Just The Facts

Facts can be powerful and dangerous things. All too often I see somebody grab a handful of facts and take a wild guess or try to intuit what they mean. Worse yet, I frequently see people (in advertising and politics often) throw a sprinkling of facts into something they may or may not be related to in an effort to add credibility, knowing that we viewers often assume they wouldn't use them if they weren't connected. We lie to ourselves and they like it that way.

We are the only ones that can be responsible for critical thinking and reality checks. Nobody will do it for us. Ads tell me that certain behavior can increase my risk of some dreaded disease by 40%. Wow, that sounds pretty serious. Except when you find out that the initial risk was less than 1% to start with. So maybe I've gone from .5% all the way to .9%. Oh, the horror.

Or the bit I heard today where I'm told how many kids (are estimated) to have preventable hearing loss as if it's a sign that our modern society is getting so loud as to be the cause. I'm not told how this statistic (estimated) compares to years past. I'm not told why these (estimated) kids are suffering damage. Is it possible their own choices and behavior might be involved? Is it possible that more kids are diagnosed because more kids are tested today? Are these facts related? Or am I being bamboozled with numbers to hammer home somebody's point of view?

I'm getting a bit tired of it all. Maybe I should start making up my own uses for facts in retaliation.