I fear we have an ingrained flaw. We don't want the truth as it is, just the truth as we want it to be. Even if we are presented the data in as non biased, non distorted manner as possible, we ourselves will often do the cherry picking... Confirmation bias is our bread and butter.
These are such important points, and apply to so many other areas besides the world collapse, such as the statistical pretzels that accompany some medical/scientific work. I would also add that the tendency to look at averages can obscure the terrifying effects of outliers. For example, the average temperature of a place may be 100, but that might mean that one end is 70 and the other is 130, at which point everyone would be dead.
You constantly have to be on guard against this when looking at climate change charts and graphs. Both NOAA and GISS are notorious for this. Particularly when Republican administrations are in charge of their budgets.
Honestly, this used to be taught in AP high school classes. Now college graduates fall for manipulated data presentations all the time, especially online where less time is spent analyzing what we see and more time is spent on "retweeting" or "sharing" .
"Implying Causation from Correlation: Suggesting one factor directly causes another simply because they correlate can mislead, overlooking other influential factors or coincidental relationships."
I fear we have an ingrained flaw. We don't want the truth as it is, just the truth as we want it to be. Even if we are presented the data in as non biased, non distorted manner as possible, we ourselves will often do the cherry picking... Confirmation bias is our bread and butter.
These are such important points, and apply to so many other areas besides the world collapse, such as the statistical pretzels that accompany some medical/scientific work. I would also add that the tendency to look at averages can obscure the terrifying effects of outliers. For example, the average temperature of a place may be 100, but that might mean that one end is 70 and the other is 130, at which point everyone would be dead.
Ah yes, the use of averages - i.e. ignoring outliers - have caused so much chaos throughout human history.
You constantly have to be on guard against this when looking at climate change charts and graphs. Both NOAA and GISS are notorious for this. Particularly when Republican administrations are in charge of their budgets.
Honestly, this used to be taught in AP high school classes. Now college graduates fall for manipulated data presentations all the time, especially online where less time is spent analyzing what we see and more time is spent on "retweeting" or "sharing" .
"Implying Causation from Correlation: Suggesting one factor directly causes another simply because they correlate can mislead, overlooking other influential factors or coincidental relationships."
How do you apply statistics to a chaotic system?
You don't.