Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.

Baudrillard’s line treats statistics not as neutral measurements but as symbolic productions that gratify a desire for order, certainty, and control. By likening them to dreams—classically understood (via Freud) as wish fulfillment—he suggests that quantified “facts” can function as consoling narratives: they select, frame, and aggregate reality in ways that make the world appear legible and governable. In a Baudrillardian register, numbers can become part of the simulacrum: they do not merely represent social reality but help manufacture it, legitimating policies and beliefs by the aura of objectivity. The quote is a warning about how measurement can mask ideology and desire.