If the majority of us are watching short-form videos and looking at infographics or charts for 1.5 seconds per piece, I wonder about the nature of being fooled, getting it or being entertained in the process.
Apparent engagement online isn’t real engagement in that context. That’s one reason I like Substack where blogging isn’t dead and you can go deeper into a topic if you want to.
Fantastic point!!! The broader challenge that emerges is the very concept of social media. An appeal to our impulsive primitive brain coupled with "lots of data" -- I have believed for over a decade that the "like" may be the root of the pernicious. This is impulse without thought and has little constructive place in discourse. It is merely fun or anger or any other primitive impulse common to many beasts. It is boring but speech of any sort (including the like button) would be better filtered if folks asked (1) does it need to be said (2) does it need to be said by me and (3) does it need to be said now -- the like button and social media in GENERAL does none of these things and leaves it all to our lizard brains in the back of our heads. No wonder most all of it is dumb hot takes.
Your example of Substack is a GREAT observation. It is also interesting to note the emergence of Notes and soon thereafter the rise of the myriad "Substack Whisperers" -- let me tell you the secrets of how Substack works -- only $9.99. It is remarkably easy to trick a dual-brained animal. It is unfortunate so many get gratification doing it.
Ramaswamy states, "The number of climate-disaster-related deaths is down by 98% over the last century."
Apart from whatever number he is using and whatever his source, the population of the world is four times higher today than a century ago. If the incidence of "climate-disaster-related deaths" was 2% then and 2% now, by the raw numbers, that's a 75% decline.
Vivek's argument does not take into account the enormous differences between today and a century ago that tend to mitigate the death toll in natural disasters. He is not making an apples-to-apples comparison. To start with, he neglects the role of modern medicine and emergency response.
1. Medicine's ability to help the injured is has increased at least tenfold. Medicine today is saving wounded soldiers who would have died in the WW II or Vietnam era.
2. Modern means of communication and transportation (911, ambulances and helicopters) get more people to life saving medical care in time.
The two greatest mass casualty natural disasters in the United States would kill fewer people today if they happened today:
A. An estimated 9,500 died in the 1901 heat wave. Most of these deaths would have been prevented by air conditioning.
B. An estimated 8,000 died in the Galveston hurricane of 1900. Greatly improved weather forecasting now allows people to evacuate. To make a direct comparison, the last time a hurricane went through Galveston in 2009, only 45 people died, all of them, because they refused to evacuate.
Yes, those are the more important factors. I was wanting to point out the fallacy of his approach based on the "numbers" (unenumerated), which he referred to as "evidence."
He claimed that the numbers showed that natural disasters are now less deadly, but what the numbers show is that we are much better at saving people despite natural disasters. As they say, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” If you want to see what natural disasters can do without modern life saving measures, take a look at Morocco or Libya.
"If you want to see what natural disasters can do without modern life saving measures"
Not to mention modern building codes, bridges, and flood mitigation channels. The "100 year" storm or earthquake (or tsunami, etc.) are real things. It is expensive to prepare for them, so generally people just hope they don't happen during their lifetimes.
There's a good book called Proofiness about manipulators' distortion of data gathering, analysis, display, and interpretation.
I learned the power of pretty graphs in my first job, as an engineering intern in a major aerospace company. I was running simulations on a mainframe, and graphing the results on this new computer called a Macintosh. The graphs were so pretty that the managers never questioned them. They could have been my biorhythms.
Really helpful tips. I certainly took away several questions I'll be asking myself when interpreting internet graphs.
It reminds me of a class offered by my alma mater where a couple of professors try to educate students on this very topic, aptly titled "Calling Bullshit." The syllabus and lectures are publicly available, and they even have a book out. https://callingbullshit.org/index.html
Also, he just produces an impressive amount of high-quality short-form econ video content, so could be worth checking out for any big econ bloggers thinking about trying out that medium *wink wink nudge nudge*
Good article... but you left off one of the most famous misleading (though aptly named) graphs - the "Laugher (sic) Curve". Totally ridiculous... Keep 'em coming, Noah!
I note that there seem to be more left-coded than right-coded graphs here. Is this because left-wing political messaging is more likely to go viral; because progressives are more inclined to use data to back up their arguments (albeit not always correctly); because progressives really are less statistically aware; or all or none of the above?
