“[They use] statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts—for support rather than illumination.”
“Andrew Lang, Scottish humourist” quoted in Scott Reid Lament for a Notion
In my latest National Post column I say because tyrannies are both ruthless and clueless, the Chinese Communists have no idea how bad they look using the COVID-19 pandemic as cover to crush freedom in Hong Kong.
“perhaps an inelegant analysis of a central problem would be more valuable than a rigorous analysis of a peripheral issue.”
The “noted economic historian ” Robert Higgs quoted in Thomas Sowell Conquests and Cultures
“the consuming hunger of the uncritical mind for what it imagines to be certainty or finality impels it to feast upon shadows in the prevailing famine of substance.”
“Eric Temple Bell, the mathematician” quoted in National Review June 7, 1993
“The past is irrevocable, but many of the factors behind its tragedies are still at work in the present, and are a danger to the future. The issues change – eugenics is not environmentalism – but the dogmatism and the ego behind the dogmatism are the same.”
Thomas Sowell Is Reality Optional?
“The spectacle of economists bringing their awesome mathematical and statistical techniques to bear on the analysis of irrelevant or misleading data can only disgust those for whom the desire to understand reality take precedence over the desire to impress their colleagues with analytic pyrotechnics.”
Robert Higgs Crisis and Leviathan
In my latest National Post column I say we seem to have lost sight of what we’re trying to do on the COVID-19 pandemic, with potentially ominous consequences.