180

We sometimes hear people say, “I’ve changed my opinion 360 degrees on that.” It’s likely they mean 180 degrees, or enough to reverse course, not spin completely around. I’m sure most just want to say they’ve changed their minds, so it’s not a big deal. However, it seems to me it’s a bigger deal when a president says he wants to lower prices by 1000 percent when that’s not how percentages work. Is he saying companies would then pay people to buy their products? Shouldn’t the president have a better grasp of numbers? Or maybe he shouldn’t confuse self-promotion with reality. And that’s my jumping off point.

There is a difference between wishful thinking and the way things are. And mathematics remains indifferent to politics. True enough, politicians try to hijack statistics to prove their point, but unlike people, numbers can’t be bribed. Ask anyone who has had to file for bankruptcy. We can’t spin data in our favor forever. No matter what a politician wants to hear, one plus one equals two, and a 100 percent discount means the item is free.

I used to fact-check email claims for my father. From time-to-time he would send me a copy-and-paste case he had received from a friend. The first thing I would do was try to make sense of the numbers. Suffice it to say many claims fall apart when the math doesn’t work out. For example, those who supported the 2017 tax act claimed the tax cuts would “pay for themselves.” My back-of-the-envelope figures indicated that the GDP would need to at least double (increase by 100%!) to make that happen. I replied to my dad, saying that such a thing was not impossible, but historically-speaking, highly unlikely.

When someone wants to believe something, numbers don’t matter. Whatever they are judging might be 99% good, but the 1% that offends them will form the basis of their judgement. This happens in relationships all the time. Basically, if someone wants to end a relationship, they will find a reason, no matter how many good things the “offender” has done. There’s no way anyone can be “good enough” in this scenario.

That said, we need to think about what kinds of behavior might be deal-breakers. Murder, sexual assault, child abuse, extortion, and fraud come to mind. How bad does someone’s 1% have to be before we refuse to accept it? While I’ve written about the need for forgiveness, I don’t know how much time must pass or how much penance a person must do. I suppose if a person makes good on their promise, “It won’t happen again,” this would help. On the other hand, every action is a sign of character. Sincere apologies matter. So does avoiding even the appearance of impropriety. My dad used to say that no matter what we do, people will judge us, so we better be careful how we act.

It’s a common logical fallacy to characterize the whole based on a small sample. None of us would want to be judged by what we did on our worst day. However, the truth is not expressed in simple percentages – this is why polls are often wrong. We’re all a complex mix of motives, desires, successes, and failures. We are neither “good” nor “bad” as others might think. But we can try to do what is right, even if we fail now and then.

It seems to me doing the right thing requires us to be rational. We need to understand the numbers are not out to get us. They simply are what they are. Recently people died in a high-speed car crash near me. The numbers showed if they drove too fast on a city street they would probably die. The numbers were not rigged. They didn’t have to like the numbers, yet they chose to ignore them. In the end, they were not punished for breaking human laws, but for breaking the laws of physics. (In case anyone is wondering, I’m also thinking about BLS reports, vaccine research, and climate science. The list could go on.)

Often when things go horribly wrong, someone has based their decisions on narcissism, hubris, or ideology rather than logic. The Challenger Explosion and the OceanGate Implosion come to mind. The numbers said, “Wait. Test. Think.” But someone in charge believed it was more expedient to roll the dice. And people died. Let’s turn away from “doing things because we can” towards a more rational course. It might not be 180 degrees, but it would be better than acting on the whims of men who want to be kings.