Yeah. I love "the visual display of quantitative information", and it has routinely been a key tool for presenting data throughout my career, but these days, when distributing information to the more general public (including my siblings), I have to ask, "Do they know how to read a chart or graph?" This even comes before, "Will they believe it?"
> But the climate doesn’t care about per capita emissions, only total; Kuwait’s per capita emissions are more than three times as high as China’s, but Kuwaiti policy is basically irrelevant to the future of the planet, while Chinese policy matters a whole lot.
But policy is set at many different levels; there are international treaties and supranational organizations (both global and regional), national governments, and often partly-sovereign subnational governments (such as U.S. states). Showing total emissions for the EU, for example, presents a very different picture than showing total emissions for each EU country; and it's not obvious which is more correct, unless you have propaganda reasons for preferring one or the other.
And even if you could decide that in an objectively reasonable way, per-capita measures would still be useful for understanding the situation. In a world where almost no country has achieved net zero, we'd accomplish much more if every country adopted policies that lowered per-capita emissions to at-most-China-like levels than if every country just tried to convince China to magically lower its total emissions to Kuwait-like levels.
There's not that many individual decisions to make. For instance, Americans' high transportation emissions are mostly caused by their governments' bad land use policies, not just because they all decided to get in their cars.
If the majority of us are watching short-form videos and looking at infographics or charts for 1.5 seconds per piece, I wonder about the nature of being fooled, getting it or being entertained in the process.
Apparent engagement online isn’t real engagement in that context. That’s one reason I like Substack where blogging isn’t dead and you can go deeper into a topic if you want to.
Fantastic point!!! The broader challenge that emerges is the very concept of social media. An appeal to our impulsive primitive brain coupled with "lots of data" -- I have believed for over a decade that the "like" may be the root of the pernicious. This is impulse without thought and has little constructive place in discourse. It is merely fun or anger or any other primitive impulse common to many beasts. It is boring but speech of any sort (including the like button) would be better filtered if folks asked (1) does it need to be said (2) does it need to be said by me and (3) does it need to be said now -- the like button and social media in GENERAL does none of these things and leaves it all to our lizard brains in the back of our heads. No wonder most all of it is dumb hot takes.
Your example of Substack is a GREAT observation. It is also interesting to note the emergence of Notes and soon thereafter the rise of the myriad "Substack Whisperers" -- let me tell you the secrets of how Substack works -- only $9.99. It is remarkably easy to trick a dual-brained animal. It is unfortunate so many get gratification doing it.
How about this one, from Vivek Ramswamy interviewed by Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC (not a chart, but still...):
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Andrea+Mitchell%27s+interview+of+Vivek+Ramaswamy&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:4a9723eb,vid:uEs0H1NG-DM,st:0
Ramaswamy states, "The number of climate-disaster-related deaths is down by 98% over the last century."
Apart from whatever number he is using and whatever his source, the population of the world is four times higher today than a century ago. If the incidence of "climate-disaster-related deaths" was 2% then and 2% now, by the raw numbers, that's a 75% decline.
Vivek's argument does not take into account the enormous differences between today and a century ago that tend to mitigate the death toll in natural disasters. He is not making an apples-to-apples comparison. To start with, he neglects the role of modern medicine and emergency response.
1. Medicine's ability to help the injured is has increased at least tenfold. Medicine today is saving wounded soldiers who would have died in the WW II or Vietnam era.
2. Modern means of communication and transportation (911, ambulances and helicopters) get more people to life saving medical care in time.
The two greatest mass casualty natural disasters in the United States would kill fewer people today if they happened today:
A. An estimated 9,500 died in the 1901 heat wave. Most of these deaths would have been prevented by air conditioning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1901_eastern_United_States_heat_wave
B. An estimated 8,000 died in the Galveston hurricane of 1900. Greatly improved weather forecasting now allows people to evacuate. To make a direct comparison, the last time a hurricane went through Galveston in 2009, only 45 people died, all of them, because they refused to evacuate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane
Yes, those are the more important factors. I was wanting to point out the fallacy of his approach based on the "numbers" (unenumerated), which he referred to as "evidence."
