What's a true fact that is so misleading it's borderline misinformation?

6mementomori@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 202 points –

What would be some fact that, while true, could be told in a context or way that is misinfomating or make the other person draw incorrect conclusions?

276

The introduction of seatbelt legislation lead to an increase in nonfatal vehicular injuries

Similarly, the introduction of metal helmets for soldiers corresponded with an increase of head injuries.

Body armor in the second Gulf war contributed greatly to an increased rate of amputations on soldiers.

Ah, survivor bias. Reminds me of analysis of damage to bombers in WW2. Data showed most damage was done to the wings and body of planes. The tail, cockpit and engines were rarely damaged. They responded by reinforcing those areas that were frequently damaged.

However they were only observing bombers that made it back to base and so data on planes that were shot down was missing. Luckily someone did eventually realise this and so the research could be used as evidence that strikes to the areas rarely recorded indicated a downed plane.

When metal helmets were introduced in the middle of WW1, head injuries went up!

I don't know if this counts, since it's only a "true fact" if you are fine with carefully chosen words and the omission of crucial information...

But the 13-50 stat is dangerously misleading.

You know,

Black people make up 13% of the population, but 50% of the violent crime.

Note: these days, black people are 16% of the U.S. population. I'll be referring to it as 16 from this point on.

Black people in America do, in fact, make up 50% of the murder arrests according to FBI crime statistics

That much is true.

But certain people tend to use this fact to assert that police officers are far more likely to be killed by black people than by white people. Therefore, the stats that show them brutalizing black people at a higher rate -- since they fall short of that 50% number -- are evidence that they hold back around black people to avoid appearing racist.

The users of this stat heavily imply black people are more violent and murder-prone, and hence a greater threat. The argument also carries with it an implied benefit to eugenics or a return to slavery (to anyone paying attention.)

But no one using this stat ever explores potential causes for the arrest rate disparity, instead letting their viewers assume it comes from "black culture" (if they are closeted racists) or "bad genes" (if they are open racists).

There's no attention paid to the fact that black people make up over half of overturned wrongful convictions

There's no attention paid to the stats further down in that same FBI crime stats table that make it clear that black people make up 25% of the nation's drug arrests, despite making up close to 16% of the US's total drug users. (Their population's rate of drug use is within a margin of error of white people's rate of drug use). It should be strange that a small portion of the perpetrators of drug crimes make up such an outsized portion of the total drug arrests in this country. But the disparity doesn't even get a mention.

There's no attention paid to the fact that more than half of US murders go unsolved, meaning even assuming impartial sentencing and prosecution, we would only know black people committed 50% OF 50% of the murders -- 25%. And in a country where 98% of the land is owned by white people and the public defender system is in shambles? Which demographic do you think would be overrepresented in the "unsolved murder" category? The murder arrest rate winds up just being a measure of which demographics can afford the best lawyers, rather than any proportional representation of each demographic's tendencies.

None of that. The people hawking this statistic intentionally lead their viewers to assume, "arrested for murder" is equivalent to "guilty of murder." And that the entire demographic can be safely assumed to be more dangerous.

I've seen similar stuff multiple times, often with misquoted statistics. What many miss is that context is as important as stats.

The thing about this is that the kind of people who quote statistics like that typically don't have an interest in all of that. They start with a racist assertion, then search for anything that appears to corroborate. They have no interest in actually understanding the statistic, they only care about it insofar as they believe it justifies their racism.

That, or they know it doesn't and they're purposely arguing in bad faith.

Yeah... that's a pretty reasonable conclusion. It's hard to just state outright though, when I live with the exact sort of person described in your comment.

It's interesting: the people who are fine with calling an entire race murderous seem to take great umbrage at being considered "racist."

It's the r-word to them -- a slur used to invalidate their concerns and diminish the importance of their well-being.

That their concerns ought to be invalidated -- since they are the racist result of racist fear-mongering -- is never well-received.

The real bottom line is that when you create an underclass of people whose neighborhoods get firebombed or bulldozed when they get too affluent (see e.g. "Black Wall Street" in Tulsa and Auburn Avenue (formerly "the richest Negro street in the world") in Atanta, respectively) and had generations of absent fathers due to persecution for things like "vagrancy", of course they're going to stop giving a shit about laws that bind but do not protect them! It's entirely rational that people systematically excluded from being able to get ahead while acting within the law, and whose behaviors are deliberately criminalized in order to target them, would end up committing crimes at higher rates than the people benefiting from their oppression did. In other words, even if it's true that they actually commit crimes at higher rates (as opposed to being accused at higher rates or being less likely to avoid conviction, as you pointed out, which just make the statistical bias even worse by compounding on top), even that is disingenous because it ignores that the disparity is caused by classism and institutional racism, not anything intrinsic to their race itself. The fiction that it's somehow their own fault is like a society-wide version of "stop hitting yourself."

Oh 100% this. The main accomplishment of Tulsa and Auburn was keeping black people impoverished, and...

