The processing of data is rarely a neutral operation. One seizes upon data, and inserts it into some sort of organizational framework in order to confirm or reject some existing inclination. It could be the case that the data itself alters the framework, or builds whole new ones.
In a crude example, what one witnesses with one's own senses may change one's beliefs.
But a lot of the times one's own abstractions are surveying the data and incorporating that data into themselves to perpetuate or strengthen themselves.
These are powerful tools, sometimes doggedly adhered to out of resentful desperation: "leave me alone, I can do it." Or one is loathe to abandon the abstractions that have taken so much time and work to put together. Here what is commonly referred to as "ideological" is better thought of as "dogmatic."
But then sometimes these abstractions are just "right," or they represent "the way." Say, through long experience and trial and error, one has discovered that a hammer is best for this, a knife is best for that, and a saw is better for that other thing altogether.
And sometimes it is dark and the way forward is not clear, and one can but clutch the instrument of choice and take it as far as one can possibly go, reaching for that light at the end of the tunnel.
