You&#x27;re treating this sample-is-the-population issue as if it&#x27;s resolved in the statistics literature. It is not. Gelman has written on this [1][2], as the issue comes up in political science data frequently. As Gelman points out, 50 states are not a sample of states—it&#x27;s the entire population. Similarly, the Correlates of War [3] data is every militarized international dispute between 1816-2007 that fits certain criteria—it too is not a sample but the entire population.<p>Treating his population as a large sample of a process that&#x27;s uncertain or noisy and then applying frequentist statistics is not <i>inherently</i> wrong in the way you say it is. It may be that there&#x27;s a better way to model the uncertainty in the process than treating the population as a sample, but that&#x27;s a different point than the one you make.<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;andrewgelman.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;07&#x2F;03&#x2F;how_does_statis&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;andrewgelman.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;07&#x2F;03&#x2F;how_does_statis&#x2F;</a><p>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stat.columbia.edu&#x2F;~gelman&#x2F;research&#x2F;published&#x2F;econanova3.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stat.columbia.edu&#x2F;~gelman&#x2F;research&#x2F;published&#x2F;econ...</a> (see finite population section)