“About 60 [academic] papers show that a very common result of greater inequality is more violence, usually measured by homicide rates,” says Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level and co-founder of the Equality Trust. - source

For as long as society insists on high inequality with one race forcefully held at the bottom, no rational person can expect that race to be peaceful.

It's just... I have a hard time bringing this concept to the table in a debate with people who believe "personal responsibility" can somehow magically indemnify society against its impact on people.

In fact, I am generally speechless when debating such people. It's such an alien worldview to me. How can personal responsibility actually make society irrelevant? And since when?

The kinds of people who spout the 13-50 argument basically believe NOTHING society does can increase or decrease murder (except, when convenient, being "too soft on children" or "soft on crime.")

Omfg, thank you so much for this. I find it repulsive that pos 9gaggers post 50/13 as a mantra to every post that includes black people, but no one would really want to understand from where those numbers come up😡

Light roasted coffee has more caffeine than dark roasted coffee.

Technically, per bean, more of the caffeine is cooked out of the dark roast. However, other things are also roasted out of a dark roast to the point that the individual beans are also lighter and smaller. When brewing coffee, usually you either weigh your dose of beans out, or you use a scoop for some consistency. Either method will result in more dark roast beans ultimately making it into the brew than would with a (larger, heavier) light roast.

Typically, this more than cancels out the reduced caffeine content per bean, so a brew of dark roast coffee still typically has more caffeine in it.

Yup, I had to explain this to so many people when I sold coffee. Nobody believed me at all. I explained that dark roast had more of the caffeine cooked out of it.

If I remember correctly, dark roast was also originally devised to hide bad-quality coffee beans. Nowadays it is often implied that darker roasts are better, which actually isn't necessarily the case.

Implied where? All the coffee snobs ik ow drink lighter roasts and derogatorily call dark roasts “supermarket coffee”

Dark roasts have a more consistent taste/flavor and it has a longer shelf life, so it's easier to know what you're getting. If you want to taste the variety of flavors coffee can have, you'll go for fresher lighter roasts.

This is actually very interesting and I had no idea. Thanks!

This is actually very interesting and I had no idea. Thanks!

This is actually very interesting and I had no idea. Thanks!

This is actually very interesting and I had no idea. Thanks!

Thank you for laying it out like this. I'd often heard that about light roasts, but had never noticed any difference in my caffeine response when I switch roasts. At any rate I've always preferred dark for the flavor, but it's good to know I'm not sacrificing any buzz for it!

This is actually very interesting and I had no idea. Thanks!

As ice cream sales in the United States increase, so do deaths in in developed parts of Africa.

I use this fact to explain to students how true information can be used to mislead people into drawing wild, deranged conclusions.

The commonality in these events is the rise in temperature during the summer. But if you leave that out, there's an absurd argument to be made about how purchasing ice cream is inherently evil.

I don't think it's an amazing example of what OP is talking about, but as an example, I like how simple and easy to follow it is. Great for junior high level kids.

So there's some "incorrect" assumptions you have made about the North American summer, and weather in Africa. In the North American summer, only North Africa experiences summer with you guys. The rest of the continent is blanketed in rains (West, Central and East Africa) or are in outright winter (Southern Africa). So our temperatures do come down in your winter. Your coldest months are our hottest months for most of the continent (except for North Africa). So saying the developed parts of Africa

According to a new study published by the University of Berchul, eating ice cream can make you be in risk of drowning.

Is this related to correlation is not causation?

Correlation at least tries to imply they're related. As lottery sales go up in your household so does credit card debt. Not always a cause but they're related

You're looking for spurious correlations which is when numbers have no business even being used in a comparison

I mean, they are related. There's a common causation (higher temperatures). There's plenty of spurious correlations but this specific example isn't it

Not exactly. What you're looking for is coincidence.

But correlation is sometimes caused by coincidence.

Do you have an example? I'm pretty sure correlation cannot be caused by coincidence.

Coincidence is describing two things happening at the same time but with separate causes. Correlation is describing two things having a common cause.

First thing you learn in a statistics course is that correlation doesn't equal causation.

Correlation: two thing happening at the same time or one thing happening right after the other, regardless of whether the things are at all connected

Causation: one thing happening BECAUSE of the other

Oh yes I got my definition of correlation slightly wrong. Correlation doesn't necessarily mean that two things have the same cause but they do relate in some way either by having a common cause or by occuring in the same system. They definitely have more in common than happening just at the same time or right after each other like a coincidence.

I didn't claim that correlation equals causation and I hope you didn't get the impression because this would be oviously wrong.

Edit: I stand corrected and today I learned that "correlation" means that two things have a statistical relation without any causal relation implied. There can be a causal relation but it's not necessary. The key takeaway for me is that correlation describes a statistical relationship.

In equally unrelated news, there's also a direct correlation between ice cream sales and shark attacks. We have to steal all the ice cream before more people get eaten!

