Originally posted by cdtmThat's logically inconsistent because it ignores trends for the individual. So while yes you can't use statistical trends to talk about the individual person or family you can still determine how things effects overall scenarios.
You know what grinds my gears a bit? Comparing countries to each other.You know, those indexes that say who has the best satisfaction, or best quality of life, or lowest crime rates. Or even worse, the debates on how to change things because that other country did it.
I mean, look at the micro level. Everyone knows some families are happy, and some are wrecks. They can both be relatively prosperous, both be in nice neighborhoods, have all the same advantages, have a similar parenting style, yet for some reason one family has defiant kids while the other has good little angels.
We can't even reproduce happiness at the family level, we've been trying for decades. Parenting fads come and go, drug them up one year, crack the whip the next, be as permissive as possible the next. Nothing sticks.
Yet we think we can solve problems of entire countries. How arrogant is that.
For instance we know poverty areas tend to have higher rate of crime. We know that some policies increased the standard of living for larges groups of people thus leading to less crime in areas.
That's not being arrogant it's looking at the data and trying to use to determine something's overall effectiveness.