Controlling the World Is Easy
Derek Hunter
Posted: Jun 29, 2021 12:01 AM
As the old saying goes, “There are three kinds of lies: lie, damned lies, and statistics.” It is of the statistics I wish to address today.
I’ve always said, and will continue to say, that if you can control the unit of measure, you can control everything. It’s a pretty simple concept – if you get to determine what constitutes funny, you can make yourself the funniest. Same goes for fastest, smartest, best looking, whatever you can think of – if you get to decide what makes something what it is, you have absolute power.
While most people wouldn’t reconstitute a measurement of time to make a slow person the fastest (though they could), the concept of manipulating reality through framing with numbers is as old as time. During the pandemic, this was used for wildly nefarious purposes.
Whenever you heard raw numbers of cases, hospitalizations, or deaths it was because those numbers were bad. When they weren’t so bad, you started hearing percentages. Why? Because certain ways of presenting information can make it seem better or worse than it really is.
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https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2021/06/29/controlling-the-world-is-easy-n2591676