Dihydrogen Monoxide, commonly used in laundry detergent and other cleaning supplies, is also present in Subway sandwiches

FACT: 100% of people that consume Dihydrogen Monoxide die.

Wrong, a mortality of 94.5% has been shown not even close to 100%.

One could say that people who haven't died yet don't have a cause of death yet so they can't be counted.

Maybe we can agree on "100% of people who died consumed dihydrogen monoxide beforehand".

Please show me the data showing the data on pre-1900s populations proving that 100% of them consumed dihydrogen monoxide. You can't do it.

Everyone who has died has ingested dihydrogen monoxide.

You are much more likely to die in a hospital than anywhere else.

1 more...

I've never lost a professional MMA match

The Seattle Mariners are the only team in the league to have never lost a World Series game

Why is it called World Series? You kinda forgot to invite the world.

Wait until you hear about the Miss Universe competition...

(Seriously though, I agree.)

When people say a politician "raised taxes." More often than not it's a tax that does not apply to 99.99% of the population and they raised it from 0.000001% to 0.000002%

But boy do those campaign ads look good

Similarly, when a politician says they cut taxes, middle class tax cuts are almost always intend to "sunset". That is, eventually, those tax cuts are designed to reverse themselves over time.

Maybe in the US. Most tax cuts that happen in Canada at least don't tend to have an expiry. Although new governments do tend to reverse previous government's tax policy. Although it tends to apply to tax policy across the board.

And sooooooo many voting Americans hear this and vote Republican.

One of my favorite Brian Regan bits kinda fits, maybe?

"In 1939, Germany invaded Poland. One thing led to another and the United States of America dropped two atomic bombs on the sovereign nation of Japan."

Clumsy. Did they at least pick them up on the way out?

'true fact'.

  • Facts cannot be anything except for true.
  • Anyone who uses the two words 'true fact' together cannot be trusted because they know neither the meaning of the word 'true' or the word 'fact'.

I'm so sorry but it's either/or & neither/nor. Gotta follow through with the negation.

That's very negative, however I must concur that it's a fact the correlative conjunctions were incorrectly placed to negate the possibilities.

Whether that fact is true or not is up to you.

Counterpoint: True Facts is a great series of humorous nature documentaries.

Imagine trying to move by riding a unicycle backwards and throwing up through a giant straw. That is how the nautilus do.

Facts are just objective statements, which can be either true or false, but whichever they are it is objective and not dependant on the observer.

I mean, it's a semantic argument, and semantics is subjective, but that's probably how the people who say 'true fact' are defining fact.

No, a statement can be tru or false. A fact is always true.

That's why I clarified that the definition of any word, including the word fact, is subjective.

No it’s not or we’ll bicker over every word and square could mean triangle. We have agreed upon word definitions. That’s part of a language.

Language is constantly evolving. Deal with it.

That doesn’t mean that word definitions are absolutely not arbitrary nor subjective. They are agreed upon in a civilization at any given time. I don’t have to deal with anything.

I can't trust you on this because you are using the words 'true fact'.

People use to say that you cant lie with statistics, but is a common practice to use statistics to lie.

We can take the infamous 41% suicide rate for trans people. Transphobes throw that out like a killing move implying that trans people are inherently unhappy and being trans is a mental illness (wish is not true).

The reality is that the suicide rate is so high because of transphobia, kids getting thrown out of home, homelessness, unable to find a job, staying at the closet to avoid social consecuences, etc.

Trans people who live in more open and accepting environments are way less likely to be depressed and commit suicide. In progresive areas where trans people are more accepted the suicide rate is nowhere near 41%.

Yeah that statistic is brutal. Like I wish more people understood it’s like saying: “we bully the shit out of people who seem depressed, we aggressively stigmatize antidepressant use, X% of people with depression will attempt suicide at some point in their lives. We should ban antidepressants and treat depressed people worse.”

Its so frustrating when I see other minorities use that argument because their suicide statistics are also typically higher! That's the nature of oppression.

"Numbers don't lie" is true in the same sense as "guns don't kill"...

Numbers don't lie, but people lie using number all the time.

Hey vis4valentine, you should correct "wish" to "which" in your comment. That typo could cause readers to understand the sentence completely inverted.

I learned that stats is all about lies lol

It depends on how you define "lie" really. A true stat is always true, but a person can draw misleading conclusions from it if they aren't trained and especially if they also are looking for a certain conclusion.

You can see the moon from The Great Wall of China.

But the opposite is not true! At least, not with the naked eye.

The frequency with which I keep hearing this misconception repeated in popular media is boggling. Hell, I feel like I just heard it again recently in the new Star Trek.

Women have smaller brains than men.

I mean, yes. Women as a population are physically smaller than men as a population.

Women have smaller fingers than men. Smaller eyes. Smaller lungs. There is no "gotcha" that smaller skeletal frames with smaller skulls contain, by volume, a smaller organ.

Doesnt mean every man's brain is larger than every woman's brain either.

Doesn't mean men are smarter than women.

