General Republicans are nuts.

[sackett]

Many years ago (like most things in my life), I knew a woman of mature years who answered any argument involving quantification with a loud "You can lie with statistics!" That was it: no counter-argument, no analysis, no reasoning, no listening. She obviously got the words from that popular book, How to Lie With Statistics.

Interestingly, her grown daughter, some kind of public health nurse, used precisely the same tactic when called on her rather obtuse generalizations. She added the refinement of turning purple in the face and bellowing it -- and repeating it, fists clenched. A dutiful child.

Dunno about the rest of the family. I suppose they just followed their hearts.

 

[slyjoe]

Many years ago (like most things in my life), I knew a woman of mature years who answered any argument involving quantification with a loud "You can lie with statistics!" That was it: no counter-argument, no analysis, no reasoning, no listening. She obviously got the words from that popular book, How to Lie With Statistics.
Interestingly, her grown daughter, some kind of public health nurse, used precisely the same tactic when called on her rather obtuse generalizations. She added the refinement of turning purple in the face and bellowing it -- and repeating it, fists clenched. A dutiful child.

Dunno about the rest of the family. I suppose they just followed their hearts.

Maybe she read the title, but obviously not the book.

 

[sackett]

Maybe she read the title, but obviously not the book.

Yes; and as helpful and useful as Huff's book is, I have to wonder if the title hasn't over generations (1954 is a long time ago) damaged many weak understandings. Blunt defiance of statistics, and, worse, of the facts they can be used to describe, is a popular tactic today. Taken to hysterical lengths, it's an embrace of ignorant unreason -- a joyous, liberating embrace, an empowerment that's not easy to combat.

Not with statistical arguments anyway. But let's not forget that we're in a majority, and not likely to lose that position. Time, I think, will erode the current fashion for brainlessness.

 

[slyjoe]

Yes; and as helpful and useful as Huff's book is, I have to wonder if the title hasn't over generations (1954 is a long time ago) damaged many weak understandings. Blunt defiance of statistics, and, worse, of the facts they can be used to describe, is a popular tactic today. Taken to hysterical lengths, it's an embrace of ignorant unreason -- a joyous, liberating embrace, an empowerment that's not easy to combat.

Not with statistical arguments anyway. But let's not forget that we're in a majority, and not likely to lose that position. Time, I think, will erode the current fashion for brainlessness.

I agree with you except the last paragraph. I thought time would help back in the 70s. It seems to have gotten worse.

Statistics, as well as risk, are two subjects the public doesn't get at all.

 

[sackett]

I agree with you except the last paragraph. I thought time would help back in the 70s. It seems to have gotten worse.

Statistics, as well as risk, are two subjects the public doesn't get at all.

I remember the 70s, hell I was in my 30s by then. Way I recall it, 60s silliness, including a lot of antihistorical and antiscientific nonsense that's still fashionable today, went right on ramifying -- but it was not politicized.

Today's bizarre "down with intelligence, long live death!" crap is something that intensified only with Mango Boy's selection, sorry, election. He made it okay for the rethublican masses to go nuts; he encouraged them to have ugly fun, and they're still trying to.

But it's all hollow. It's -- damme sir but I must repeat it -- a fashion, and can't by any contrivance be solidified into an ideology.

"Far from me and my friends may the error be of overestimating the intelligence of the crowded citizenry!" said Dr. Johnson, or he might have.

"But" (interjected a plain fellow down the table) "let us be as far from supposing that men are brutes, and impenetrable by evident truths."

"No, sir," said Dr. Johnson with great positiveness, "I am not in error of any kind that YOUR wit can discover! Give your attention to your plate, sir! That manner of nurture you can chaw!" Giving added force to his words, if that were possible, he addressed his own trencher, and fed until the cloth was drawn.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Again it's just the slide further and further into anti-intellectualism and a post-fact world.

The ProudlyWrong do not want a world with facts. They want truth to be determined by who can be the most stubborn and yell the loudest because that's what they are good at.

 

[ahhell]

I am amused by the 5 minutes of hate.

 

[wareyin]

1984, yet another thing that conservatives just don't get but think they do.

 

[sackett]

I am amused by the 5 minutes of hate.

Christ, who could hate that sorry flock of gulls who think they're Republicans?

Hate is like ammunition. You save it for a worthwhile target.

 

[dudalb]

I am amused by the 5 minutes of hate.

Actually in "1984" it's a two minute hate..

 

[wareyin]

Actually in "1984" it's a two minute hate..

And it's hate that the authoritarian regime directs you to hate...like the concentrated freakout on right wing media about whatever the manufactured crisis du jour is. Critical Race Theory, Cancel Culture, kneeling during the anthem, whatever. The left side of politics just doesn't have that top-down directive to hate stuff, but clueless conservatives don't grok it.