challenge is not in understanding the other side, but in uniting these two approaches into one Grand Unified Theory.
Talmudic Journalism
Now comes the real reason why this essay (or manifesto) was called “Talmudic Journalism.” While it is praiseworthy to relate to the other side of the debate — between Nate and Ezra, David and Malcolm — the unification between opposites only occurs under the tent of Torah. When a Torah debate is done for the sake of Heaven, then no matter what the ruling, both views are equally correct.
This is of course counter-intuitive. Either one side is correct and the other wrong. But as explained in Rabbi Ginsburgh’s Lectures on Torah and Modern Physics, science has become more counter-intuitive as well, especially during these past hundred years. For instance, according to quantum mechanics, two states (e.g. electrical charge) can coexist simultaneously.
The answer then to the nature vs. nurture debate is the same that we can give to the most heated debate today, creationism vs. evolution: Both sides are true, and both sides are true simultaneously.
Since Torah is the great equalizer, the great reconciler of divergent but valid opinions, this is also the place where common ground is reached. Once topics are explained under the tent of Torah, one objective lens emerges.