It's just a statistic, that while true, doesn't imply what some people think it does.

There's actually some historical context for this untrue way of thinking.

France, 1873 Paul Broca, a French physician, decides to weigh some brains. And women's brains weighed less than men's brains. This is part of his research into crainiometry in which the size of the brain is used to understand a mesure of intelligence. Bigger brain weight = more smart.

We now recognize crainiometry as a pesudoscience.

Then another French academic Gustav Le Bon uses Broca's research to further engain that not only are women's brains small causing them to have the big dumb, women are in fact more similar to gorillas in brain size. Thus, women are uncivilized, akin to children, and MUST be under the care and control of men who are CLEARLY more intelligent with their big brains and, naturally, should control and run society.

Broca did not take overall body size or age of the specimens into account when originally weighing the brains. The male specimens were younger and larger to the female specimens who were smaller and older. Brains tend to shrink as we age.

So, not only was this flawed science, based in flawed measurements, thay have been readily disproved, we're still struggling to undo this as a belief.

History rant over.

Many years ago I worked as an analyst at a small VC firm. My boss, who was a raging misogynist prick and liked to date College freshmen, LOVED this fact (and any other Manosphere bullshit he could find about women being inferior to men). He was such an unbelievable stereotype, he could have stepped out of a sitcom.

Yeah I mean, neanderthals had bigger brains than humans, and they were no smarter than we are (as far as we know.)

Also a blue whale's brain is four times the size of a human brain and they don't even know how to drive.

We don't really know where blue whales go a lot of the time, so I think that's a bit of an assumption there.

It's my pet hypothesis that people are drawn to the comfort of sitcom-level characters because they're so basic and predictable, even when they're terrible. Real life is so complicated that black-and-white thinking blasted by people like that is just so low-energy to consume.

It's just more impressive that even with a bigger brain he is still a bumbling buffoon.

The average human has less than 2 arms.

Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:

Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.

Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.

Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.

DHMO is a major component of acid rain.

Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.

Contributes to soil erosion.

Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.

Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.

Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.

Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.

Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.

Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.

Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.

https://www.dhmo.org/facts.html#DANGERS

The large percent of traffic accidents that take place within 5 miles of home. Most people only cover a fairly small radius on a day to day basis so it makes sense if there is an accident, it’s close to home and not 80 miles away… just on average of how far how often you drive. Makes it seem like neighbourhoods are more dangerous than highways or something.

The only accident I have ever been in was 1300 kilometers from home...

Well I can’t recall the statistical percentage often cited but I’m sure it wasn’t 100% so it’s ok for it not to have been true for you. Sorry about your far from home accident.

Another factor is that people feel more comfortable driving their local roads and get used to usual traffic patterns, which could mean that they're not as alert if something's different.

Eg you're almost home, in your neighborhood, and there's a stop sign that almost never has anyone else there, so you might not look too much just roll through, the one time someone's actually there.

This is such a good example for how statistics are often misinterpreted without any fault of the statistics itself.

It reminds me of when they looked at fighter jets to decide which parts to reinforce. So they examined which parts had the most bullet holes and came up with this statistic:

If some of you don't knew about this yet, I let you decide why this effect is called "survivorship bias". :D

There needs to be more education about how statistics need to be looked at in the correct context.

When you think about data it actually gets really scary really quick. I have a Master's in Data Analytics.

First, data is "collected."

  • So, a natural question is "Who are they collecting data from?"

  • Typically it's a sample of a population - meant to be representative of that population, which is nice and all.

  • But if you dig deeper you have to ask "Who is taking time out of their day to answer questions?" "How are they asked?" "Why haven't I ever been asked?" "Would I even want to give up my time to respond to a question from a stranger?"

  • So then who is being asked? And perhaps more importantly, who has time to answer?

  • Spoiler alert: typically it's people who think their opinions are very important. Do you know people like that? Would you trust the things they claim are facts?

  • Do the data collectors know what demographic an answer represents? An important part of data collection is anonymity - knowing certain things about the answerer could skew the data.

  • Are you being represented in the "data"? Would you even know if you were or weren't?

  • And what happens if respondents lie? Would the data collector have any idea?

And that's just collecting the data, the first step in the process of collecting data, extracting information, and creating knowledge.

Next is "cleaning" the data.

  • When data is collected it's messy.

  • There are some data points that are just deleted. For instance, something considered an outlier. And they have an equation for this, and this equation as well as the outliers it identifies should be analyzed constantly. Are they?

  • How is the data being cleaned? How much will it change the answers?

  • Between what systems is the data transferred? Are they state-of-the-art or some legacy system that no one currently alive understands?

  • Do the people analyzing the data know how this works?

So then, after the data is put through many unknown processes, you're left with a set of data to analyze.

  • How is it being analyzed? Is the analyzer creating the methodology for analysis for every new set of data or are they running it through a system that someone else built eons ago?

  • How often are these models audited? You'd need a group of people that understand the code as well as the data as well as the model as well as the transitional nature of the data.

