true but wrong

My favorite statistic: 

some years ago I came across Citigroup's Global Economic Outlook & Strategy. In it I found a page on revolutions! According to their research, a revolution in a nation on average will induce a 14% decline in that nation's GDP. And if it is coupled with a civil war, the dip is likely to be twice as great!! 

I love this statistic. I think it's safe to say that this decline in GDP is hugely important and no doubt more or less true. And yet it also misses everything important about a revolution. From the perspective of the revolutionary and social justice, it's strictly irrelevant. It's totally true, and utterly wrong. 

When we consider theories and explanations and understanding, do we check to see whether we've got the right truth or the wrong one? Is there a bigger picture than the narrow truth? Is there a biggest picture? 

I know it's common to complain that, say, scientific theories are too narrow, that they may be true, but still wrong. I think these complainers are the narrow ones. Their view of the potential of the sciences is limited by their anti-scientism. There are many narrow scientific theories, but I think there are also scientific biggest pictures. 

The Citigroup statistic is narrow truth. The justifications for a revolution are also a narrow truth. A bigger picture is, obviously, a cost-benefit-plus-risk analysis, weighted by some values like justice, human rights etc. You can maybe see when the biggest picture is intuited by the public. If the regime is extremely repressive, it can be because it knows the public wants to take that risk. But a small radical military faction can also induce extreme oppression from the regime. A civil war following a revolution might also indicate a public rejection of that radical faction. Everyone involved is intuiting what Citigroup has measured in a number. Of course, Citigroup's statistic is addressed not to regimes nor to the public nor to the revolutionary. It's addressed to the investor, indifferent to them all. 

The anti-scientismists complain that science can't give us our values, our aesthetic sense, our emotions. But surely everyone knows that's not so. As E.O.Wilson pointed out, our moral values are the ones that natural selection selected for us as a social species, the values that conduce to social species survival. Same with emotions, and there's a post here on why mathematical beauty is beautiful to us, and it's all about natural selection of reliable signals. So could we retire this anti-scientismism? 

Ah, but once you know the scientific explanation for some value, will you still hold the value? That's a real problem, since some illusions are practically helpful and useful. Cleave only to truth and you're left with no reason to live at all. Except for your naturally selected values and emotions. 

So I say, don't worry about truth undermining your values. The values that science shows you are yours are in fact the ones you want. Don't worry, be happy. I mean, don't harm yourself, be engaged in something engrossing outside yourself.