It’s often said you shouldn’t treat people simply as statistics, but instead as individuals, each with their own complex feelings and concerns. But perhaps treating people purely statistically is – on a large scale – the most moral way to treat them. In treating people as statistics, you automatically give everyone’s life an equal value. If we start thinking about who these people are, and what their interests or desires are, then we are liable to start making distinctions between them, seeing some as ‘better’ than others, or more deserving in some way. But as soon as we start making such distinctions, we are departing from the most important moral principle: that each human life should be granted equal consideration. Such a departure would itself be immoral.