Then you have outside forces, and this might be scariest of all.

  • The best way to describe this is to tell a story: In the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were the top candidates for the Democratic and Republican parties. There was a lot of tension, but basically everyone on the left could not fathom people voting for Trump. (In 2023 this seems outrageous, but it was a real blind spot at the time).

  • All media outlets were predicting a landslide victory for Clinton. But then, as we all know I'm sure, the unbelievable happened: Trump won the electoral college. Why didn't the data predict that?

  • It turns out one big element was purposeful skewing of the results. There was such a media outrage about Trump that no one wanted to be the source that predicted a Trump victory for fear of being labeled a Trump supporter or Q-Anon fear-monger, so a lot of them just changed the results.

  • Let me say that again, they changed their own findings on purpose for fear of what would happen to them. And because of this lack of reporting real results, a lot of people that probably would've voted for Clinton, didn't go to the polls.

  • And then, if you can believe it, the same thing happened in 2020. Even though Biden ultimately won, the predicted stats were way wrong. Again, according to the data Biden should have been comfortably able to defeat Trump, but it was one of the closest presidential races in history. In fact, many believe, if not for Covid, Trump would have won. And this, at least a little, contributed to the capital riots.

All media outlets were predicting a landslide victory for Clinton. But then, as we all know I’m sure, the unbelievable happened: Trump won the electoral college. Why didn’t the data predict that?

Nate Silver was singing a different tune, though. I remember an interview he gave a month out from the election where he noted significant softness in support for Clinton. There were also a lot of undecideds who might swing elections in key states. That is, of course, exactly what happened. When the Comey letter was leaked by Congress, it likely cost Clinton the election. Her poll numbers dropped from +7% to +3%, well within the advantage that the Electoral College gives to Republicans.

On Election Day, the 538 model was about 3:1 in favor of Clinton. That sounds highly in favor of Clinton, and it is. But it still leaves plenty of room for a Trump win. And lo and behold, she lost.

One other thing polls didn't really capture was voter enthusiasm or maybe not enough people was paying attention to it. Just because you answered Hilary when asked who would you vote for, it didn't mean you went out on Election day to vote. A combination of lack of enthusiasm for Hilary, coupled with news constantly reporting that it will be a landslide kept many Democrat voters home.

I believe that's why there's such a huge push for "get out the vote" campaigns in 2020 by the Democrats. Generally, the more people voting means better chances for a Democrat win, given general (non-electoral) election results.

That's interesting, I did not think the letter had that big of an impact.

For me it was Bernie. I remember a lot of us on Reddit were all about Bernie.

Iirc, Bernie had a lot of steam and it seemed like again Clinton was going to be pushed aside for a grass-roots candidate (just like with Barak years earlier).

And Bernie said he was not going to give up the race, because even if he didn't win the votes he could still be voted in at the national convention.

And as the DNC neared, things were looking great. Clinton was giving paid speeches to wall street and Bernie was tearing her whole campaign apart because he was saying, give money back to people and she was saying keep things the way they were.

And then, among mounting pressure, two weeks before the convention he concieded out of nowhere. At least that's what it seemed like to us.

Then emails leaked that showed the Democratic Party had colluded with Clinton to get Bernie out of the race!

We couldn't believe it. We were devestated. So some people went to the DNC and were making a big stir, demanding that Bernie get back on the ballot.

And it all came to a waterfall moment when Sarah Silverman was on stage. And people were chanting Bernie and she lost it and told everybody to shut up and said the Bernie supporters were stupid.

And that was it. The only thing that came out of it was somebody got fired, but there was no regard or representation for us in the Democratic Party anymore.

They didn't care about what we wanted, and they were just as crooked as they had always told us the Republicans were.

For me it was a massive dissolutionment, and drove me to Trump. Since he was saying we need to take our economy back from the 1%.

I won't say Bernie supporters weren't a factor, but the prospect of "buttery males" was an easily measurable factor. Trump was having a really rough few weeks running up to the election. He had a piss poor debate showing, the Access Hollywood tape, and sexual assault allegations all coming together against him. Even with Russia laundering their hack of John Podesta's emails through Wikileaks and Wikileaks working working with the Trump campaign to drip out the hacks, Trump was well behind. It was hard to see anything with Bernie supporters because that played out over the entire campaign. Meanwhile, the Comey letter had an immediate effect over mere days.

Clinton was giving paid speeches to wall street

Note that Clinton's speeches were from well before the campaign. When I looked at the transcripts when they got released as part of the Russian hacking, I could see why she didn't want them released. There were parts where she was being more frank about certain subjects than politicians usually are. It was easy cherry pickings from there. And as much as the paid speech circuit has its detractors, I'd rather see former or dormant politicians giving empty platitudes to rooms full of bankers than lobbying their former colleagues.

she was saying keep things the way they were

At the very beginning of Hillary Clinton's campaign, she did a tour of the nation and just listened to people's problems and concerns. From there, she drew up a platform. She has a history of doing this sort of thing like when she was a senator in New York, where she tackled loss of jobs in upstate New York in areas that had been ignored.

