Toe-tapping Statistics

March 7, 2005

Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (1796-1874)(portrait) was a Belgian mathematician, astronomer, statistician, and sociologist known for his application of statistics and probability theory to social phenomena, an explanatory and predictive technique we now take for granted.

Quetelet was struck by the fact that human traits and abilities follow the same distribution curve as do errors of measurement [the bell curve]. He concluded that all human beings, like loaves of bread, are made in one mold and differ only because of accidental variations arising in the process of creation. Nature aims at the ideal man, but misses the mark and thus creates deviations on both sides of the ideal. The differences are fortuitous, and, for this reason, the law of error applies to these distributions of physical characteristics and mental abilities. --Morris Klein, Mathematics for the Non-Mathematician.

If everyone were identical, there would be no culture or communication.  Culture mediates difference.

If there were no end to the characteristics constituting the human kind, the unlimited possibilities would defeat themselves, commonality would dissolve, and each would be adrift in cosmic loneliness.

However challenging, it's just about perfect in this fine balance, says The Resident In-House Defender of the Beneficence of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Threatening to perform an unscheduled unique-but-recognizable Joy Dance.

Update: Dance premature.

Chilling paper by Nick Bostrom, Yale-to-Oxford philosopher, argues that
--major deliberate biological re-design is on its way,
--evolution is no longer (?) trustworthy enough,
--concern for human "identity" is not a priority value,
and
--a no-appeal single-point-of-control-system thus may be inevitable and desirable, in spite of such downsides as the [increased] risk that an oppressive regime could become global and permanent.

Bell curve to flat line, ideas have consequences.

Via Marginal Revolution.