No particularly salient ideas tonight, so, let’s chew the whole “quantitative thinking” thing again.

In casual conversation recently, I said that I thought the world needed all the liberals who are good with numbers that it can get. And that’s absolutely true. There is something about the sort of quantitative thinking I talk about (a lot) that is anathema to liberals, just like the enlightened and compassionate and morally nuanced thinking we liberals employ seems to be a cup of hemlock with no chaser to the conservative mindset.

As far as I can tell, the main difference between the two camps is empathy. There is something about the typical quantitative mindset that rejects empathy. Perhaps the root cause is that the sort of person who is attracted to quantitative fields is someone who finds comfort in how logical, perfect, predictable, and sensible numbers are.

In other words, how inhuman they are.

This sort of person rejects empathy (feeling what others feel) as illogical, unpredictable, and even unfair. They only trust the answers that come from numbers, and the truth is you can go a very long way with numbers. You can, for instance, get rich off being good with them. So in that sense, they can avoid the sort of stimulus that would force them to grow empathically and retreat further and further into their internally logical world of numbers, mathematics, and a blinkered and cowardly definition of reason.

Of course, their personal lives will not be as easy to control without empathy.

On the other end of the stick, the typical qualitative mindset finds the world of numbers to be cold, alienating, and even evil. They only trust that which is intuitively correct, and base their morality on this. Things must feel right, and it is this feeling that defines their ethics. If an answer disagrees with this feeling, it must be wrong, no matter what. These sorts of people, usually unconsciously, vehemently deny that numbers have anything to do with what is right or wrong. So they construct their morality with the underlying assumption that what is right feels right, and once you know what is right, the numbers can always be interpreted to support it.

This is, of course, untrue. Numbers matter. Reality has all sorts of limitations that don’t give a shit about what we want. They just define what is possible.

Both sides are equally blind to half the equation, but being a liberal-leaning hybrid myself, I would much rather try to explain numbers to qualitative types than try to explain empathy to quantitative type people. Liberals, at least, accept the validity of numbers in some situations.

From my position, it seems obvious that one must take both into account. As a Utilitarian, I am entirely comfortable with determining right or wrong via quantitative means, when possible. On the other hand, as a deep Humanist, I truly and deeply believe that it is empathy, understanding, and communal feeling that makes us truly human, and none of those are easy to quantify.

And the thing is, it wouldn’t matter so much if both sides were equal in power. But they are not.

The quantitative people rule the world. It’s one of the side effects of capitalism^[1]. Money is numbers, after all, especially in this era of digital transactions. And money rules the world. The cold quantitative people have far too much power, and liberalism is stymied by its aversion to numbers.

Hence my remark about the need for liberal people who are good with numbers, like myself. We are the only people with our hearts in the right place while also being able to exercise the kind of power over the world that quantitative thinks allows. Much evil in this world is hidden behind a veil of numbers because these bastards are counting (so to speak) on the fact that the people trying to stop them are unwilling or unable to enter the world of numbers, even if it means allowing great evils to be inflicted on the innocent.

Anything to avoid doing math, right? We’d rather let evil people do whatever they want. Because math is boring and icky and hard and mean and stuff.

At least, that’s how it seems to me. So what liberalism needs is people who can invade the quantitative world of numbers, finances, and so on and steal all the secrets hidden in plain sight by evil people so smugly sure that the numbers will keep those pesky liberals at bay that they don’t even bother to hide their crimes.

Imagine how satisfying it would be to go to some evil fucking corporation not with protests and passion (which they easily ignore or reject) but with facts and figures (their native language) which they cannot ignore and proving to them that, on their own terms, they are bastards.

That wouldn’t just be a way to get them arrested. If done right, it could impact the whole financial world by removing all their layers of justification for their sociopathy and laying bare just what inhuman pieces of shit they have been.

And all it takes is liberal minded people who are perfectly comfortable in the quantitative world to stop outside of the box and beat the bastards at their own game and by their own rules.

That is both my greatest hope and greatest source of frustration. Like I have said before, I hate having to choose between benevolent incompetence and malicious competence, but those seem to be the only options. I am liberal, in one sense, because obviously well-meaning fumblers do less evil than competent sociopaths, but there are times when I wish there was a third option.

One that takes the best elements of both sides of the divide, and in doing so, creates something far more than the sum of its parts.

But what the hell would we call it?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.