RobitusinZ
Well-Known Member
Does it surprise anyone else at how disassociated people are with concepts of scale? So many statements get thrown out talking about *ALL* of these or those people, and so many political issues get obfuscated by the fact that people don't even grasp the concept of how many "things" are being talked about.
For example, I just read something in a thread about "racist cops". "Racist cops are now going to imprison all brown people!". Who really has any sort of accurate concept of how many "racist cops" there are in existence?
There are 300 million people in the US. If 30,000 people died suddenly, that'd still leave 299,970,000 people. Percentage-wise, that's 1/100th of a percent, or 0.01%. That's 1 in 10,000. Something that affects 30,000 people pretty much doesn't matter. Heck, something that would affect 10,000,000 people would still be under the 5% margin of error that most statisticians would consider reasonable error.
Frankly, I think people need to consider the concepts of scale when going off on their views. Something that affects less than 1/100th of the population just isn't worth talking about on a national scale. It's a local, niche issue that's been radically warped by the instant-speed media and internet buzz to present a facade of aggrandized importance. Don't let yourself be fooled...
For example, I just read something in a thread about "racist cops". "Racist cops are now going to imprison all brown people!". Who really has any sort of accurate concept of how many "racist cops" there are in existence?
There are 300 million people in the US. If 30,000 people died suddenly, that'd still leave 299,970,000 people. Percentage-wise, that's 1/100th of a percent, or 0.01%. That's 1 in 10,000. Something that affects 30,000 people pretty much doesn't matter. Heck, something that would affect 10,000,000 people would still be under the 5% margin of error that most statisticians would consider reasonable error.
Frankly, I think people need to consider the concepts of scale when going off on their views. Something that affects less than 1/100th of the population just isn't worth talking about on a national scale. It's a local, niche issue that's been radically warped by the instant-speed media and internet buzz to present a facade of aggrandized importance. Don't let yourself be fooled...
