Agreed. Having seen other try the statistical approach to making many of life's decisions I have concluded that it's somewhere between futile and or worse self

Agreed. Having seen other try the statistical approach to making many of life's decisions I have concluded that it's somewhere between futile and or worse self deception. It might work things that happen over and over again like deciding which route to take to work. You can accumulate enough useful data to do that. Many new and large decisions by their nature do not have that data and then you're stuck looking for proxies for it based on other's data (experiences) and that rarely applies to your circumstances. An example of this would be moving to SV, you prob don't have your own data points so you're relying on data of others (friends, people on the internets) but it's unlikley that that will have a bearing on how you feel about it once your there.