But it’s also how capitalist governments work. And businesses. And every scientific advancement, including how we decided which of the covid vaccines to give the OK to and which ones to reject. It’s also how the chemistry of the synthetic fibres in your clothes and the plastic in your computer were learned, how the machines which made each component of the latter and assembled them into the finished products became reliable enough. It’s how we even know there’s a rise in obesity levels, how we learned which things are good SSRIs and which have unfortunate side effects, how we learned not to let everyone have as much alcohol as they (or their bartender) felt like, and why various countries allow tobacco to be sold but only with graphic depictions of the consequences (consequences which we only know because of statistics and science). Online advertising is nothing but statistical aggregations; algorithmic timelines and personalised search results and recommend products/content are basically the exact same statistics but used to sell the recommender itself rather than a 3rd party. The politicians in a democracy also do statistics to figure out how well they’re selling their ideas and if they need to change tactics or entirely switch their message (or even messenger).

And, as I said, literal flight, that’s also science and statistics.