She also was pretty blunt with certain areas, like talking in West Virginia about needing to plan for a future after coal. To his credit Bernie didn't jump in there to attack her, but he also didn't exactly jump to cover the subject. Trump of course did, lied to the workers, got their votes, and they're still losing jobs anyway.

And it all came to a waterfall moment when Sarah Silverman was on stage. And people were chanting Bernie and she lost it and told everybody to shut up and said the Bernie supporters were stupid.

She shouldn't have lost it, but I can see why. I remember Bernie supporters in general getting extremely annoying around that time. It's the same attitude that we saw out of Trump supporters: everyone I know loudly supports Bernie/Trump, no one I know supports Clinton/Biden, therefore I was cheated. I couldn't poke my nose up on /r/politics in support of Clinton without getting my face gnawed off.

And that was it. The only thing that came out of it was somebody got fired, but there was no regard or representation for us in the Democratic Party anymore.

There was supposedly a takeover of the DNC by the Clinton campaign. This is a questionable interpretation. tl;dr: A heavily indebted DNC traded fundraising by the Clinton campaign for some control. Nothing stopped Bernie from a similar deal. Also Donna Brazile told the Clinton campaign that there would be two questions: one on capital punishment and the second on lead in drink water. I'm sure she had a stock answer for capital punishment. For the second, the town hall was in Flint, Michigan. Yeah, of course they're going to ask about lead.

For me it was a massive dissolutionment, and drove me to Trump. Since he was saying we need to take our economy back from the 1%.

Did Trump ever actually say that? I ask the question because Trump does this thing where he leaves himself as a blank canvas. Two supporters with different values can believe contradictory things about Trump without there actually being evidence of a contradiction because he either never said anything or because he just says things without meaning them.

Do you have a source for the outlets changing their poll results? I did a search myself but couldn't find anything. I find that very interesting and wanted to read more!

It was in an article on Hacker News around that time. It was super interesting, but I can't find it atm, I'll look around tomorrow.

Oh yeah. I might say some wrong stuff since I'm quite ignorant but. Statistics is messy and I tend to avoid including too much stats in my projects, although sometimes I accidentally end up blindly doing so and believing them also drawing inaccurate conclusions. Physical stats are even messier because not everybody has the competence to accurately understand what they mean, or sometimes we just don't understand the world enough. Environmental science data is an example of that. I rely on other people's analyses cause I can't read them. I don't know much about politics.

Newer cars are designed to crush more and easier than older cars.

For anyone curious about this, it's a safety feature. The front of a car is called the "crumple zone" — it's designed to crumple up in an impact, which absorbs a lot of the energy and means the cabin (the place where humans are) will experience significantly lower forces.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumple_zone

"Vending machines are more deadly than sharks".

While it's true that (at least for some years) more people are killed by vending machine accidents than shark attacks, your personal risk depends on what you do. If you're a vending machine factory worker who never goes into the ocean, you're far more likely to be killed by a vending machine than a shark. But if you live in a part of the world that doesn't have vending machines and you swim in the ocean every day, the reverse is true.

Wait, so you're telling me that there are no vending machines in the ocean that are preying on people swimming in the water?

There may be, the ocean is deep and not thoroughly explored.

You're scaring me! Just the thought of having a swim and then suddenly hearing a bag of chips getting stuck behind a glass panel sends shivers down my spine.

However sharks have a huge PR issue and Spielberg regrets how Jaws is a big source of that

Of the ~100 billion humans who have ever lived, about 8 billion (8%) are still alive today. Therefore, your chance of dying is 92%, not 100%.

People reading this, aren't you just a ray of sunshine with your 8% survival rate?

Wouldn't that be the chance of any randomly selected person being dead?

Yea, you are right, idk what the original commenter is on.

Are you assuming that everyone currently alive is immortal? You may be in for some disappointment.

We have no evidence they're not. Statistically speaking, as many as 8% of humans are potentially immortal.

It's common sense that if aging were solved tomorrow, it would be patented and the wealthiest 3% would enjoy much longer lives, while the working class wouldn't see much change.

Incidentally, longer life would allow even more accumulation of money and power, making inequality worse.

Plus side: billionaires now consider climate change threat #1 and use many more resources to solve it compared to today, rather than only care about the next 40-50 years.

On the down side, they'd probably solve the climate crisis by spreading vaporised peons in the upper atmosphere to block some of the solar radiation.

That's what's misleading about it.

Yeah, only about 8% of people currently living are immortal, so don't get your hopes up.

We have no evidence they're not. Statistically speaking, as many as 8% of humans are potentially immortal.

Since the invention of seatbelts there have been a larger number of serious injuries from car accidents.

This sounds like seatbelts are causing serious injury but in fact, these serious injuries used to be deaths. That statistics is never mentioned causing it to be misleading, just like they never mention how many bugles are in the car when an accident happens

Thunderstorms & lightning strikes can severely affect "cloud" computing!

