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Whether we’re talking about inflation, pandemics or sex scandals, we all know that politicians fudge numbers. This kind of behavior has become such a dark artform that the following quote has become infamous in the world of abusing numbers to prove your point:
“There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Funny, sure, but why are statistics to blame? Statistics are simply a tool, and like so many tools in our world, tools are only as useful as those who use them.
Credit cards, gasoline and dental floss are all wonderful and effective tools in the hands of someone who understands how to use them properly. But these same tools can be disastrous in the wrong hands.
Numbers are no different.
Politicians, journo-activists and terrorist groups alike know this, and gleefully use (or create) data as a tool, shield and a scapegoat in pursuit of their goals.
Unfortunately, we’ve become an easy mark, hamstrung by, as Iowa State University Professor Mack Shelley puts it, our society’s lack of statistical skills; willingness to be influenced by emotions, preconceived notions, and things we think we know but do not; and the Dunning-Kruger effect, where those with “lesser abilities tend to overstate their level of knowledge and understanding.”
But even this might be too complimentary. Too many are happy to skip these psychological quirks and jump straight to voluntary stupidity, with deadly results.
There is no better example than the world’s bizarre acceptance of data provided by the Hamas-controlled “Gaza-based Ministry of Health,” whose absurd propaganda has been repeatedly swallowed by the West as absolute fact.
The issue here isn’t even that Hamas is lying. Of course they’re lying! Given that Hamas is openly seeking the mass murder of the world’s Jews, it’s hardly beyond the realm of possibility that they would be prepared to spread porky pies in the process.
If being a genocidal terrorist group alone isn’t enough of a red flag for you, the laziest Google search proves Hamas’s lack of reliability as a news source. For example, following an explosion at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on Oct. 17, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry (and subsequently the vast majority of mainstream media and multiple American politicians) announced that hundreds had been injured and killed by an Israeli strike on the hospital … despite every important detail being wrong, including casualty rates, damage and the pesky detail that the rocket was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not Israel.
But this highlights the real problem: the total willingness to accept the word of a terrorist organization, no matter how many times reality slaps us in the face.
As Alan Dershowitz writes in his latest book, “War Against the Jews”: “Hamas puts out false information and exaggerated figures that are immediately accepted by much of the media and many human rights groups.”
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Author: Ian Haworth
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