The Importance of Seeing the Larger Context

This is a great post by Nate Silver on how helpful bayesian statistics is in maintaining our focus on how important the underlying context of a given situation is in determining events. In this case Silver is talking about the arrest of Julian Assange, and how unlikely it is that his arrest is unaffected by his actions in releasing classified government documents.

But Silver's point is larger than that. He notes out how bad people are at understanding the importance of the underlying context or major drivers in determining the course of events. We overestimate the importance of information that is readily at hand, and don't look beyond that to see what the larger forces determining events are.

For some reason this reminds me of the movie All the President's Men when Robert Redford playing Bob Woodward is down in the parking garage talking to Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat, and Woodward is sort of fixated on Donald Segretti, who he and Bernstein had just learned had been part of a dirty tricks operation for the Nixon campaign known as "rat-fucking." And of course Holbrook in his masterful portrayal of Deep Throat says something like "Don't concentrate on Segretti. You'll miss the overall," (with that sly knowing lilt at the end) meaning that Segretti was obviously just the tip of the iceberg. This was corruption on a massive scale, the kind that would send the highest law enforcement officer in the land to jail. But on his own Woodward couldn't see the forest for the trees perhaps because it was too unbelievable. This is what the major academic fields on inquiry all have in common, they each emphasize the importance of seeing the real forces driving change, not just the forces at hand.