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A statistician is someone who can put their head in a hot oven, their feet in a bucket of ice water, and then proclaim: “On the average, I feel fine.” We have a ton of jokes and just-so stories about statistics, and yet, we trust them with our lives, don’t we? In the engineering world, we often rely on statistics, such as the mean time between failure, or the mean time to repair, to help design a system. And this seems to work fine, because you are working with materials and equipment, not people.
In the “old world,” God instituted natural laws, which were then translated into societal laws by a given people in the context of a given government. In the “new world,” we treat a society as a “system,” shaped by forces, and statistically understandable. If we have a riot, we study the riot, and we determine how best to prevent a riot in the future, using statistics and engineering principles. If we have a food shortage, we do the same thing.
The problem is it doesn’t work. While you can socially engineer a society, the result will always be a disaster of the gravest proportions. Social engineering always leads to destruction. Why? There are many reasons, not the least of which is the treatment of people as objects to be “worked.” Included in these many reasons is statistical manipulation. People, and societies, are incomprehensible systems. This tends to simplification, and simplification leads to using the numbers that benefit your cause the most. To give a few examples:
- People will claim various percentages of the US population pay certain amounts of the taxes paid in the Country. There are, of course, two numbers, one based on those who are the wealthiest, and another based on those who earn the most in a given year. One side will quote the percentage paid by the wealthiest x% of people, while the other will quote the percentage paid by the top x% among earners in a year. Of course, wealth doesn’t equal taxable income, so one of these two numbers is completely off base. But either way, both of these numbers skirt the real issue: Why is it acceptable to take more in taxes from one person than from another, simply because they make more? How is this just?
- People will make all sorts of claims about “gun control” (which is really about people control). They will say this country or that has a crime rate of x%, and hence, we should emulate their gun laws. But what difference does any of this make? Owning a firearm is about self defense, not about statistics. Firearms laws should be based on reasoning, rather than statistics.
- And an example from today’s news, to bring the point home. Over at Heritage, they have a piece about how the EPA came up with their estimates on the cost of a cap and trade system under consideration by Congress. First, the Agency Chief, Lisa Jackson, admits they made some simplifying assumptions. As in they didn’t read the bill. Second, if you dig into their numbers, you find the EPA is assuming the economy is going to grow at a rate of 2.5% a year for the next several years. The Congressional Budget Office, when figuring the impact of Mr. Obama’s proposed budgets, assumed the economy was going to grow about 3.3% a year for the next several years. Why the difference? Well, when looking at the budget, it’s better to assume the economy is going to grow fast. When looking at emissions, it’s better to assume the economy is going to grow more slowly. In fact, the EPA’s Chief admits this is the reason they assumed that rate in their cost projections.
Humans tend to support causes. Causes, in a world where we think we can engineer people, rely on statistics. Humans will always choose the statistics that support their causes, simplifying them to get the point they want out of them. Which is why we shouldn’t rely on statistics to set any sort of public policy. Instead, we should return to relying on reasoning from natural law. We should return to being a Nation of laws, instead of a Nation of statistics.
Now, can anyone tell me what the mean time between failures is for a society? Or the mean time to repair?
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