The Hyperbolic Lie, an Ugly Anti-Aesthetic
2022 Year of Aesthetics Series №2
Recently there has been an increased ugliness of the lie based on statistics, and a selective cherry picking of data to tell a lie. Cherry picking is as old as time immemorial, yet the miss use of sophisticated statistics has become more common with on twitter and face book.
An example is that more people under 60 have Covid if they are vaccinated than unvaccinated. This is a statement to mislead, the statement groups the largest number of elderly (vaccinated elderly with all other ages. ) so if a majority of the cases are in the elderly population and most elderly are vaccinated than most cases will be in population under 60 vaccinated. Yet the idea that there are less cases than before in that population, and that the cases have a higher survival rate and less hospitalization are dropped. This lie is intentional to miss lead, I am not for compulsion in vaccination, but this statement is here to say if you vaccinated you will get covid more likely which is not the case. An excellent discussion of this is by Nassim Taleb below, he is much better on the statistical discussion, so I leave it to him. There are legions of examples on the right and left lately.
These lies are becoming more and more prevalent and they use statistics in a way that someone in the food chain of these “facts” has to know they are making errors or omission or commission to generate this ‘evidence’. I see this intent as ugliness, I am sure I am not fully innocent of this, but I have to realize the ugliness of it and try to negate it in myself and others. This ugliness is more than a lie, it is a hyperbolic crafted lie. A lie to raise fear and ire. These lies are to encourage discord and sow strife among us.
I see the good work that Taleb and Yaneer Bar Yam have exemplified the anti example of this behavior, for all the claims of interagency on Taleb’s part I have never seen anyone ask for his papers to be ripped apart and to be so quick with a correction. I think the information they have given on Covid is the gold standard.