How statistics lost their power - and why we should fear what comes next

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: January 19, 2017 at 9:36:10 AM EST
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] How statistics lost their power - and why we should fear what comes next
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> How statistics lost their power – and why we should fear what comes next
> The ability of statistics to accurately represent the world is declining. In its wake, a new age of big data 
> controlled by private companies is taking over – and putting democracy in peril
> By William Davies
> Jan 19 2017
> <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/19/crisis-of-statistics-big-data-democracy>
>
> In theory, statistics should help settle arguments. They ought to provide stable reference points that everyone – no 
> matter what their politics – can agree on. Yet in recent years, divergent levels of trust in statistics has become 
> one of the key schisms that have opened up in western liberal democracies. Shortly before the November presidential 
> election, a study in the US discovered that 68% of Trump supporters distrusted the economic data published by the 
> federal government. In the UK, a research project by Cambridge University and YouGov looking at conspiracy theories 
> discovered that 55% of the population believes that the government “is hiding the truth about the number of 
> immigrants living here”.
>
> Rather than diffusing controversy and polarisation, it seems as if statistics are actually stoking them. Antipathy to 
> statistics has become one of the hallmarks of the populist right, with statisticians and economists chief among the 
> various “experts” that were ostensibly rejected by voters in 2016. Not only are statistics viewed by many as 
> untrustworthy, there appears to be something almost insulting or arrogant about them. Reducing social and economic 
> issues to numerical aggregates and averages seems to violate some people’s sense of political decency.
>
> Nowhere is this more vividly manifest than with immigration. The thinktank British Future has studied how best to win 
> arguments in favour of immigration and multiculturalism. One of its main findings is that people often respond warmly 
> to qualitative evidence, such as the stories of individual migrants and photographs of diverse communities. But 
> statistics – especially regarding alleged benefits of migration to Britain’s economy – elicit quite the opposite 
> reaction. People assume that the numbers are manipulated and dislike the elitism of resorting to quantitative 
> evidence. Presented with official estimates of how many immigrants are in the country illegally, a common response is 
> to scoff. Far from increasing support for immigration, British Future found, pointing to its positive effect on GDP 
> can actually make people more hostile to it. GDP itself has come to seem like a Trojan horse for an elitist liberal 
> agenda. Sensing this, politicians have now largely abandoned discussing immigration in economic terms.
>
> All of this presents a serious challenge for liberal democracy. Put bluntly, the British government – its officials, 
> experts, advisers and many of its politicians – does believe that immigration is on balance good for the economy. The 
> British government did believe that Brexit was the wrong choice. The problem is that the government is now engaged in 
> self-censorship, for fear of provoking people further.
>
> This is an unwelcome dilemma. Either the state continues to make claims that it believes to be valid and is accused 
> by sceptics of propaganda, or else, politicians and officials are confined to saying what feels plausible and 
> intuitively true, but may ultimately be inaccurate. Either way, politics becomes mired in accusations of lies and 
> cover-ups.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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