Well yeah, where do you think the lightning is??

People on HRT have a significantly higher mortality rate than people not on HRT

In a similar vein, people on puberty blockers have a higher mortality rate.

(Because those medications are used in combination with other treatments to help treat certain cancers.)

This one is great, I absolutely believe that conservatives would (and I'm sure do) pass it around like some profound statement.

I don’t get it… I dumb.

HRT is short for Hormone Replacement Therapy, a treatment many transgender people use to feel more aligned with their gender identity. It's been proven to increase mental health, and has a low regret rate. However, it is correlated with higher mortality because trans people overall have a higher mortality rate and HRT is primarily used by trans people.

A more extreme example of the same thing would be "People on chemotherapy have a higher chance of dying from cancer than people not on chemotherapy." It's true, but only because people without cancer don't tend to enter chemotherapy.

Trans people on HRT may have a slightly higher mortality rate (the suicide rate declines significantly with HRT), but OPs statement is true because most people on HRT are cisgender and old - estrogen is a common treatment for menopause symptoms and products like androgel are specifically marketed to cis men with age related decline in testosterone.

My bad, I didn’t know HRT was a term used outside of transgender healthcare. Thank you for the info!

HRT was originally used to treat menopausal women at risk for osteoporosis, who are at higher risk due to being old.

I'm aware that transgenders also have a higher than otherwise expected mortality (whether taking hormones or not), but they may not be numerous enough to move the needle against millions of old women.

“I’ll call you back as soon as I can”

Working at Lowe’s I’ve learned that I need to tell people “and that might be hours from now this job is hectic”

Add "As soon as possible" to that list as well.

Boss wants something ASAP and it probably means ithey want it very soon and not when you're free

Some customers get so upset when I explain to them that I have a queue of other customers that I'm helping.

Like they're offended, as if I don't care about my job. Pisses me off, because while you're complaining about my lack of work ethic I'm the guy at work while we're understaffed because other people have decided not to work. I'm the guy who showed up, and I'm overloaded, and people read it as I'm lazy because it takes me a long time to get back to them.

Switching from a 5mpg truck to a 10mpg truck does more for the environment than switching from 40mpg car to a 55mpg car.

How is that misleading, isn't it true?

This is why the rest of the world uses l/100km (liters per 100 kilometers), the comparison is linear and thus comparable between different vehicles in a simple manner.

  • 5mpg = 20g/100mi
  • 10mpg = 10g/100mi
  • 40mpg = 2.5g/100mi
  • 55mpg = 1.82g/100mi

The difference between 10 and 20g is easy to see as a lot bigger than the difference between 2.5 to 1.82g. 15 is a much bigger number than 5, but that 15 is relative to the initial mpg rating

In fact going from 5mpg to 10mpg is better than going from 10mpg to 100mpg, a 10g saving vs a 9g saving......the more you know

The ask was

What would be some fact that, while true, could be told in a context or way that is misinfomating or make the other person draw incorrect conclusions?

More outrageous sounding, switching from a 5 mpg truck to a 10 mpg truck saves more gas than switching from a 50 mpg car to a 100 mpg car

https://youtu.be/oLQmwOX6Xds

I still don't understand hot that statement is "misleading"?

Well a lot of people would think gaining 50 mpg is way better than gaining 5 mpg, since it's 10x as much, but really it just shows that you can't use mpg as a unit to compare like that

Environmental damage from emissions doesn't care about relative efficiency, 15 free miles is objectively more than 5 free miles.

It you travel 50 miles at 5mpg, you use 10g of fuel At 10mpg you use 5g...a saving of 5g

40mpg uses 1.25g 55mpg uses 0.91g a saving of 0.34g much less of a saving.

Yeah but if you’re already driving the more efficient vehicles to begin with…

but if we are trying to save the world getting the lowest mpg vehicles off of the road first will have a stronger effect

if you already drive a 30mpg car and you are ready to upgrade then definitely look for better efficiency but I think we should have incentives in place to get cars that operate at for instance 16 mpg (my first car for instance, 1996 Chevy blazer, now deceased) replaced by even 10 year old models which are much more efficient

...you have made a smart choice, and can focus on reducing your other emissions!

but it's not like a person in a 50mpg car is likely to drive 5 times as much per year as the person in a 10mpg truck. over consistent distances, improving the shitty mileage vehicle will save a lot more gas.

swapping a 5mpg truck for a 10mpg truck will save 10 gallons per hundred miles, while switching a 40mpg car for a 55mpg car will only save 0.68 gallons per hundred miles. even going from 5mpg to 6mpg would save more than that.

This is minor one, but annoys me how comnmon this is: light is made out of litle packets of energy called photons.

Here is a good video on the topic: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SDtAh9IwG-I (Too lazy didn't watch: Light is an electromagnetc wave and is is not quantized. Only the interactions between atoms and light are quantized)

I was under the impression that electromagnetic radiation is both a wave and a particle, and it's known as the "wave particle duality".

huh, I thought quantization of light(or energy really) came from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle

6 more...

