A few paragraphs on the importance of running the numbers in any discussion. Part of his greater series on human sustainability and progress (http://www-formal

A few paragraphs on the importance of running the numbers in any discussion. Part of his greater series on human sustainability and progress (http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html) [WARNING: epic material]. excerpt: """ Many questions can be settled by recourse to available statistics and arithmetic - arithmetic not higher mathematics, although higher mathematics is also useful. The converse is that failing to look up statistics and do the arithmetic is a recipe for ignorance. """