He claimed that the numbers showed that natural disasters are now less deadly, but what the numbers show is that we are much better at saving people despite natural disasters. As they say, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” If you want to see what natural disasters can do without modern life saving measures, take a look at Morocco or Libya.
"If you want to see what natural disasters can do without modern life saving measures"
Not to mention modern building codes, bridges, and flood mitigation channels. The "100 year" storm or earthquake (or tsunami, etc.) are real things. It is expensive to prepare for them, so generally people just hope they don't happen during their lifetimes.
Read about the Galveston hurricane.
Completely off topic, but this is the funniest bunny video I have ever seen. Obviously, none of us appreciates tomatoes enough.
https://twitter.com/RabbitEveryHour/status/1701098242572775536?utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&s=20
At the end he looks like he could be Bunnicula.
Who said rabbits are harmless?
Well, Sir Bors for one. But it was the _last_ thing he said.
When do we get the dump of other charts that have pissed you off?
Next week
There's a good book called Proofiness about manipulators' distortion of data gathering, analysis, display, and interpretation.
I learned the power of pretty graphs in my first job, as an engineering intern in a major aerospace company. I was running simulations on a mainframe, and graphing the results on this new computer called a Macintosh. The graphs were so pretty that the managers never questioned them. They could have been my biorhythms.
I used to have a whole tumblr of bad visualisations. Then they started getting so numerous that I stopped maintaining/ “collecting” them
https://www.tumblr.com/badvisualisations
Nice article. I was also inspired by Summers chart. But in this case to write a fully fledged defense of it https://open.substack.com/pub/shakoist/p/larry-summers-chart-is-fine?r=jhraj&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Absolutely fantastic 🔥
Really helpful tips. I certainly took away several questions I'll be asking myself when interpreting internet graphs.
It reminds me of a class offered by my alma mater where a couple of professors try to educate students on this very topic, aptly titled "Calling Bullshit." The syllabus and lectures are publicly available, and they even have a book out. https://callingbullshit.org/index.html
Thanks, this was a fun (and hopefully useful) read!
I'd recommend Christopher Clarke's video on the first graph as a sharable for anyone with family members who are addicted to short-form video content:
https://www.tiktok.com/@econchrisclarke/video/7277754625564871979
Also, he just produces an impressive amount of high-quality short-form econ video content, so could be worth checking out for any big econ bloggers thinking about trying out that medium *wink wink nudge nudge*
Good article... but you left off one of the most famous misleading (though aptly named) graphs - the "Laugher (sic) Curve". Totally ridiculous... Keep 'em coming, Noah!
The Laffer curve is highly accurate at the ends ...
Great text, thanks.
I note that there seem to be more left-coded than right-coded graphs here. Is this because left-wing political messaging is more likely to go viral; because progressives are more inclined to use data to back up their arguments (albeit not always correctly); because progressives really are less statistically aware; or all or none of the above?
Education polarization. When right-wing stuff goes viral it's usually not the kind of nerdy thing that would include a chart.
Yeah. I love "the visual display of quantitative information", and it has routinely been a key tool for presenting data throughout my career, but these days, when distributing information to the more general public (including my siblings), I have to ask, "Do they know how to read a chart or graph?" This even comes before, "Will they believe it?"
Nice work..thanks
great article!
> But the climate doesn’t care about per capita emissions, only total; Kuwait’s per capita emissions are more than three times as high as China’s, but Kuwaiti policy is basically irrelevant to the future of the planet, while Chinese policy matters a whole lot.
But policy is set at many different levels; there are international treaties and supranational organizations (both global and regional), national governments, and often partly-sovereign subnational governments (such as U.S. states). Showing total emissions for the EU, for example, presents a very different picture than showing total emissions for each EU country; and it's not obvious which is more correct, unless you have propaganda reasons for preferring one or the other.
And even if you could decide that in an objectively reasonable way, per-capita measures would still be useful for understanding the situation. In a world where almost no country has achieved net zero, we'd accomplish much more if every country adopted policies that lowered per-capita emissions to at-most-China-like levels than if every country just tried to convince China to magically lower its total emissions to Kuwait-like levels.
There's not that many individual decisions to make. For instance, Americans' high transportation emissions are mostly caused by their governments' bad land use policies, not just because they all decided to get in their cars.