Bad Data is Good Data

Bethany's old statistics site was "Bad Data, Bad!" a wonderful title. No one wants misbehaving data. The claim is that one can lie with statistics, but I have always felt that if you grab them by the collar, shove them against the wall, and make them tell you who their friends are, you can get the truth out of them.

But even bad data can be informative. If the same bad data keeps being brought forward in an argument, it tells you that they have nothing better. The joke in Russia during WW2 and the invasion by Germany was that "We are winning glorious victory after glorious victory - a little closer to Moscow every day." Gun control is full of these sorts of arguments. If you purchase a gun for your house, the most likely person to be killed by it is a family member. Well, yes. This is like the Burns and Allen routine where Gracie is reading the paper and says to George "It says here that most accidents occur within five miles of home." He pauses and says, "That sounds about right." Gracie pauses even longer and then says "Gee, do you think we should move?"

The majority of school shootings involve guns. Hmm, yes. The majority of school stabbings involve knives, bombings involve bombs, arson involves fire, etc.  There are fewer shootings in Europe, because guns are outlawed. They do still have people driving vans into crowds in Christmas markets, however. Lots of fires these days. Plus, they do have some shootings anyway. They didn't used to so much, but the numbers went down long before the laws changed. As with New England, they would commit various crimes, but homicide didn't tend to be one of them.  This is changing, both there and here.  I wonder why?

America has a high crime rate and a high incarceration rate. This is supposed to show that we are locking people up to much and making them criminals. Yet what happens when the incarceration rate goes up? Does crime go up?  No, it goes down. Fancy that. Maybe it's about something other than our incarceration rate driving crime, then.  Maybe the incarceration rate is fine. There are lots of nominations what else it might be, but first, first, we send incarceration to the back of the line for the moment.

I keep seeing the same genetics vs environment arguments. The same heresies keep coming up in the church every century, with different branding. Everyone whoever went to school is an expert on education, all bringing up the same bad ideas over and over. (And don't think teachers are exempt from believing theories without evidence.  They may in fact be worse than anyone. Except administrators, right, I forgot. And Ed School professors may be worst of all, worse even than overinvolved parents.) 

I would like to give everyone something encouraging about what to do about this life of playing whack-a-mole. I don't have anything. I am not quite like Cassandra, because I am not always right, but I completely get how maddening her life must have been. I don't know how to defeat this. Reasoning doesn't work.  Bullying doesn't work. Bribery doesn't work. The promise of being one of the very few In The Know sort of works for a while, but it's impossible to keep up with. I see, and I understand, but all my actions make things worse. I remind myself that people pay money to play whack-a-mole, and I must just have that gene - or more likely, collection of genes that each create some 1% tendency toward whacking moles, even though I rather like moles in the wild. I don't fancy bullying or bribery.  I pretend I am reasoning.