Facts can be misleading, however.
Two problems come to mind. First, thinking of the world and problems and people in terms of numbers and statistics promotes a reptilian way of thinking. It can lead to you see people as numbers and to make sweeping generalizations about them. Valuing the unique humanity of each person is something I have come to see as essential for living a good life. When we use large statistics to try to bring the most good to the most people we have to afterwards conciously turn off that computational way of thinking. We should get a cup of coffee and stare out the window and see all the idiosyncratic, unique, holy, tired, shy, brilliant people out there actually making their lives, and remind ourselves how small and unimportant we truly are.
We should not, however, shrink from our duty to try and make the world a better place. To do so is to be motivated by cowardice. In fact, those soulless bureaucrats working in IOs, the World Bank, the UN, (maybe there aren't any soulless bureaucrats in those organizations, I don't know) who only see people as numbers and statistics are martyrs in a way. They are martyrs (because they live shitty shallow lives) if, despite their shallow views of other people, they are able to maintain their perspective and still work to pull masses out of poverty.
I will not chose a life like that. I want to help the most people the most efficiently, but for myself it is more important that I live a full, happy, wise life. People are beautiful, holy individuals and to lump them into categories tarnishes their inherent holy uniqueness.
The second problem with facts, is that they can be improperly collected. Truly objective reality, as it turns out, is impossible to quantify, at least by humans. People have hidden agendas, they subconsciously misreport, they fail to uncover all the evidence. Still, it is possible to approach an objective representation of reality. If we look at data averaged over the years for large trends and comparisons we can learn a great deal about the world, despite the inherent unreliability of the individual datasets and points.
I was watching a video on the TED website which made me think about this. TED in itself is an excellent example of the possibility of improving the world by the application of knowledge and information (and creativity!). The video was of Hans Rosling, a swedish statistics nerd, who believes in the power of information, properly collected, displayed, and publicized, to increasing our understanding of the world. His nonprofit has created a website, called gapminder.org, which has mined all the available public information databases (of which there are a multitude) and created a flash program that can graph any of these data-sets against any other, and can display changes over time (if the data is available) and even add a third data-set (the default is population) that is displayed by the size of the dots on the graph. The colors of the dots can also be connected to information, such as the region of each country.
I think its pretty cool.
Two problems come to mind. First, thinking of the world and problems and people in terms of numbers and statistics promotes a reptilian way of thinking. It can lead to you see people as numbers and to make sweeping generalizations about them. Valuing the unique humanity of each person is something I have come to see as essential for living a good life. When we use large statistics to try to bring the most good to the most people we have to afterwards conciously turn off that computational way of thinking. We should get a cup of coffee and stare out the window and see all the idiosyncratic, unique, holy, tired, shy, brilliant people out there actually making their lives, and remind ourselves how small and unimportant we truly are.
We should not, however, shrink from our duty to try and make the world a better place. To do so is to be motivated by cowardice. In fact, those soulless bureaucrats working in IOs, the World Bank, the UN, (maybe there aren't any soulless bureaucrats in those organizations, I don't know) who only see people as numbers and statistics are martyrs in a way. They are martyrs (because they live shitty shallow lives) if, despite their shallow views of other people, they are able to maintain their perspective and still work to pull masses out of poverty.
I will not chose a life like that. I want to help the most people the most efficiently, but for myself it is more important that I live a full, happy, wise life. People are beautiful, holy individuals and to lump them into categories tarnishes their inherent holy uniqueness.
The second problem with facts, is that they can be improperly collected. Truly objective reality, as it turns out, is impossible to quantify, at least by humans. People have hidden agendas, they subconsciously misreport, they fail to uncover all the evidence. Still, it is possible to approach an objective representation of reality. If we look at data averaged over the years for large trends and comparisons we can learn a great deal about the world, despite the inherent unreliability of the individual datasets and points.
I was watching a video on the TED website which made me think about this. TED in itself is an excellent example of the possibility of improving the world by the application of knowledge and information (and creativity!). The video was of Hans Rosling, a swedish statistics nerd, who believes in the power of information, properly collected, displayed, and publicized, to increasing our understanding of the world. His nonprofit has created a website, called gapminder.org, which has mined all the available public information databases (of which there are a multitude) and created a flash program that can graph any of these data-sets against any other, and can display changes over time (if the data is available) and even add a third data-set (the default is population) that is displayed by the size of the dots on the graph. The colors of the dots can also be connected to information, such as the region of each country.
I think its pretty cool.
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