Never Trust A Number

This is a repost of one of my favorite essays, which I originally published back in 2022. It’s as relevant to AI as it was to the topics I was focusing on back then, as I explain in a new section at the end.)My topic for today: All numbers are wrong.Like, seriously. Whenever you see a number – in a tweet, newspaper headline, office email, technical report, textbook, anywhere – assume it is wrong. Treat it as enemy misinformation, deliberate sabotage of your understanding of the world, and disregard it.You’re thinking, ha ha, I’m exaggerating for effect. I’m not. Seriously I am not. I mean, of course not all numbers are literally incorrect; but it happens so very, very much more often than your intuition, that I do literally mean it is a good practice to treat all numbers as incorrect by default.I’ve come to this position slowly, over the years, one screwup at a time. But now that I’ve really started paying attention, the mistakes are everywhere.It’s so easy to find examplesThe day I…