Sometimes I find myself almost marveling at the ease with which people lie with the facts as often as they do.
What do I mean by that?
What lies beneath the fog?
In this case I was thinking about the misuse of statistics and actual facts to misrepresent what's happening in a given situation simply by putting a certain spin on what is an actual fact.
Consider this bold statement:
”100% of the people who get a Covid vaccination will die!”
That is an absolutely 100% true statement, because we all die... eventually. The statement can be made sensationalist simply by omitting the word "eventually," as it refers to the fact that all human beings eventually die. Therefore, it also follows that all human beings who got a Covid vaccination will die.
Therein lies a lot of the trickery of modern life, in which people are able to with complete honesty and sincerity say that they spoke the truth while the message conveyed by that truth was an untruth... or certainly a manipulation of reality.
Of course what I just offered up here is an extreme example that's not likely to actually show up. That said, a variation of it recently came up when I was watching a video clip in which some civil rights attorney was going on about deceptive governments and scientists and then finished her statement with an outraged sounding ”and let's not forget that 100% of the lab animals who were given these Covid injections are now dead!”
She's absolutely right! And her statement makes many people feel outraged and ready to go on protest marches. But wait...
She's absolutely right, because virtually ALL animals used in pharmaceutical experiments are euthanized at the end of the experiments. So yes, ”all the animals” are dead; what is being omitted here is that the reason for their death is deliberate euthanasia, not the result of the vaccine.
I'll kick in a quick footnote here that my making the preceding statement has nothing to do with editorializing on how I feel about lab animals. Simply stating a fact. Lifted directly from the Humane Society’s web site: “It is extremely rare that animals are either adopted out or placed into a sanctuary after research is conducted on them.“
In any case, whenever we come across seemingly outrageous political, philosophical, religious, or financial declarations they are most likely a variation of stating an actual absolute truth without providing context.
One of my favorite ways politicians tend to use this has to do with things like economic or employment data, like a newly elected president/governor/mayor declaring something like “the unemployment rate is now the lowest in eight and a half years!” — which might definitely be an absolute truth — but the fact that aforesaid president/governor/mayor has only been in office for a month means there's zero correlation between that person being in office and low unemployment rate.
In statistics, we call it a "non-causal correlation."
And yet we fall for these sorts of things all the time.
I suppose the thing that disturbs me about it is that it seems like fewer and fewer people question any of these facts. They simply take them at face value and then it's off to the races with speculations and accusations, where just five minutes with your favorite search engine could explain to you exactly how something is — or is not — true.
Sometimes it feels like people are actually ”addicted” to being outraged by the outrageous claims... after all, facts can be pretty boring, and certain never as extreme as preposterous claims!
Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!
How about YOU? Have you often noticed people "lying with facts?" Do you find it easy to spot? Do you do "due diligence" when you hear/read about something? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20210519 00:47 PDT
0262/1505