Firing the Numbers and Did Gandhi Choose Violence? with Elliott Serrano
About this episode
The episode discusses the importance of statistics in politics and explores Gandhi's complex views on violence and nonviolence.
In this Episode Sonar talks with Elliott Serrano on WRMN 1410am. Hour 1: Firing the Numbers: Statistics are vital in politics because they anchor decisions in measurable reality—informing policy, allocating resources, and enabling accountability. Without them, governance drifts into ideology and propaganda. Yet statistics can be distorted through selective use or flawed methods. The remedy is not suppressing data but expanding it. More statistics—independently gathered, transparently reported, and critically compared—provide context that reveals biases and counters manipulation. Multiplicity strengthens credibility: competing datasets and open methodologies allow citizens and policymakers to detect distortion and ground debate in evidence. In politics, the cure for bad statistics is not fewer numbers, but more, and better, statistics. Hour 2: Gandhi Chose Violence Mahatma Gandhi is often celebrated as the champion of nonviolence, yet his own words reveal a more complex view. In Young India (1920), he admitted, “Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.” For Gandhi, nonviolence was the highest ideal, but it required courage and…
People in this episode
Host: WRMN
Guest: Elliott Serrano
Topics covered
- statistics in politics
- nonviolence
- Gandhi
- political accountability
- data transparency
Keywords
- politics
- statistics
- Gandhi
- nonviolence
- accountability
- data
- violence
- policy
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