Those who took the covid vaccine have a mortality death rate of 9.172/1000 in the USA.

2023 USA death rate is 9.172/1000 so I guess that lines up.

In places where more storks live, you also have more babies.

After the Corona lockdowns there was an increase in infections with the common cold. Researches tried to explain how this is connected to the immune system and a lot of people now assume you have to "train" your immune system with exposure to pathogens. Or that your immune system falls out of training (like a muscle) if you stop exposing it to pathogens regularly. A potentially dangerous misunderstanding.

People often draw false conclusions from reduced information about a fact. For example: Babies who are kept in one position for hours each day over weeks or months show developmental delay. For some reason this information got shortened so much that a lot of people (in Germany at least) now assume baby seats are hurting babies backs.

Centrifugal force does not exist

"A laughable claim, Mister Bond, perpetuated by overzealous teachers of science. Simply construct Newton's laws into a rotating system and you will see a centrifugal force term appear as plain as day." https://xkcd.com/123/

It does, it’s just called a different thing. Centripetal force is exactly the same thing as what most people assume centrifugal force means.

I know I've had it explained a million times to me since I was a kid but... I still can't remember the difference between the two. I do, however, remember this little factoid about it.

I think centripetal force is whatever is pushing/pulling the object toward the center of rotation, such as the closed door of a car pushing on you while driving around a curve, where otherwise you would fly out of the car. Another example is the wheels of the car causing it to travel on a curve instead of straight. Or the rope of a tetherball for a pulling example.

In most cases (besides orbits in space) the force is question is actually the electromagnetic force, like any other case where objects made of atoms touch.

Personally I think it's weird to call that a specific force, especially by those who don't want to give centrifugal force a name - sure it's really just things "tending" to travel straight instead of following the curve, but no reason that can't have a special name, it's certainly intuitive enough.

It doesn't exist in an inertial frame of reference. In a non-inertial frame it's a perfectly valid force

Several (attempted) murderers have owned copies of The Catcher in the Rye.

human and chimp DNA is 98.8 percent the same

I don't know the exact number, but, come on! Look at those guys! They are basically hairy humans with a slightly less complex system of communication.

Yep but the point is the 1.2% represent millions of gene pairs and the ones we share are not always present or expressed in the same way. So just sharing genes doesn't necessarily mean were the same or they do the same thing.

https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/human-origins/understanding-our-past/dna-comparing-humans-and-chimps

Yeah chimps are one of our very few (very very) distant cousins left. But i think they rip more faces off than us

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/theyll-rip-your-face-off-how-humans-inherited-warlike-aggression-from-chimpanzees/news-story/1bf74adbd1cf2c9b072577a2abd80253

If you have a complicated health issue or emergency, the legislative branch of government dictates your potential treatment.

(Most reputable practitioners will temper their recommendations based upon the professional risk involved.)

Sometimes the best doctors have poor outcome rates.

Because they are often taking on the hardest cases.

50% of doctors graduated in the bottom half of their medical school.

This is maybe true in the US. Don't forget that people from all over the world are on here.

Still holds true either way. If the doctor is or is not at great risk of legal consequences, it will greatly impact your care. I have a complicated case with lots of small spinal damage that all adds up to partial disability. All reputable neurosurgeons here spend five minutes reading the radiology summary from a MRI and walk away from anything that is not easy like my case. It is just too much legal liability to take on hard cases. If you live in a region where it is safer for the doctor to treat difficult cases with impunity, you will likely get better, or at least more, care. In the real world, the legal system plays a major role in medical treatments. No one is throwing away or risking their entire career on your case. Skipping context, your healthcare really is determined by Judges either way. Learning this the hard way sucks.

Every year, traffic congestion wastes billions of gallons of gas.

explanation, since this one might be more confusing than most:

Traffic congestion does indeed waste gas. However, any place worth driving to is going to have congestion--driving without congestion is easy, fast, and comfortable, so people generally won't take other options until roads become congested. Thus, congestion actually reduces gas usage overall, because it is only once areas become congested that people stop driving places.

Trying to avoid congestion, on the other hand, usually involves expanding roads, something which increases driving, and makes other forms of transportation less useful/comfortable, thus increasing gas usage overall.

shouldn't your first post say congestion saves billions of gallons of gas?

no, since the misleadingly-true fact is still that congestion wastes gas - congestion is cars spending gas on going nowhere, so the gas is wasted

This thread has a lot of potential, great for dining table debates

Every single rapist and murderer was found to have dihydrogen monoxide inside their body at the time they committed their crimes, and your friends and family may be using it recreationally without you knowing

I don't think something you need to survive can be called being taken 'recreationally'.

There are people who consume flavored crystal DHMO recreationally. Children even!

Is that world wide or in a specific country?

The infamous FBI crime statistics are probably the big one