We have a big lesson today so pack a lunch and sit down.
We need to cover three big, important concepts and we do need to pay attention because reality as we know it has become warped out of recognition.
First lesson:
Humans suck at statistics. I analyze data for a living. I look at graphs, linear regressions and interpolated results based on traceable, provable, primary standards. This is my job and I make statistical mistakes in passing all the time and I spend hours listening to lectures on the topic. From a cursory glance at the news during any given election I can tell you for a fact, most people don’t understand standard deviation and how it applies to data. This is really important at a time when the entire human race has access to a virtually infinite amount of data. Even scientists make mistakes with some of these concepts, but they are at least scrutinized by other scientists. Podcasters, News outlets, facebook, youtube… all of these do not get scrutiny for their piss-poor understanding of these concepts and these seem to be primary sources for many of the diatribes I see on social media. I have no doubt the people posting them are very smart, but even good mathematicians don’t understand the where and how statistical significance is derived and that’s only half the problem.
Second Lesson
There Is No Such Thing as Safety. Like time, money and so many other human constructs, safety is an illusion. If you stay at home, unmoving, shielded from the horrors of outside you expose your self to poor indoor air quality, lack of mobility, social anxiety and a host of other ailments. If you go outside a virtually infinite litany of possibilities can literally crash down on you. There is no such thing as safety, only Risk Tolerance. Driving a car is by far the most dangerous thing a human can do at any given moment of any given day and yet we do so without batting an eye. I’m not immune to this fallacy either, I’ve said of my self I have an unhealthy-lack-of-fear-of-heights, in that I have virtually no fear of heights. Falls are literally the second leading cause of “unintentional death (injuries)”, which in Canada is the 6th highest cause of death (OK, side note, unintentional death? Wtf? What’s intentional?). To be clear, my risk tolerance of heights is disproportionate to the risk heights to posses me. As is all of our tolerance of driving and most of our tolerance of cucumbers and melons.
Third lesson
I touched on this ever so briefly in the second lesson and I will use that example in this lesson. The most dangerous thing I said in that last thought is my declaration of: I have an unhealthy-lack-of-fear-of-heights. It’s true, but the danger is in that I have Identified my self this way. Something I am very guilty of and something I have tried to do a lot of in the past few years is dissociate my self away from the things I have made part of my identity. When you identify with a concept, any criticism of that concept becomes a personal attack. When something attacks you personally you will defend your self, logic and fact become secondary because you person is at stake. This is one of the few psychological experiments that’s both highly predictable and repeatable. It is important when we are discussing large, important ideas, that we can talk about the ideas them selves without being personally attached to them. It’s not easy, it’s not natural but it’s really, really important.
In conclusion: Unless you can explain to me how a second test improves the reliability of results using Beyes theorem or at what point a P-value indicates statistical significance, avoid “doing your own research”. Safety is an illusion, there is only Risk Tolerance. Make a constant mental point to avoiding personally identifying with your beliefs and your ideas.
I am NOT going to tell you what to believe, but I am absolutely going to question you on why you believe it. Not as a personal attack, but because reality is fracturing and it’s time we start putting it back together.