This is a literary device. The article continues to explain why this isn’t a simple problem, and it’s clear from the conclusion that the author understands the complexity.

>But it’s good to be reminded that we know a lot less about the world than we think. Much of our thinking about the world runs on a statistical edifice of extraordinary complexity, in which raw numbers—like population counts, but also many others—are only the most basic inputs. Thinking about the actual construction of these numbers is important, because it encourages us to have a healthy degree of epistemic humility about the world: we really know much less than we think.

I guess this is why reading things other than technical documentation remains important.